Author Henry Melton has written quite a few novels during his career, but is not as widely known as other writers publishing today. Among his works is an interconnected sci-fi saga that rivals quite a few of the space operas out there for the public to read. To get some insight into this saga as well get to know Mr. Henry Melton a little better, I was able to conduct an email interview with him to share with all of you.
Questions are in bold/italic
How would you describe the Project Saga?
Different stories come in different sizes. My first published piece was 600 words, little more than an elaborate pun. The Project Saga is several large stories that fit together in the same universe. The name was given with I was deep in the Earth branch, where the major theme was the Great Terraforming Project where humanity, convinced there would never be practical star flight decided to remake pieces of the solar system into habitable worlds where people could live, barefoot under the sky, if necessary. Rather than name the various branches as separate stories, they just became branches of the overall Saga.
How many series make up the Saga?
The initial novel, Star Time is basically a stand-alone story about the impact of a nearby supernova and the alien race that attempts to take advantage of distressed populations. This leads to the other stories. In fact, after the final chapter of the novel, there are two short stories that are the introduction to the next major branches of the story, focussed on different groups of people; the Earth Branch and the U’tanse Branch.
The Earth Branch is the story of the recovery of Earth after the supernova flare, developing genetic engineering, and discovering the tractor/pressor technology that enables the Terraforming Project.
The U’tanse Branch is an isolated story of the humans captured by the alien race and trapped as a slave race on the Cerik’s home planet. However, the mother of all the new humans was very psychically gifted and the whole population inherits this.
Following the Earth Branch, about 500 years after the disastrous collapse of the Project civilization, there is the Lunar Alpine Trilogy. Taking place on terraformed Luna, on a world at roughly iron age technology and very little education, the survivor of a colony of scholars attempts to bring literacy back to Luna.
Not yet published, but mostly written is the final stage of the story, Children of Earth. In this final trilogy, the U’tanse rediscover Earth, and all the remaining story threads get resolved. No more after this, I promise.
What inspired this series?
There are several big ideas that I’ve wanted to explore, and sometimes big ideas take a lot of words. The U’tanse Branch deals with humanity and psychic gifts. It’s a common theme to give psychic abilities to characters in fiction, but I’ve always had nagging questions. One of which is that if some humans had a genetic advantage such as telepathy or clairvoyance, why haven’t those humans out-competed the rest of humanity and we’ve all become psychics? Surely, there must be disadvantages, and I work on some of these issues.
Terraforming planets, a necessity if humanity is trapped in the solar system by the speed of light limitations, is a fascinating problem, and nearly impossible without new technologies. An early story triggered my interest in tractor beams. I was never happy with tractor beams as commonly used in Star Trek or Star Wars. It was too much a magic device. I set out to define a new type of tractor/pressor technology with its own rigid rules and limitations, and this gave me the tool to terraform planets in the Earth Branch.
These are the two big inspirations that came together to enable the Project Saga.
Was this a planned-out project, or did you start connecting your books and the universe that was created after?
I was a short story author, starting back in the 70s with works in Analog and many other magazines and paperback anthologies. Several of the smaller pieces included my ideas on terraforming and using tractor-beam technologies. Once I folded those technologies into my novel Star Time, I realized that they were all connected and the beginnings of the Project Saga took shape from there.
Your book, Maker on The High Road seems to connect fandom to the real world, what inspired it?
Write what you know? Maker is one of those garage inventor stories that I like and it was natural that the main character would be tinkering with 3D printing and would be looking to sell his wares at a comic con, before he discovered his Big Thing. I’ve been selling my books at cons for some years now and it was just natural to walk some of the people I meet into the pages of the book. It was fun to write.
As an independent author, is it hard to maintain momentum in such a competitive field, or does it give you an advantage?
I’m not the example of a successful writer. I love to write, but I’m bad at selling my books. If I didn’t go to cons and talk about my books, all my stories would just be files on my computer that would never find a reader. I’m just glad that I enjoy meeting people one-on-one. I make enough to keep doing what I like and I love that people enjoy my work, but unless magic happens, my stories will never go big time. I think I’m content with that.
