The Project

As with many things in my life, this project began in a pub. OK, well, technically two of them and one living room with a bottle of red.

Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012. The most awesome game, once patched, with an ending of 250 hours of play per run, ruined by writing.

Man of Steel came out in 2013. The most awesome Superman film with the best cast. Except the military were written as idiots and 'wouldn't it have been good if Superman had thought to take care of normal people'.

Cue pub visit 1: 'Cool. If you think you can do better, then why don't you do it?'

OK. So I'm an aerospace & defence engineer. I spent a career making humans and machines work together better. I seek to understand science and technology and trends. I figure stuff out. I see trends in random parameters and put them on a graph together. Then I stare intently, sucking coffee or walking a dog. And figure out what if.

So another what if...

Wouldn't it have been nice Cavill's Man of Steel had someone to make him a bit less lonely in the suit. Which wasn't an unusual thought, which is why Supergirl exists. And yet, outside of comics since before the 80s, that's not what we've seen.

Then the CW supergirl show came out. And, eventually, there was a Superman - but he was kinda happy, settled, together and largely sidelined. Not the guy from Man of Steel who'd had to hide for 25 years.

And...

Krypton just keeps exploding. They have the tech to build escape pods. So why didn't they do anything? If their culture was that ossified, why?

And then Superman has kids with Lois and sometime you get these random stories where the Supes are normal and someone else gets powered up. Why?

Definitionally, if you can breed a male and female together, that's a common species. And if there's some weird way for powers to hop, same thing.

And then why are the powers to do with yellow suns? That's only 7% of stars. And we keep finding planets everywhere we look. So why would you have a bunch of superpowered humans with transferrable skills that only work on 7% of star systems? That's weird - and don't give me some nonsense about heavy gravity worlds - same height, same muscle mass, same soft tissue in the same places.

So pub visit 2 (to be clear - just the one of relevance to this, others happened): Why would you have these weird humans with superpowers that only work in a few systems, including the one humans are from, but not including the one these weird ones live on?

And so: 'Dude, you're the weird science guy that predicts how we get cool tech. Go backwards. If you have weird humans with special powers in a few places, work out what each of the rules means, what converged to get there and figure out how that rule would come about.'

And so more coffee was consumed and dogs were walked for more miles.

And then, a few things happened.

1. The 'woman of tomorrow' comic came out. And Supergirl's origin on Argo got really interesting.
2. Milly Alcock knocked it out of the park in Upright season 2. That woman can act. And she got cast as Supergirl a year or few later. 'Interesting...' as they say.
3. AI started to happen - which meant research could be done in seconds not days and concept art could be made and tweaked.
4. Project Hail Mary (the book) came out and knocked it out of the park with science and structure - and gave a handy little gadget for storing solar energy.
5. Redundancy then consulting meant there was time.

And so some of the thoughts on the dog walks got turned into things on screen and on paper.

And then the kicker... one night, in a living room, with a new friend and half a bottle of red wine. Each.

'So for 12 years, this stuff has been rattling around my head. Now it's getting a shape. What d'you think?'

And she said 'That is a very cool set of ideas. Do it. Do it now. Not like right now - but like tomorrow. DO IT!'

And so... almost a year later, here we are. A website and 2 novels. -ish. More to come over the next year or so.

AI has been used for research, image generation and has been trained to write like me on a bad day. And then I work manually. This is me doing in text what I practised in Defence - work with the machine, do not have one or other do all the work.

This is not a commercial offering or a teaser. This is shout into the ether of 'I can do this - and I'm clueless. Somebody read this and do better!'

So 9 novels have been scoped and drafted. The site launches with part 1 and a preview of part 2. Others will follow. There will be concept art and the odd video.

These will always be free.

I may get inventive with audio & video, but I promise nothing.

To Henry Cavill and Milly Alcock - you wuz robbed.

To David Corenswet, Tyler Hoechin and Melissa Benoist - well done.

To Christopher Reeve (RIP) and Helen Slater - there is always a first.

And Christian Craighead, who is actually the kind of hero we need to see and have more of: Bravo Zulu. Out.

PS - Really, Milly was awesome with what she was given. Sigh.

PPS- and if any of these people read anything on this site, I'll be mortified

PPPS - Critical Drinker and Andy Weir also rock. There. I said it.

Go Away Now.