This book marks the completion of Crest of the Stars, which lasted three volumes, despite being a newcomer’s debut long work. Did you enjoy it?
When I was planning the plot of this book, I intended to write something that dealt with interstellar war. However, it’s not that exciting to have cultures from Earth fighting each other in space.
First, I thought I’d like to place the main character on one side of an interstellar Empire that couldn’t possibly exist unless humanity had spread to many planets. I wanted to make the Empire a hostile nation that develops land-based political principalities throughout the galaxy.
Then, I created the Humankind Empire of Abh as a type of empire that couldn’t exist on a land world, and created the race called the Abh as an indispensable element to integrate the empire.
I flatter myself that I’ve created a pretty unique empire.
I placed the boy called Jinto in this story to act as your guide. Simultaneously informed and ignorant, he was an apt guide, and he is unmistakably the main character of Crest of the Stars.
You’re probably wondering why I would deliberately declare something like that, in spite of the strong impression our guide’s guide, a girl called Lafiel, makes, (laughs) If I didn’t say it plainly, somehow I’d feel sorry for Jinto.
Oh well, it can’t be helped. As for Lafiel, she doesn’t feel too “made up.” To varying degrees, though, the characters are all like that. There are those who dared to make an appearance, even though I had not planned on their participation, and some who I destroyed arbitrarily.
As a complete guide to the Empire, Crest of the Stars is still insufficient — the idea of being an Abh tradesperson, for example, was barely mentioned.
And now, there is still the issue of the impending war (to those who’ve already read volumes one and two — by now, you knew better than to expect the war to conclude in this number of volumes, didn’t you?). For now, my feelings are: “Perhaps I should end it here.”
As I wrote that, I actually knew, “Nah, the story can’t end with this.”
Right now, not even the author knows the fate of the kin of the stars. What I do know, however, is if they’re defeated in the war, the Abh must be destroyed. Abh bound to land worlds are already not Abh. More than anything, if genetic adjustments are prohibited, the genetically unstable would die out in just a few generations.
I want to see with my own eyes whether the Abh are destroyed, or if they bring peace, like a great sleep, to the galaxy. At the same time, I feel very strange talking about this kind of thing, but it’s a fact that I want to leave them an open-ended future like this.
When I go writing such things, it seems like Crest of the Stars came about as the result of some grand plan, (laughs) Actually, as I stated in the postscript to volume one, I made up the plot only as fast as I could write it. I wrote this in a time widely known as “the age of SF winter” (even now, SF seems to be in winter). Regardless, I approached it fondly and enthusiastically.
I aimed for four hundred pages, to make it easier to get it published. But once I began to write it, that proved impossible. Boo hoo hoo.
“Then, somehow, in six hundred pages …” I thought. Then later: “If it’s eight hundred pages, will that fit into one massive volume?”
When I finally got through it, I had about five hundred and fifty pages. All things considered, I felt myself to be about right in the middle of the story. In actuality, I couldn’t arrive at the end without seven hundred more pages.
The plot and terminology also changed considerably from the first draft.
For example, Lafiel wasn’t a “Star Force Pilot Trainee,” she was a “Cosmic Army Officer Cadet,” and Captain Lexshu was originally “Colonel.” Rereading it a while after I’d written it, those particular words stood out, and the peculiar terms such as “Star Force” and “Aviator” were born.
The ideas of Plane Space navigation and the Abh language were more rigid from first draft to completion.
As a minor scholar of SF writing, I had to stop implementing FTL with the word warp, and I racked my brains to produce “Plane Space navigation.”
There are many reasons why I made the Abh language rubi dance madly. One reason was that I wanted to engender an otherworldly atmosphere.
Jinto is set up as a human about three hundred years in the future from our timeline, so it’s okay if we give him a normal future. Lafiel is a human from more than two thousand years ahead of us — if you don’t understand why this kind of contradiction occurs, research the Lorentz transformation. Please don’t ask the author, because he’ll give himself away (laughs) — I didn’t want to use borrowed terminology too heavily.
There wasn’t anything I could do about plasma and energy. For plasma, I thought there were the translation words like “ionization substance,” but because it didn’t appear in the Koujien [a famous Japanese dictionary], when I put the Abh language rubi on it, nobody would understand it at all. Although I thought that using atypical kanji for preexisting words just to put on fictitious language rubi was too unkind, I closed my eyes to my tastes.
The Abh language’s origin was made clear in volume two (I did make it clear, didn’t I?), but for people who say: “How did this become the Abh language? I can’t accept it,” I’ve prepared this installment’s appendix. To those who say, “I’ll buy volume three and start there,” I suggest you reconsider, because it’s a spoiler (I admit — from time to time, I can’t ignore that warning).
Seeing as this is the final volume, I get to relate my thanks.
I got a recommendation letter I didn’t deserve from Nota Masahiro. Thank you very much. When I first met him, I just wanted to pay my respects to him. His articles published in SF magazines, starting with SF Hero Group, taught me the joys of space opera.
Holed up in the shed on the galvanized iron roof while it was really super hot, what I gleaned from back issues of the SF magazine SF Hero Group were memories I have not been able to forget since elementary school.
I also thank Miss Akai Takami, who decorated the front covers with splendid illustrations, despite being busy with many different projects. I’m certain most of the people who picked up these books were captivated by the front covers (you too, right?).
I mustn’t forget the people who put in the hard work on the rubi relationships. At first, they put them on in accordance with their own basis, but after that, they ran wild. They put rubi even where they weren’t necessary, and it got to be so that I couldn’t make them stop.
The burden of sorting out the wild rubi fell largely on the editor, N. Of course, I am indebted to N, not just for the rubi relationships, but overall.
Still more, to the reviser and manufacturer, I guess that the work involved in these books was a nightmare. Thank you very much. Basically, because I think there ought to be fewer rubi, I hope to see you again.
And of course, to all you who’ve been with me to this point, I offer my sincerest thanks. I’ll thank you again if you’ll send me your impressions.
It was truly a joy to write Crest of the Stars. If the book conveys even one-tenth of that enjoyment, I think you will like it.
Well, I await the day when we can meet again somewhere.
Hiroyuki Morioka
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Author: Hiroyuki Morioka
Name: Return to a Strange World
OCR: 2008, g/christensen