As a science fiction story,
Exode had a single goal: by writing it, I would discover some of the features of
Genesaunt Society, features that are normally not revealed to mere Earthlings. That mission of discovery began with Hana, an Earthling who "won a ticket" for a trip to the stars. I imagined that
Exode would be a fairly simple account of Hana's travels and the Genesaunts she would meet on several planets of the galaxy.
Parthney
But then a small complication arose. I felt the need to explore the life of the secret Genesaunt agent stationed on Earth who removed Hana from her Earthly existence. That secret agent was Parthney. Examination of Parthney's origins on the planet
Hemmal was a fortuitous diversion that quickly led to important revelations about the
Kac'hin, the
Buld and the
Prelands (three human variants of the
Galactic Core) as well as the mysterious
pek. Investigation of Parthney's origins in the Galactic Core raised far more questions than it answered, but that was a good thing.
The Prelands are a genetically engineered human variant that had been crafted by the pek as a replacement for we Earthlings. The Buld are a remnant of a past age when humans had been given access to advanced space travel technology that allowed the Buld to travel between the stars at speeds close to the speed of light. The Kac'hin were designed to be a human variant that could efficiently use the
Bimanoid Interface and allow the alien
Huaoshy to monitor and guide their humanoid agents while they worked here in our galaxy.
Fan Fiction
When I began writing
Exode, I had just completed a major fan fiction writing project:
Foundations of Eternity. When I began writing
Exode, I intended my new story to be an "all original" story that was set in my
Exodemic Fictional Universe, not the fictional universe of
Isaac Asimov,
Jack Vance or
Chris Carter. In fact, I was feeling some shame over having written a fan fiction sequel to Asimov's two novels,
The End of Eternity and
Foundation and Earth.
Then something strange and wonderful happened. I realized that
Exode and
Foundations of Eternity were really just two parts of the same story. Parthney's mother turned out to be another secret agent who used the name
Trysta Iwedon while working on Earth during the 20th century. She was another human variant, an
Asterothrope, also known as
Noÿs; a time traveler from 7 million years in our future.
Trilogy
Of course, there was much to be said about the Asterothropes and Trysta's mission the 20th century Earth. The Asterothropes were the creation of
R. Gohrlay, the first positronic robot. R. Gohrlay had become the "queen of time travel" and had allowed Noÿs to believe that there was only one time travel device in the entire universe: the one located on Earth and described as "
Eternity" in Asimov's time travel story,
The End of Eternity.
However, even after Eternity was destroyed by Noÿs (as described in
The End of Eternity) other time travel machines continued to be used, both by R. Gohrlay's tribe of positronic robots and by the Huaoshy, specifically, their Kac'hin agents. Thus,
Exode became a kind of sequel to
Foundations of Eternity in which Trysta would have to confront a new problem: a raging time travel war between R. Gohrlay and the Huaoshy.
And since
Exode had its own long list of Genesaunt issues to reveal, a third novel,
Trysta and Ekcolir was needed to tell the story of the Time War and how it was ended by
the Trysta-Grean Pact. As the
Exode Saga grew, I was confronted by the problem of how to provide a unified narrative across multiple novels.
After I had already grown comfortable with having Isaac Asimov appear as a character in
Exode, I eventually realized that I should not stop with Asimov... why not bring in
Carl Sagan and Jack Vance and even myself? So, "
the Editor" was born as a character in the Exode Saga, someone who could function as the device for revealing Genesaunt secrets to the people of Earth.
Starting Points
Thus, while Hana had been
a starting point for
Exode, the story grew far beyond that simple beginning. I slowly realized that more needed to be said about the origins of R. Gohrlay, so
First Reality was added as an additional Exode Saga novel.
Most recently,
A Search Beyond became the 5th Exode Saga novel, a place for the exploration of Jack Vance's fictional universe of
the Beyond as an important feature of human civilization that existed in the
Asimov Reality.
The Exode Saga now extends from more than 2 billion years in the past to several million years in the future. Parthney and
Azynov travel as far as the Andromeda galaxy and the Huaoshy empire includes thousands of galaxies. While
A Search Beyond was a late addition, I want it to be the starting point for the Exode Saga. Finding the correct starting point for
A Search Beyond has not been simple. Originally, I was going to begin on the planet Tar'tron, but more recently I decided that the story should begin close to Earth, right when Azynov is created as a replicoid of Isaac Asimov.
The newly created Azynov will help
Grean with part of
the final Reality Change, just before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel. Azynov will also "meet" the 12-year-old Editor and introduce him to
The Gods Themselves, beginning the Editor's obsession with
science fiction.
Roz Shipdesqi
The day after the Editor "meets" Azynov, Interpol agent Roz Shipdesqi arrives at the Editor's home, asking questions about his grandfather's involvement in secret rocketry experiments with Nazi scientists.
Roz is half tryp'At, her mother being a
tryp'At agent on Earth who knew the young
Arthur C. Clarke and who was part of a secret technology development project aimed at toppling the communist government in Moscow. Roz "lost" her mother soon after being born in 1947 and she was raised by her father (was he a rare human who could impregnate a tryp'At or is there
another explanation for the existence of Roz?), who blamed the Nazi's for the early "death" of his wife. Roz's mother did not actually die in 1947, she was simply taken off of Earth after completion of her
interventionist mission.
Investigative Science Fiction
Roz began working as a trainee at
MI6 after graduating with a masters degree in computational physics in 1967. One of her mentors was
Daphne Jackson. However, she was soon placed on staff with Interpol as part of an international team investigating former Nazis, war criminals living in nations around the world under cover identities.
Roz also appears in
Exode, after she has transferred to Europol and is investigating nanotechnology developed by
Peter. Eventually, Roz became too knowledgeable about Interventionist activities on Earth and she was "killed" in a plane crash in 2014. Actually, she was simply removed from Earth and taken to
Observer Base.
Related Reading:
mind clones
Next: is Roz a clone?
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