Chasing Sunlight

I know that Chasing Sunlight was not nearly as popular as my other works, but it was something I really wanted to do. It’s an odd story, I know, but I had a lot of fun doing it. Having “magic” that wasn’t some esoteric energy that could be measured or depleted, having a protagonist that was not only completely unreliable but not even necessarily good. The ability to have absolutely wild setpieces.

Of course it’s not perfect, but I think I got pretty close to doing what I wanted to do with it. Really the greatest failing was not being able to convey some of what was going on as impactfully as the Gospel of the Smiling Man, which was definitely the best…thing that I created. Perhaps it would have been better as something closer to the Shackleton Expedition, but that would have changed the flavor and not allowed me to build the sort of world I wanted.

(Also, I’m not certain I could have managed something as intense as the Shackleton Expedition)

Did I learn anything? Well, I’d like to think so, especially in the realm of protagonists. Yet so much of what I did in Chasing Sunlight is sort of unique to it. The intense focus that Jonathan had just isn’t appropriate to most stories, and most protagonists don’t have a singular goal pursued singlemindedly.

Anyway, I had fun, but the next story is going in a different direction. It’s called Systema Delenda Est.

When the System came to Earth, technology failed, monsters appeared, and billions died as humans were inducted into the game-like physics the System enforced.

Unfortunately for the System, not all humans were on Earth. Some scattered postbiological individuals decided to push it back, and embarked on a decade-long crusade to eliminate the System from Earth.

Cato is just an ordinary postbiological citizen, disgusted enough by the System’s excesses to go through one of the portals on Earth and spread himself to the broader System just as Earth is completely freed. He has no magic, for the System can’t be destroyed from within, but he does have the technology and knowledge of a civilization that is reaching toward the second rank of the Kardashev scale. Cato may have to operate under the System’s limitations, but he certainly doesn’t have to play by its rules, and fully intends to remove the threat it offers.

“…furthermore, I maintain that the System must be destroyed.”

However, this story will not be starting immediately. I spent several weeks writing the wrong story, and haven’t caught back up to where I need to be to start publishing this one. The comic for Paranoid Mage will start at the end of February, and Systema Delenda Est will start posting in late March.

I will also be answering questions in the comments here, for anyone who might have some curiosity about the setting or the like. The world of Chasing Sunlight is very obtuse, that's for sure.

Thank you all for reading!