{"id":355,"date":"2015-01-13T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T17:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/?p=355"},"modified":"2015-01-03T18:11:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T23:11:10","slug":"my-favorite-book-tales-of-the-utanse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2015\/01\/13\/my-favorite-book-tales-of-the-utanse\/","title":{"rendered":"My Favorite Book: Tales of the U\u2019tanse"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tales<\/a>
Tales of the U’tanse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was plain from the very beginning in Star Time that this saga I was writing had two branches, and it wouldn\u2019t work to combine them in one novel.\u00a0 No matter that this was hardly the traditional way to write a book series, the off-world branch of humanity needed its own books.<\/p>\n

Strictly speaking, Tales of the U\u2019tanse isn\u2019t a novel, but rather a collection of tales covering the first few generations of the human race as slaves on the planet Ko. Their masters, the Cerik, have no lips and could not pronounce human<\/b>, coming up with u\u2019tanse <\/b>instead.<\/p>\n

\u2018Adam and Eve on a new planet\u2019 sounds romantic, but those first few generations have some very tough problems. Uncontrolled, the limited genetic diversity would normally doom such a population with birth defects and infertility. In this case, however, Sharon from Star Time was a very capable psychic, able to control the cells of her body and she was able to weed out defective gene combinations just prior to conception. Still, it was a life-long task to raise as many children as possible to conserve what genetic diversity they had.<\/p>\n

But her abilities added new complications.\u00a0 How do you raise a telepathic child to have an independent mind? How can you prevent a community of telepaths from becoming a hive mind?<\/p>\n

And there is the question, if the U\u2019tanse ever find their way home to Earth, will they still be human?<\/p>\n

With these big questions forcing the early culture of the U\u2019tanse into a shape alien to most of us, I still wanted to write clearly human stories, with people struggling to find their own way in life.<\/p>\n

As a writer, I also had to constantly watch out for anachronisms. These people knew practically nothing of American culture, other than a few mentions in the Book, written by their ancestor. Creating a new culture is fun, though.<\/p>\n

Cover art was an issue.\u00a0 From the beginning, I wanted a different look for the saga — different from my YA adventure novels.\u00a0 The first two were near-current time, and I managed with Photoshop work.\u00a0 But starting with Tales of the U\u2019tanse, I went searching for character art for the covers, and found an artist in Germany who did a very good job creating the look of the U\u2019tanse, cousins all, living on a world with a poisonous atmosphere.<\/p>\n

So, with stories creating the culture of the U\u2019tanse and being able to shape this new branch of humanity, Tales of the U\u2019tanse is my favorite.<\/p>\n

More about Tales of the U’tanse<\/a><\/p>\n

Next up — My Favorite Book: In the Time of Green Blimps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was plain from the very beginning in Star Time that this saga I was writing had two branches, and it wouldn\u2019t work to combine them in one novel.\u00a0 No matter that this was hardly the traditional way to write a book series, the off-world branch of humanity needed its own books. Strictly speaking, Tales… Continue reading My Favorite Book: Tales of the U\u2019tanse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[26,12,8],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-5J","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}