I had never noticed before how pompous that title sounded! Most scifi titles do tend to be a little on the grandiose side. Not really grandiose; impressive, really. SciFi aficionados wouldn't notice anything that wasn't on an impressive scale!
I still remember writing this story—again, in chunks—but I specifically remember introducing the character of Lena! I love kids, and Lena is one of the children whom I adored the most. (Lena and Summer were created together, and they're both wonderful characters. If I were a good artist, I'd try to draw Summer; Lena is a little too much of a perfect child, but Summer, I should be able to manage. She was a thin-ish, shapeless kid, always dressed in a TShirt, and jeans and a jeans jacket, grey eyes, dirty blonde, blonde eyebrows that disappeared into her bangs, a short bob hairstyle.)
Helen started a choir on the ship. Over the winter break (they created winter on the ship, by reducing the number of hours the heating and lighting was on) they were rehearsing choral numbers in the early morning. Here's a paragraph describing it:
Summer was in the chorus, though Lena had been deemed a little too young to take the grueling schedule of rehearsals. She didn’t care; she sang along softly as she waited for her friend, all arms and legs and hair. Her hair was long now, a chestnut mane of straight, silky stuff that everyone loved to play with. Little girls often braided it and re-braided it, while Lena blissfully sang.
The words blissfully sang just puts me back into a special place in my mind, where I was when I was writing this chapter; I think I had just realized what a marvelous creation Lena was. I could not have imagined how her character would develop; Helen and Lena are both major strands in the story.
So is Summer; so is Lena's mother, Daisy, and so are Sheila Connors, and her family!
If any of you had tried to read the story, but been discouraged by the introduction, go find the place where Helen is revived, and start reading there; I give you full permission!
Kay Kay, Kay.
