by Jill Ramonsky
This is the story of a galaxy very distant from our own, and which happens to have taken place long before the Earth even existed. It is also the story of the people of that galaxy, and their adventures.
Though smaller than the Milky Way, the Je-Strak galaxy is very much like our own, in all respects except one - it is chock full of wormholes! And this is very convenient for the people of that galaxy, because it means they can get together and have an interstellar community without ever having to invent warp drive. This is good. It's good because, like time-travel, clairvoyance, and mind-reading police forces, faster-than-light travel is pure fantasy and has no place in a serious work of science fiction (as opposed to science fantasy). The difference between the two is that, of fantasy, you can say "it couldn't happen", wheras of fiction, the worst you can say is "it didn't happen". So you see, my world, my galaxy, is one which has to make sense to me. The people who find themselves in this situation have very real problems to solve, and, while I rule out the absurd traditions of sci-fi, I do not rule out the plausible extrapolations of technology - things such as genetic engineering, nanotech, AI, and so forth, which (unlike warp drive) will happen, and to some extent are happening already.
The story that I have to tell is vast, and so can only be told in small segments. To this end, I would like to introduce you to one of the worlds in the galaxy of Je-Strak: a particular world, which calls itself Enua. You see, in the galaxy of Je-Strak, unlike the galaxies of TV and movie "science fiction", not all aliens look like humans dressed up. In fact, most don't. There is a vast diversity of sentient life, many of whom look like nothing on Earth (literally). They have different cultures and ideals, different world-views, different physical characteristics and different means of communication. With this in mind, the planet Enua serves as a gentle introduction to everywhere else, because, by one of those staggering co-incidences that could only ever happen in fiction, Enua happens to be that rare exception - a planet that's actually pretty similar to Earth. So similar, in fact, that you may encounter allusions to places and events corresponding to those with which you are already familiar. The enuans each have two arms and two legs, they speak with their mouths using sounds similar to those a human could produce, and so on. Their invention of technology roughly parallels that of our own history, and they even watch similar TV shows. Furthermore, it just so happens that an Enuan day is just over 25 hours long, and an Enuan year is just under 400 Earth days long, so that even planet-bound terms like "day" and "year" can be used without causing too much disorientation. That said, Enua is not Earth. It's not even in the same galaxy. I apologize in advance for this somewhat unlikely co-incidence, but it seems to me that universe I am about to depict is so very different from the conventional television view of science fiction1 that it would be helpful to introduce this society gradually, and in a realistic way, as (I imagine) it would be more likely to progress if this were real life.
One final thing worth mentioning is that the language "Digitalic", which is only touched upon in these two stories, is quite real, and will become central in future stories.
In the meantime, here are the first two episodes of the saga. They are short stories, because I haven't had time to write any novels yet. They are more of an introduction than a main thread, but for what they're worth, here they are. Read, and enjoy.
Jill Ramonsky
Copyright © 2003 Jill Ramonsky