The Starman Companion
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THE STARMAN SAGA Volume 4 THE STARMAN COMPANION 2 The cover illustrates a scene on page 101 of Volume 2, The Search for the Benefactors. This book is available in four versions: in color (expensive) and black & white (less expensive), and in both casewrap and dust jacket. Visit lulu.com and search by title. 3 THE STARMAN SAGA Volume Four THE STARMAN COMPANION by Michael D. Cooper (assembled by David Baumann) © 2017 by David Baumann, Jon Cooper, and Mike Dodd all rights reserved ABCDE “A Baumann-Cooper-Dodd Enterprise” www.starmanseries.com 4 About the Author Michael D. Cooper is the pseudonym for Jon Cooper, Mike Dodd, and David Baumann, each of whom played a vital role in creating the Starman series. Jon Cooper plotted the stories, Mike Dodd suggested creative plot elements and supervised the stories’ scientific accuracy and plausibility, and David Baumann wrote the text, fine tuning details and developing the characters. Cooper is a computer programmer, Dodd is a social worker and zeppelin builder, and Baumann is an Episcopal priest and martial arts master. TAKE NOTE There are many spoilers in this volume. Anyone who has not yet read the Starman saga in its entirety should not read this book. 5 THE STARMAN SAGA Volume 1: The Dawn of the Starmen Mutiny On Mars (May 19-July 22, 2151) The Runaway Asteroid (July 24-September 10, 2151) “The City of Dust” (July 30, 2049-August 2051) “The Flight of the Olympia” (2110) “The Caves of Mercury” (2112-2113) “The Orphans of Titan” (August 2, 2130) “A Matter of Time” (October 12, 2150) Journey to the Farthest Planet (January 1-August 22, 2152) Volume 2: The Search for the Benefactors Descent Into Europa (August 7-December 25, 2152) The Treasures of Darkness (March 18-May 6, 2153) “The Eight Treasures” (10085 B.C.) “The Sand Tomb” (Summer 2060) “The Infestation at Sulphur Creek” (June 1, 2153) “The Plight of the Bumblebee” (June 13, 2153) “The Ultimate Code” (September 26, 2153) “Return to Europa” (October 15-December 31, 2153) Doomsday Horizon (July 30-August 19, 2156) Volume 3: The War of the Light The Heart of Danger (September 1-November 9, 2157) The Last Command (March 11-May 4, 2160; June 2161) “A New World” (March 12-13, 2161) “Stars of the Deep” (October 7-15, 2165) Paradox Lost (summer 2168, but relating events that took place March 21-April 23, 2155) Master of Shadows (summer 2169-June 26, 2170; 2171) Volume 4: The Starman Companion 6 Cover artwork Jonathan Cooper The Starman Companion is dedicated to the late Valerie Jean Kramer (December 3, 1949-October 2, 2015). She was a good friend, an accomplished book collector with a memory of impressive comprehension, and a gifted commentator on our books as they were being written. She helped shape the Starman series as it developed in ways beyond our ability to estimate or tell. All readers of the Starman saga owe Valerie more than can be expressed. We were blessed by her life; we are diminished by her death. 7 INTRODUCTION to The Starman Companion By David M. Baumann It was sometime in February 2000 that I wrote the first line of Assault on Mars. Jon Cooper and Mike Dodd and I had spent more than a year and a half planning how we would produce a series of adventure stories, and we were ready to begin the actual writing. I still remember sitting down at my computer in my upstairs office with some anxiety; although I had written and published many articles for magazines and a couple of non- fiction books, I had not written fiction for more than thirty years. But after all of our planning and plotting, the time to get going had come. I took a deep breath, flexed my fingers, stretched my hands over the keyboard, and set down the first lines: “MAN, can this thing move! We were really burnin’ daylight on the way!” Those lines are now on page 71 of The Dawn of the Starmen. The next five years were an intense time of creativity in which we wrote eight novels, two novelettes, and nine short stories, not to mention the five Inter*Stellar newsletters and the seven Starman Chronicles. Taking note of the unexpected popularity and increasing complexity of the Starman series, we updated and rewrote the first book and restored its original working title, Mutiny On Mars. After a favorable review in Analog magazine appeared in 2003, we were contacted by Americana Publishing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and contracted with them to produce audiobooks for the first six books and a revised form of the novelette The Lost Tomorrow, which were all that we had written at the time. Publishing the stories as audiobooks required some abridging of the stories (except for The Lost Race of Mars, which was recorded and published unabridged). Later, when The 8 Heart of Danger and The Last Command were finally completed, we thought we were finished. It was the summer of 2005. Then, thanks to Jon Cooper’s niggling feeling that not all had yet been told and that loose ends needed to be tied up, in 2010-2011 we put together Master of Shadows, the book we subtitled “The Sequel to the Last Starman Book”, followed by “The Caves of Mercury”, which we thought would be the last short story. The last customers bought their copies of Master of Shadows, and then the once-active message board quieted down and eventually all but stopped. We were finally finished. But we remembered. We remembered that during the years when the books were being written and published, there was a very active message board in which fans, readers, and the writers of the saga interacted. Between 2000 and 2005, an immense amount of material was written about the Starman saga, by us and by others. A lot of it was inspired by and appeared in the Starman message board. There were essays on the Christian theology that undergirds the Starman saga, the different personalities of the three Starmen and how they work together, when and why the Starmen weep and whether it was appropriate that they do, how matters of race and gender were addressed in the series, how science and new discoveries validated much of what first appeared as fiction in the Starman series (often surprising even us!), and the nature of the various sentient beings depicted in the saga. Now, with all texts updated, a project that lasted from the middle of 2015 through the end of 2016, we believe that we have put the story into its final form, appearing as a trilogy of tales. This fourth volume of “extras” includes the best of the essays, appendices, reviews, writers’ notes, interviews, and more that help to undergird the saga of the Starmen. Over ten years ago we produced five books we called The Starman Appendix (volumes 9 1-5) that also included a lot of “extras”; the current book is similar to that one, but it has been updated and designed very differently. A lot of outdated material has been omitted, and a lot of new material has been added. Some material in this volume can be found more than once in one form or another; this is because the material was published more than once in different places. In most cases, for the sake of accuracy and completion, I have preserved the original text even if it meant that the information is repeated elsewhere n the book. There is a lot more in our archives than appears in this book, but we think that the contents of The Starman Companion are the best and most interesting of it all. This volume has been designed to “tell the Starman story” using primary source material. Now, nearly seventeen years since Assault on Mars was first offered for sale, there may be very few customers left to purchase this volume or find it of interest. But the Starman Team believes that it is a fitting way to close off the saga of the Starmen, and we feel compelled to produce it as the final entry in the reissue of the Starman Saga. As we have said from the beginning, we didn’t do this work to make a profit or in hope of becoming popular or famous, or even to have our saga widely distributed, but for the sake of the work itself. We have been told by several people that their lives have been made better by reading our saga. Jon, Mike, and I have also been made better men because of it. No one can or ought to hope for more than that. David M. Baumann February 21, 2017 10 11 CONTENTS THE BEGINNING (1998-2000) . 15 The First Emails . 15 The Origin of the Starman Series . 45 Introduction to the World of David Foster 45 Afterword to Assault On Mars 47 The Starman Saga 51 (written when the saga was finished) Mike’s Ideas . 54 The World of the Starmen . 66 The Ancient History of the Solar System 66 The Characters The Three Starmen 71 Minor Recurring Characters 75 The History of Earth 2000-2150 85 The Politics of Earth 2000-2150 88 The Nature of the Planets 92 The Star Ranger 104 NPACs 106 The Titanians 106 Starlight Enterprise 106 Summaries of the Original 23 Books . 111 DURING THE ACTIVE PERIOD (2000-2005) . 127 The First Ad . 127 The Text on Early Endflaps . 129 One of Jon’s Summaries . 130 The Summary of the First Four Books . 157 The Dedications and Introductions to the First Editions .