by Rick Wilber
Rick Wilber and Kevin J. Anderson return to Asimov’s in our [March/April issue, on sale now!] with the third piece in their planned quartet of stories about the generation ship known as the Hind. In this informative essay, learn more about Rick and Kevin’s unique cowriting process, along with how the Hind came to be
“The Ghosts of Goldilocks” is the third of a planned quartet of stories that Kevin J. Anderson and I have written about a troubled generation ship, the Hind, and its crew and passenger colonists. The overall idea is about the promise and perils of generation-ship colonization, and about the way some under-valued people can transcend expectations.
In the first story, Hind suffered nearly cataclysmic damage and was limping along aimlessly through the void until an elderly passenger overcame her memory troubles to wake up the damaged ship’s AI and save the day. The story won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award for best novelette and then won the Canopus Award for Best Interstellar Writing—Short Form.
In the second story, the novella, “The Death of the Hind,” the deeply wounded ship reached its destination, but the colonists found it barely habitable. Nonetheless, they had to start their settlement even as the damaged Hind finally fell out of orbit and was destroyed as it fell through the planet’s atmosphere. One of the principal characters in the second story is a child with Down syndrome, popular with everyone on the ship, even his grumpy grandfather who insists to nearly the end that the ship is all right.
In this third story, it is some decades later and the colony is struggling to survive under trying circumstances. The child with Down syndrome from the second story has grown into a valued adult who chooses to live alone, wandering all over the forbidding landscape, stopping in to see a few friends now and then but mostly keeping to himself.
With his cheerful demeanor and intimate knowledge of the wilds of Goldilocks, Lonnie Dothanson has become a treasured, almost mythical character, the Old Man of the Hills, surviving on his own, happy and productive in his particular way. The discovery by the colonists that they are not alone on this planet makes Lonnie’s expertise all the more important. You’ll see the connection in the stories as they talk about people exceeding expectations.
There’s some history to these stories, and some future, too. Kevin J. Anderson and I are friends and colleagues, both of us on the faculty of the low residency Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University. The GPCW is primarily online, but there is a one-week residency in July where we all meet face-to-face, have classes and special guests and evening events and outings into the mountains. The campus is at 7800 feet, so we’re in a high mountain valley. Crested Butte, a ski town, is nearby. It’s a great way to get an MFA or MA from a fine university (consider this my plug for Western and the GPCW, which I really enjoy being part of).
I’m on the Genre Fiction sequence faculty, doing some teaching and also serving as a mentor to grad students working on their thesis novels. Kevin is the founder and director of the Publishing sequence, where he teaches and advises and directs the program, which is chock full of grad students anxious to learn the ins and outs of modern publishing, traditional or independent.
For many people that work alone would be a full-time job, but for the incredibly energetic Kevin, it’s one of about ten different jobs he’s working on at the same time, from running his publishing house (WordFire Books), writing his best-selling novels, being heavily involved in the Dune franchise as a producer and writer, working on projects from audio books to original music to so much more. He’s a very busy guy.
One of his tricks is to maximize his writing time, dictating his stories and novels as he hikes up one mountain or another in Colorado.
For instance, Kevin wrote the quick first draft our first story, the multiple award-winning, “The Hind,” while on a mountain hike near Western Colorado University’s campus, where we were both in residence. We had mapped out that story on a the long drive from Kevin’s home in Monument, CO to the campus in Gunnison, a good three-and-a-half hours of mountain driving. I live at sea level in Florida, so I always take a day or two to acclimate, staying with Kevin and his wife, the very talented Rebecca Moesta, and then driving from their home to Gunnison with Kevin at the wheel..
We did something similar for the second story, “The Death of the Hind,” traveling along mountain roads like US 50, stopping for lunch in Salina, stopping for the views at Monarch Pass, and then diving down into Gunnison.
The third story, the one in this issue, came about a little differently. We’d mapped it out, for sure, but it was my turn to get that first draft done and I struggled. With Kevin cheering me on, I eventually got it done and sent it his way.
But my version veered off from Kevin’s plot, and he had his doubts. He’s a master of plotting, so I welcomed his thoughts as I did the next draft, sent that his way and all was good. One more draft for polish and we sent the story in. Happily, it sold and got very nice play on the cover of the current issue of the magazine.
I’m lucky to have collaborated with other talented writers; Brad Aiken, Lisa Lanser Rose, Nicholas DiChario, Alan Smale, and even the always remarkable Joe Haldeman, where I’m in the final throes of a draft of our shared novella. Several of the stories I’ve teamed up with these writers on have appeared in this magazine.
With each of the writers I have plans for more collaborations, stories we’ve talked about, stories I’d love to get to work on. It’s a privilege having the opportunity to work with them. But then there’s the fourth Goldilocks story with Kevin. As usual, he’s already plotted it out and sent that my way. I’ll get to it soon, honest, but, you know, it’s hard keeping up with Kevin.
From Earth to the Stars 