Guest Post: Embers of War (Embers of War #1) by Gareth L. Powell

MAYDAY! 

How The Golden Age of Ocean Liners Inspired EMBERS OF WAR

Gareth L. Powell

You know what happened to the Titanic, don’t you? In 1912, the ship hit an iceberg in the Atlantic, broke in two and sank. The band played until the end. Leonardo DiCaprio drowned…

But the Titanic wasn’t the first liner lost at sea. Many had gone down previously, some with an even greater loss of life. Below, I have prepared a brief list of liners lost in the years before the Titanic. 

• SS President – 1841

• SS City of Glasgow – 1854 

• SS Pacific – 1856 

• SS City of Boston – 1870

• SS City of London – 1881

• SS Waratah – 1909 

All these vanished. They set out to sea and failed to arrive at their destination, and no one really knew what happened to them. They were presumed lost, their passengers and crew dead for days or weeks before anyone realized something might be amiss.

The difference with the Titanic was that it carried a radio. When it got into trouble, it was able to signal its plight to nearby ships—with the result that almost a third of its complement were rescued within hours of the sinking.

In contrast, the SS President disappeared without a trace on her voyage from New York to Liverpool. With no way to summon assistance, the unfortunate souls on board might as well have been stranded on the dark side of the Moon.

When I came across this story in a magazine a couple of years ago, while waiting to see my dentist, it made me pause to consider the parallels between ocean travel and space travel. If a starship foundered in a distant system, would anyone be there to rescue it? Without faster-than-light communication, wouldn’t its fate be the same as that of the SS President?

So what would happen, I thought if humanity had both superluminal communication and travel? Nearby ships could come to the aid of the stricken vessel, much as the Carpathia came to assist the Titanic. Then I started to wonder what would happen if the situation were analogous to today. In today’s world, organizations such as the RNLI and US Coast Guard exist to help ships in trouble. If a passenger liner starts taking on water, helicopters and rescue boats can be with it in a matter of hours. 

And that’s when I knew I had the nugget of a science fiction story. I’d taken an idle thought concerning that magazine article and spun it out to the point where I was suddenly imagining an organization dedicated to rescuing crashed and stranded starships. A sort of Thunderbirds in space.   

I already had a few characters I’d been kicking around, including a sentient warship that had resigned her commission after accidentally developing a conscience. From the moment I imagined her joining this rescue organization, I knew I would be writing a novel.

Six months later, I finished the first draft of EMBERS OF WAR—a novel about a starliner brought down in a disputed system on a political fault line, and the former warship who sets out to rescue its passengers. Along the way, I’d also thrown in an ancient alien species, a couple of undercover agents from opposing human factions, and the first hints of something dangerous on the loose in hyperspace.

Flicking through a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room, I had inadvertently discovered the seed for what would become an entire trilogy of novels. And the article wasn’t even about anything science fictional. This is why when I’m asked where I get my ideas, I often reply,  “Everywhere.” Because you never really know when inspiration will strike—or what might set it off.

EMBERS OF WAR by Gareth L. Powell is published by Titan Books. You can find Gareth on Twitter @garethlpowell