Behind the Scenes

As The Hunt evolved from short story to novel, it was, in a sense, my own quest for a resolution to a tragic original story. In the original story, written when I was 13, Talbot and Stone ended up killing each other in the forest, each driven by their own hatreds. At first I thought this was sufficient to the theme - hate each other as members of groups, ignore individuality, and death is the result. But as I grew in my appreciation of the duty of a writer, I began to feel uncomfortable with that - as if it were a failure on my part to resolve the issue more constructively. So The Hunt began to grow.

I wanted to tell a story that was primarily focused on the viewpoint of a single character. I wanted to put that character through great changes in the course of the story. I wanted to show how those changes could happen, in context. The changes were to bring the character from bigot to individualist in the course of the story. In general, I was pleased that I could accomplish this to the extent I did. I was focused strongly on showing that Talbot would have held his bigoted opinion even in an atmosphere of neutrality, because his dislikes were born from shutting himself off from reality. I tried to keep the alien characters neutral toward Talbot and his dislikes - though how much of that is real uncaring, how much is ignorance of the implications of Talbot's actions, and how much is "good manners", I leave to the reader to discover. Certainly Atrenn believed that he knew the source of Talbot's problems, and yet believed Talbot had great potential, while Amel was somewhat innocent, and became angry when it realized what Talbot was doing (yet I think it never knew that Talbot disliked it as a member of a species - Amel simply thought Talbot was inconsiderate).

The core of the presentation was to use my style of "show don't tell" in an assemblage of small scenes. This style substitutes an omnipresent (but highly selective) cameraperson for the classic omniscient narrator. There are many virtues to this style. One is the ability to suggest connecting scenes without actually having to write them, especially when the content of those scenes can be implied by prior or following dialog or actions. This allows me to sustain a rapid dramatic pace. Another benefit lies in the flow of the events selected - the sense of where this is driving can sometimes force events in unexpected directions. I like avoiding an inflexible plan or outline. If I have to spend years living with characters and events, I like it when they can continue to surprise me. And I think it helps me to avoid telegraphing the course of events to the reader.

In this novel were many threads to be maintained and integrated:

• The epic arc - the historical and political story.
• The character arc for Talbot - his development from bigot to individualist.
• The adventure and the quest.
• The romantic thread between Talbot and Jill.
• The slow revelation of Latimer and the role of his species.

Everything takes time and space to evolve. I had to find enough time and space for the events and texture of the story. I had to have characters who could make mistakes and learn from them. I had shifting levels of authority for the characters - for instance, as Talbot shifts from working for Jill to having her work for him, jealousy, competitiveness, and anger had to be generated, sustained and resolved. Most importantly, because of the epic components to the novel, I wanted to ensure that my characters were affected by the cumulative danger and strangeness of events, something frequently missing in the genre. The burden of the quest was something I saw as intense and powerful, but these were characters who were both strong and vulnerable, and they had all been through events of large and terrifying scope before. I needed to balance their sanity on that fine blade - and most of the characters fell off the wrong side of that blade at some point - Talbot during the initial phases, and perhaps during his descent to Tlnou; Jill in the cafeteria on the lighter, Steve Hallison after the accident in the Geodesic ship and the death of his team, Clu Sherril after the near death of Latimer - and, of course, the final act of Latimer's species.

In the course of facing the need to have aliens and yet have them communicate, it was necessary to decide how that would be handled. I decided that they used translation systems which took the native communication mode of each species (ultrasonics, skin color, gesture, whatever) and translated it into Cospuk. Cospuk would then be the common medium of communication between translators, which would use contact lenses, audio, or other media to present the resulting translated material to each individual in some acceptable modality. However, at the same time, I wanted to give each species a natural texture of speech, and so I invented specific accents and sentence structures for each, and allowed that to show through the audio translation process. I decided that the processing needed and capability differences in translators were partly responsible for that problem, and I allowed characters to use non-local processing or higher fidelity levels with slower translation to improve the presentation as needed or as affordable. The difficulty with this was the need to maintain consistency in these accents across the novel, and to try to allow individual differences to show through the speech.

Showing individual differences among the alien species in The Hunt was further complicated by the fact that the Geodesic is multi-species, with so many species that it was difficult to find an opportunity to show more than one member of a particular species. However, I was able to find a few places - for instance, Atrenn and the Director of the Tereniades (a technologically superior species, dominating much of interstellar travel and commerce), and Amel and Wanr of the Pangalin. Unfortunately, there were relatively few scenes in which to stress intraspecies individual differences.

In a way, this is one of the most difficult aspects of a "show don't tell" style. If things work out, you get to show enough to meet your secondary objectives. But sometimes the luck doesn't go with you, and you can't show the things you need for those objectives without distorting the focus of the story beyond recognition. It's even harder when you restrict yourself to staying mostly with what the main character's viewpoint - which is the case here.

The work culture of the Illyrion (Talbot's home vehicle) is another area of importance, because it shapes much of the personality of the characters. I quickly realized that people who signed up for this kind of career would spend most of that career on spacecraft, in transit, living with the people with whom they worked, and with intense missions being periods of continuous effort - no going home at five. I presumed that these people would have to be highly dedicated, often single-minded, possibly even obsessive in their focus. This would be exacerbated by the way work roles change over time in their employment. The authority structure is highly informal, except, in this case, for the Director, who is the primary policy setter and strategist for the ship, with authority delegated from the company. Team structures shift swiftly, based on interest, tactics, relationships, and the task at hand. The Director is hands off, mostly setting direction, and even team leaders try to let team dynamics evolve. But this fluid structure means that only the most dedicated and focused make it to the top and stay there. At the same time, every member has an incentive to mentor and develop new people to work with (for variety and for the sake of being able to be sure of compatibility in work style and personality). To some extent, Talbot's lack of advancement was a partial cause of his bigotry, but it became clear to me after a while that he was just keeping himself down and using a convenient excuse, because he had decided early on a path and wasn't changing his course when it was clear that didn't work.

Though the Geodesic is multi-species, and the large corporate ships like the Illyrion are very multi-species, there is a tendency, only occasionally violated, for species which prefer similar environments and atmospheres to work together on ships (Waylandcorrig is the primary exception in The Hunt). That's just convenience from the viewpoint of both shipmakers and individuals. Shipmakers like it because accomodating multiple environments is much more expensive, and individuals like it because living and working in closed environments and spacesuits is tedious and exhausting.

Another area of interest was the society of Prometheus. Prometheus had originally been developed as part of my (at the time) unfinished novel Source. A chain of several large asteroids, hollowed into vast open habitats operating under a system of engineered gravity and light, whose origin is not discussed in The Hunt, Prometheus is a minarchist society, primarily represented in The Hunt by an aged Clu Sherril (in her youth, the main protagonist of Source). Promethean technology, and Clu's associate Latimer, ultimately provide an opportunity to resolve the origins and purpose of the Mover.

As The Hunt developed, it became a complex and sometimes fearsome object. As the various threads raced toward completion, I wasn't sure I could maintain control over all of the complexity. I kept no notes and wrote the entire novel from my head. Each night I would lie awake for a little while, knowing the general direction of the story, and some of the resolutions, desperately trying to pick the next scene. But when it was over, I was both relieved and sad.

You shouldn't need to read this to understand The Hunt. If you did, then I failed in some degree to manage the complexity of what started as a short story written by a thirteen year old. This remains my most complex and difficult work - though Ringclimber had its own powerful challenges, it was, in many ways, a more subtle story of people, with a more limited cast of characters and a more close-held setting. Like Ringclimber, The Hunt developed a story of character and of many people interacting. But there were many more people, many more scenes, many more easy answers to avoid, a genre to respect and extend. I'm proud of it, but I think there were some areas where it was less successful than I hoped, and some areas where it was more successful than I even intended. It became a world of its own that I was privileged to watch, and that I'm happy to share with you.