by Augustina Van Hoven
We’re heading into the holiday season and in my neck of the woods there is already snow on the ground. Besides the change in the weather, the Hallmark channels are running their Christmas movies and the stores are putting out their displays of decorations and toys. It’s the time of year when we gather and celebrate with friends and families.
This gave me the idea for my Christmas novella. The story is a prequel to my New Frontier futuristic series. It takes place one hundred years in the future and tells the story of two people who are preparing to leave on a starship to colonize a new planet.
Like many of you, I grew up with the STAR WARS movies and television shows like STAR TREK, BABYLON 5, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, and FARSCAPE. I love space stories and all the imagination it takes to create new worlds and non-human sentient beings. I often fantasized as a kid about traveling to different worlds and meeting their inhabitants.
In 2006, Stephen Hawking stated that humanity faces two options: either we colonize space within the next two hundred years and build residential units on other planets, or we will face the prospect of long term extinction. NASA has as its ultimate goal, space colonization. With this in mind, I have created my new series involving a group of people who are leaving earth to colonize a new world.
In my series, faster than light (FTL) travel is possible and it will take nearly a year for my colony ships to reach their destination. When the story begins, it’s the holiday season and the colonists are making final preparations for their upcoming launch in March. Part of those preparations include setting their affairs in order and saying farewell to friends and family. Most of the colonists will never return to earth.
The story focuses on one of the ship’s engineers and his girlfriend who is a botanist. My novella, THE LAST CHRISTMAS ON EARTH, asks the question, what would you do if you had to choose between your lifelong dream and the one you love?
The story will release in early December.
Happy Holidays.