I was asked recently about world building when I write my stories. How do I come up with an alien world? Right now I’m working on a new novel where part of the action takes place in Enceladus (a moon of Saturn). Another part will take place at a base inside a moon. Reflectively, Demeter is also a world inside a world or dead planetoid. Paragon is the one setting I have used so far that is more of a traditional surface world. Enceladus fits well into to follow-up story I’m writing as a follow-up to Salt of the Earth (not yet published). The current science makes it an interesting potential setting as we have discovered that Enceladus has a vast ocean under a frozen surface. So reading science articles about what is happening in the Solar System awakens my creative juices on “what could it be like”.
The model for Demeter was the asteroid in our Solar System, Ceres. If you think about mythology it makes some sense that the Greek God for Agriculture is Demeter and the Roman God for Agriculture (lifted from the Greeks) is Ceres.
Ceres is a large asteroid in the Asteroid Belt about 1,000 km in diameter. It is like a very small, very dead planetoid that is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Demeter likewise is set in a desolate, but strategically valuable point in Orion’s Spur. It is a light year away from any Sun. To put this in perspective the Kuiper Belt 2.0 is about 90 Astronomical Units (AU) from the Sun. (Note: If you’re not familiar with the term AU it is a unit of measure that is the distance of Earth from the Sun.) One light year is 63,241 AU.
Using Ceres as a model, and thinking about such stories as “Journey to the Center of the Earth” I started thinking about the problems I had with the concept of Jules Verne’s story based on science. The interior of Ceres became a challenge. The interior world of Demeter was not natural, but a matter of terra-forming. This occurred over an undefined time. Some of the mysteries of Demeter is who formed it in the first place? How was it discovered considering its remoteness. The war that surrounds Orion’s Spur had been going on for over 10 millenia. The root cause of the war is a thing of legend. Even who built the buildings and infrastructure is a point of contention. This part is revealed to be more of a surprise to the protagonists, although there is enough foreshadowing that it is not a major surprise to the readers.
In Chapter 7 we get our first glimpse of Demeter:
Demeter looked like a small planet, although Ryder knew that it had a diameter of only about half the size of the Earth’s moon. For him, it would be better to think of it as a large asteroid. It was basically round, although elliptical like an egg might be more accurate. The surface was heavily pockmarked. In fact, there seemed to be craters inside craters and then more craters. It was very uninviting, increasing Ryder’s sense of foreboding and concerns.
The world of Demeter edges on paradise from a topographical perspective. It is primarily a large ocean world, supported by ice fields on the polar region of the interior of the world. As the eco-system is artificial, the systems are maintained through technology. It rains every night, but the days are always clear. The lighting inside the world is created through technology in a world that is a natural geode that has been terra-formed. There are numerous green islands, but the bulk of the population resides on what would be the sides of the world with what appear to be mountains, but is actually the inner wall of the planetoid.
Ryder and his friends get their first glimpse of the interior of Demeter after traveling through a number of locks
From the side portals, they could see the sheer face of a mountain wall rising on either side of the lock. As Ryder followed the line of the jagged obsidian cliffs that rose out of sight, he saw patches of chartreuse vegetation struggling to survive on the glassy surface. The sky was difficult to read. They could not see any clouds, but it felt hazy as if twilight were approaching. It was obviously daytime for this world, but Ryder could not locate a central source of the light. As the Pegasus continued to move forward and exit the final lock, a pale aqua surface mirrored below. It wasn’t until a large creature of some sort broke the surface that they realized it was water.
“The Sea of Demeter,” …
Once I had created the world of Demeter, I worked to explain how the world could possibly work? How could you keep it warm? What about atmosphere? Gravity? Weather? Agriculture? How did you feed the population? Why even bother?
Now for the downside of world building. It takes away from the action. I’ve been told that the first book is a great story, but a little slow in the first half of the book. That is unavoidable from my perspective to set up a good story with a good world that has its own uniqueness, its own alienness, its own mystery. Books 2 and 3 of Orion’s Spur focuses more on action as the world is already constructed. Books 4 and 5 take us to two new worlds and cultures. Does the story slow? Not so much as we have a point of reference already developed in Book 1.