And with that, CREST OF THE STARS — the work that took three volumes despite being its no-name author’s first longform — has come to an end. I wonder whether you enjoyed the read.
When I was concepting these books, I’d planned to write something pertaining to an interstellar war from the beginning. I soon realized, however, that simply taking nations that could exist or have existed on Earth and expanding them to a galactic scale wouldn’t be engaging.
Instead, I thought I’d set up an interstellar empire that couldn’t have arisen without the advancement of humanity to many different planets, and pit it against the countries that spread the political principles of Earth across the galaxy.
I created the Humankind Empire of Abh as a sovereign entity that could never exist on Earth, and the Abh race as a unifying element of that empire. I’ve fashioned a rather unique galactic superpower, if I say so myself.
Meanwhile, I tasked young Jinto with guiding the reader through the Empire. He knows just enough to need some but not all things explained to him from time to time, making him an ideal guide indeed. He is the indisputable protagonist of CREST OF THE STARS.
...As for why I felt the need to tell you that, I fear that the impression the guide’s own guide, Lafier, left was so strong that it rather overshadowed his own. I can’t help but laugh at that, but I assure you I do feel a little sorry for him.
Oh well. Nothing for it, really. With Lafier, I’ve never had that “I crafted her” feeling. I suppose that’s also true of the other characters. There were even those who entered the fray in spite of the fact I never had any such plans, running roughshod over my plot.
In any case, CREST OF THE STARS is hardly sufficient, on its own, to guide you through the Empire. It’s particularly lacking in any depiction of the economic side of Abh life.
I don’t feel too many misgivings over wrapping up CREST OF THE STARS here, because the plot naturally progressed to the “the war’s going to start in earnest” point. (To you who already read Volumes I and II, there’s no way you thought the war would be over in the space of three volumes, right?)
I actually found myself thinking oh, I guess this phase of the story’s complete. Not even I know where exactly the Kin of the Stars are headed now. All I know is that if the Abh fall in battle, they can but suffer complete annihilation. An Abh bound to a surface world is an Abh no longer. Worse yet, if genetic modification is forbidden to them, they’d die out within a few generations anyway, due to their unstable genome.
I’d love to learn alongside all of you whether the Abh crumble to oblivion, or whether they bring the slumber that is “peace” to the galaxy. Yet at the same time, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that wants to leave them with an infinite future.
...But that makes it seem as though CREST OF THE STARS was penned with some grand and important idea behind it. In reality, as I confessed in the afterword to Volume I, I ended up creating the setting as I went along.
The actual impetus behind this series was all the murmuring that we were in “the Winter of SF.” That made me want to write some light-reading SF that people might pick up precisely because it was the so-called “Winter of SF” (which doesn’t seem to have abated, mind you), and so I started working on it, just like that.
Initially I was aiming for a piece of around 400 pages, thinking that’d make it easy to publish, but it dawned on me that was going to be impossible after the third day of writing. All right, then, I’ll get it done in 600 pages... But it wasn’t long before I was thinking, 800 pages and I’ll have it published as one thick paperback . I found myself constantly rethinking my initial conception.
I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel at around page 550. I reckoned that turn of events would make for the best midpoint in terms of story balance. (Though I ended up writing 700 more pages before reaching the conclusion.)
I also altered the setting and terminology a great deal, retroactively. For instance, Lafier wasn’t a Star Forces Trainee Starpilot, but rather a Space Army Cadet, and Captain Lexshue was a colonel. After I’d written the series and waited a while before rereading it, there were bits and bobs that felt “loose,” strangely. The unique terms I came up with, such as “Star Forces” and “starpilot,” were born then.
What had been created with relative care were the mechanics of flat space navigation and Baronh. I’m no august SF writer, of course; at the end of the day, the idea of “flat space navigation” is just a slight twist on the well-worn, hackneyed “warping” trope (evoking faster-than-light travel with one quick and easy word) that I wanted to avoid. With regard to the liberal sprinkling of Baronh all over the place, I had several reasons. To give you just one, I wanted to foster an alien atmosphere.
In terms of the feel of the setting, Jinto hails from a society just 300 years from our present, so you can think of him as your stereotypical future human, but Lafier comes from more than 2,000 years in the future. For those of you who can’t square that discrepancy, try looking up Lorentz contraction. Whatever you do, don’t ask me to clarify, because then I’d have to give myself away! In truth, I just didn’t want to go ham with too many foreign-origin words.
That said, “plasma” and “energy” were the words that had me stumped. Japanese just uses the English words for them for the most part. I was under the impression that a purely Japanese word whose characters combine to mean “ionized substance” was coined as a translation for the English word “plasma,” but I couldn’t find that word in the Koujien dictionary, so if I tried using that made-up word as the meaning of the Baronh for “plasma,” readers wouldn’t be able to understand what it was referring to. Obscuring the commonly used word with non-standard characters on top of piling on fictional vocabulary felt too unfriendly to the reader, so I gulped down the urge to overindulge in my little hobby.
Speaking of Baroh, its true origins became clear in Volume II — or at least, I hope I made them clear enough. In case you didn’t buy that origin story (“How in sam heck did that become the language in the books!?”), I included an appendix in this volume that should help persuade you. If you’ve bought all three volumes at once and haven’t read any of the story yet, I recommend not reading that appendix beforehand. It’s a spoiler. (I see spoiler warnings from time to time, but I’ve never personally abided by that whole rule.)
Now then, seeing as this is the last volume, allow me to express my gratitude.
A hearty thank you to NODA Masahiro, who wasted a blurb on the likes of me. I only met him in person and greeted him once, but he introduced me to the sheer entertainment value of a good space opera through works published in SF magazines — works like “Heroic Figures of SF” (SF Eiyuu Gunzou ). I’ll never forget how, when I was in elementary school, I’d hole up in the tin-roof shed in the sizzling heat, browsing through back issues of SF magazines to read installments of “Heroic Figures.”
I’d also like to thank one AKAI Takami, for decorating the covers with gorgeous illustrations despite how busy he always is. I’m sure the majority of people who picked these books up did so because they were captivated by the cover art (and I bet you did, too, dear reader).
In addition, I can’t forget to thank all the people who put in the hours to slot in the Baronh. At first, I only added Baronh based on specific criteria, but then it ran away from me. I ended up laying down Baronh even where it wasn’t really necessary; so much so, that to say I went mad with it would be an understatement. Making all of that Baronh play neatly with the rest of the text was largely on the shoulders of a certain someone in Editorial. Of course, that certain someone helped me with everything, not just with the Baronh text.
Moreover, all the work these books required must have been a nightmare to the proofreader(s) and overall production. Thank you so much! I do think less is more when it comes to auxiliary text, so I’ll still be relying on their help from here on out.
Finally, I naturally need to thank you, the readers who followed along all this time, from the bottom of my heart. If you could send me your thoughts and feelings, I’d be even more grateful.
Writing CREST OF THE STARS was loads of fun, and if you experienced a tenth of the fun reading it as I did writing it, then I think you’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
I sure hope we meet again, somewhere, some day. Until then!
✦ ✦ ✦
10-May-96