SFSTORY: HMS Golden Lance #38 - Author's Afterward

Back in the late 1980's, I was attending an institute of higher learning being exposed to a great number of interesting things which would help me later in life. Unfortunately, few of these things had anything to do with the bachelor's degree that I would ultimately fail to attain.

One of these things was SFStory.

This was a time before the Internet and the World Wide Web. Email was a new and frightening thing. Newsgroups were a new idea that people weren't quite sure would catch on. We had things called ARPAnet and BITnet, but no Internet or Compuserve or America Online. Everyone with access to any computer network was educated, intelligent, imaginative, resourceful, creative, or sleeping with someone who was.

In short, we were a bunch of geeks.

Somehow, I discovered SFStory. Science Fiction Story. A email discussion group where anybody could write a new chapter to the rapidly growing story. Collaborative fiction. It was the first time I'd ever conceived of such a thing. I just had to read more. Eventually, I just had to write something.

My first efforts weren't met with hoots of derision, so I continued. Then I went home for Christmas or Spring Break or something. When I returned, I found that someone had taken my storyline in my absense and moved it in a new direction. Now I conceived of something called "creative control" and decided to seize it.

I had been using characters and situations created by others, so I had no right to be the slightest bit upset when someone else used them as well. I had no right, but I was upset anyway. I eased my upset by creating some of my own characters and situations. Oh, they were still set in the SFStory universe. I couldn't force myself to go completely out of my own and give up the pre-existing audience. But they were my characters, my stories, and people were mostly nice about asking before they played with my toys.

I lost network access for a while and eventually forgot all about SFStory. When the World Wide Web became popular and I finally got access (at all of 14.4kbps), I created a website and wrote some stuff, but I didn't even think to look for SFStory until years later. I found that it had continued on without me as a subset of the Superguy universe. Ironic, because I remember Superguy as a subset of the SFStory universe.

I eventually got up my nerve to start writing again. Superguy didn't have a lot of traffic and practically none of it was SFStory, but I started writing again. I figured, if nothing else, there'd be nobody around to laugh at me.

Apparently, there were several would-be authors just waiting for someone to test the water before they dove in. Soon, there were plenty of people around to laugh at me. Luckily, I was writing comedy.

Time Agent 357 was an original creation of mine. SFStory had the Time Police and possibly even a Time Detective or two, but I figured that the whole of Time and Space needed a little more than a police force. I decided that in addition to the regular patrol officers, there should be roaming troubleshooters. Free agents, if you will. I decided to call him 357 because numbers are cool. I hit three buttons on the numpad and that's what came out.

No, he wasn't named after a firearm calliber.

Time Agent 357 started off as human. Well, ish. But I eventually added details and backstory and made him a unique alien. Any similarities between 357 and a certain British doctor who travels through time and space in a phone booth are strictly coincidental.

357's ship, the HMS Golden Lance, was envisioned to be a spacegoing motor home recreational vehicle sort of thing. I came up with this idea years before Spaceballs, by the way. I was inspired by my grandparents' purchase of one, and my grandfather's cynical comment that if things got too rough at home, he'd just retire and live in the RV. It being bigger on the inside than on the outside was because it was funny, though I never got around to writing any jokes about it. Nowadays, it's a bit of a cliche.

Now that I was back, I decided to write the ultimate 357 story, the story to end all stories. This series would tell the complete life story of 357, from his humble beginnings to his heroic end. And I'd frame it in a story of an evil overlord trying to rule the multiverse.

Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts, occasionally a life comes up and gets me. I found myself with less and less time and energy to write. I also found my interests moving away from science fiction and more towards superhero fiction. My planned 357 episode science fiction saga barely made it to 37. The framing story was about all it was.

Well, at least I got two of the numbers right.

Regardless, I did enjoy writing HMS Golden Lance, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. I hope to have some new fiction for you shortly.

Copyright 2007 by Troy H. Cheek. Free to read, but please reprint only with permission.