Category Archives: The River

Feb 19 2012
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The River

THE RIVER RELEASED PART II

The River is now available in pdf format for 95p. Again following my mantra of it’s not about the money I’d get very little revenue from this. I’m only interested in making The River as accessible to all – and the best thing about this release is you can get it without postage and packaging.

So, a great story at an even greater price. Download it now, here.

This is my first baby step into e-publishing. I’ll be aiming for kindle next, but if you’ve nothing to do at work discreetly reading this will be a great way to pass the time!

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Feb 14 2012
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Short Stories, The River

The Telegraph Short Story Competition February 2012

Early response to The River has been very positive. Roughly two out of three people who’ve read it have cried and the other hard-hearted souls have loved the high-scifi and concepts. But as written in my article what writing a book looks like the promotion aspect is a hard, long road filled with pitfalls and traps.

However, in an attempt to move down that road and for the purposes of The Telegraph short story competition February 2012 below is Chapter 7 of The River. What’s shown below is also the preview available on Lulu (although the format’s a bit screwed on this blog) so there’s no new spoilers. It’s easy to extract due to an approach to story writing I take shown on the Fresh Ink article Loops of Life. I hope you enjoy!



Chapter 7 – Two Years Later Continue reading →

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Jan 31 2012
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The River

THE RIVER RELEASED

After thirty-seven months.

Having written forty-four chapters.

And built a website (for the first time).

The River is finally and thankfully finished.

And it can be yours for £5.99

Buy it here, alternatively view more information (and any available discount codes) here.

Comments from readers so far include:

“In awe of [Andrew J Knight's] world making abilities”

“Enjoy[ed] the mix of high sci-fi and brit realism”

“The Kirk speech made me LOL”

“The River genuinely has a rivetting storyline”

“…an excellent plot. It is complex, but not confusing, and it all ties together at the end.”

“[Andrew J Knight] has created an excellent villain”

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Jan 30 2012
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The River

Let’s Design A Spaceship

This article is part of a series exploring the technology and concepts found in The River.

With X-wings, Vipers, Marquis vessels and even Spitfires in space, fighter-like space ships have been done-to-death in sci-fi. There is little, if anything, new that can be done with the ‘jet-fighter-in-space’ concept.

Up the scale and unique creativity is still hard to find. With the Enterprise, Star Destroyers, Battlestar Galactica and a plethora of other well-known ships there is also next-to-nothing left in the creative bank under the ‘cruiser’ or ‘aircraft carrier’ spaceship account. Continue reading →

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Jan 27 2012
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The River

Who Wants to Live Forever?

This article is part of a series exploring the technology and concepts found in The River.

What do Indiana Jones, a tree and a certain Ponce have in common with The River?

One futuristic technology entices well beyond just science fiction fans. Long before the dream of exploring other countries, seas, continents, moons and planets ever crept into collective human consciousness there was an advancement almost everyone desired to see. Even mythology, religion and modern day science theory are aligned in their quest for this advancement.

Of course I can only be talking about one thing Continue reading →

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Jan 25 2012
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The River, Writing Tips

What Writing A Book Looks like

This article is part of a series exploring a few tips & tricks I’ve learned from writing.

Prior to The River my creative history consisted entirely of abstract art and mechanical sci-fi-esque design. So following this visual route I’d like to show you, quite simply, what writing a book looks like.


The Spark

Coming up with the concept might take years, perhaps decades. But playing with an idea and toying with the results is fun. It’s like chewing your favourite meal over and over, with each mouthful feeling as fresh as the first. This is the bit everyone loves and why so many people start writing a book. But in terms of effort once the concept is created, the major plot points are defined and the basic characters are set in stone your concept-job is done, so the workload for this part is small – irrespective of how long you were thinking about it! Continue reading →

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Jan 23 2012
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The River

Awesome Acceleration

This article is part of a series exploring the technology and concepts found in The River.

The following element of The River isn’t just made-up science fiction but is partially based on modern day medical fact. Those unfortunate enough to live with Progeria are already in receipt of a defective version of a potentially future-perfected ability. From Borg Maturation Chambers to Cloning, science fiction has no-end of methods to skip that annoying fiddly bit of life, childhood.

Following this theme The River contains its own version of skipping such innocent times. I call it accelerated youth.


The Attributes of Accelerated Youth

Like a good role playing game, parents in The River’s future-world allocate for their children ‘attribute points’.  With the entirety of human knowledge available for upload into their child, or the entire breadth of human characteristics it’s important parents give their children only a finite amount of these points.

From an authors perspective this limit was necessary because without this it each person could be given knowledge of everything resulting in carbon copies of intelligentsia. This would’ve also created cardboard characters, all sharing the same point of view, knowledge and experience.

Additionally giving a ‘finite’ amount of attribute points allowed me to give a little bit of my own social commentary. I state;

‘Early forms of this technology had no limits, resulting in aimless children who knew almost all the total sum of human knowledge but only confusion as to what to do with it. Being knowledgeable with no direction is useless.’

This, unashamedly, is a bash at the western education system. Accelerated Youth intentionally runs counter to our current societies determination to delay adulthood. All the best science fiction comments in someway on a perceived social ill.


A Different Angle

Unlike many other stories in science fiction, I swerve away from certain sci-fi-childhood norms. Specifically I don’t believe in ‘artificial everything’.

For example, although not specifically stated it’s strongly hinted at that almost all children are breast fed. The argument for this is easy – why create a technological version of something already readily available? Many parts of The River universe are about efficiency. Wasting time recreating something evolution has honed over millions of years seemed a bit abnormal to the ethos I’ve built. Additionally with inner-screens giving the capability to pass the exact feeling and memory of breastfeeding the equality argument goes out of the window (as men can experience it too).

Anyway, after an early age everything changes beyond what’s normal so it also makes sense that parents would want to be as close to their children as possible.


The Acceleration

This is where we get into the thick of the science fiction action. Children are taken away for around a year and their bodies are grown and minds uploaded with information. Then they are returned to society owning adolescent bodies. It’s at this point that they start having lessons to supplement their learning.

Their lessons are only short and sharp twenty minute subjects designed to get them to think. With each child able to access any information they want via their inner-screens it seemed silly to create an education system based on fact regurgitation and ‘busy work’.

Eventually at an age we’d consider teen the child takes up their role in society as a fully accepted, experienced and expert individual.

Accelerated youth is only one element to the back-drop of The River universe. The book delves into much more detail about this and you meet some children at different stages of their brief childhood along with one character whose family has a unique experience when they choose their child’s attribute points.

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Jan 20 2012
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The River

It’s Not About The Money…

In the past I’ve written three articles for a fabulous finance blog called Magical Penny. Its owner, Adam Piplica, has a great attitude to taboo busting the world of personal finance.

Now, some people may call talking about money crass and corrosive – and if done in a gluttonous way that’s exactly what it is – but if people were to break through this taboo the world would be a better place. Why do I, as a business analyst, earn more than a nurse? Is that fair? Why do women still earn on average less than men for the same role? Why the hell do I have to guess what salary I want when going for a new job instead of being given an obvious range!?

No, the argument is clear and there is even a movement to get high earners in society to publish their wage in comparison to their staff. Quite simply, greater transparency will lead to greater democracy and an increased fairness of wealth sharing.

But, this blog is about The River, not personal finance. However, the financials of The River tell their own story.


Read the Money

In paperback The River will cost £5.99 + P&P (correct as of Jan-12).

Too much? Too little? Or just right?

Let me help you. A quick review of the science fiction page of lulu  gives an average sales price of £12.07 with a range from £6.53 to £25.81 (science fiction page at the time of writing had 24 titles at a total of £289.79). So The River is cheaper than the cheapest title.

But this only tells half the story and certainly doesn’t mean The River is a throw-a-way trashy novel.

The lulu ‘cost’ (printing & their profit margin) for The River is £5.56. That means for every £5.99 paperback sale I, as the author, will get £0.43 or 7.7%. In my day-to-day role as a multimedia content analyst I see that on average authors of (e)books often get around 70%.

But the story doesn’t end. That £0.43 will be subject to tax and NI meaning I’ll get to see roughly 69% of it.

So in the end, for every £5.99 sale I make I will receive 29p or 4.8%. That’s less than one penny per month of work. Hopefully you will agree that this is a reasonable rate! However this was a conscious decision because as the title to this article states, it’s not about the money…


…but about the Price Tag

£5.99 is the closest above cost price point ending with the psychological 49p or 99p barrier. It’s clear to me that the average price of lulu titles is fairly high because authors actually want to make money.

I wrote The River to challenge myself and to have fun. I didn’t write it to make money. For me the desire to continue to write won’t come from income, but will come from people reading my work and wanting more.

Through a rare financial transparency I hope I’ve done my bit to help bust this taboo, given you an insight into my motivations around The River and offered you an absolute bargain!

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Jan 19 2012
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The River

Communication Conundrum

This article is part of a series exploring the technology and concepts found in The River.

Working for a telecommunications company and writing for a technology blog I have to state I’ve a strong vested interest in the content of this article. But then again, who doesn’t? Because in life, as in The River, communication is key.

And, as a science fiction staple, I quite simply couldn’t have gotten away with writing a story set thousands of years in the future without devising my own communication system.

But when setting on the road of attempting to create something fairly unique, where the heck do you start?


Have you met my Father?

Having written fifteen articles its near-amazing that I’ve gotten this far without mentioning one major element of my upbringing. Throughout my teenage years as I suffered a present-absent father and the daily horrors of High School my one trustworthy friend and role model was, quite simply, Star Trek.

Star Trek’s bold utopian vision along with its amazing technology, interesting storylines and empathetic characters expanded my mind and gave me a weekly joy to look forward to.

But, unfortunately, Star Trek has suffered. No, not the frenetic JJ Abram’s movie which was good but sucked all the life out of the original universe, no – my issue with Star Trek is how much it has dated.

I can’t watch the bald-headed flute-playing captain of the Enterprise-D in almost any scene. My issue isn’t the graphics, which are forgivable, or the writing, which still stands the test of time. No, my issue is the technology. And specifically, for this article, Star Trek’s communication technology.

In the Original series, Star Trek had flippable communicators which worked much like today’s mobile phones (albeit with a greater range and better reception!).

In the Next Generation communication is made through a gold and silver coloured combadge which is fairly indescribable as to the how-to’s of its operation. Other than the fact it’s got a gold pin in it somewhere which can be used to reprogram Lt Data or make a daring jailbreak, the description of how this neat little piece of kit works was always left out from Trek.

So knowing Star Trek’s history as though it was that of a loved family member, along with the Stargate’s, Babylon 5’s, Battlestar’s and many, many other shows the desire to create a fairly unique communication method was always going to be hard. So, where to start?


What Works Wins

Once fiction is exhausted there’s only one other place to look – fact, or, specifically – nature. Humans and all animals communicate by taking sensory input from the environment or other animals and interpreting that information in their brain prior to making their own response (which is also started from within their brain). Think about the entirety of the animal kingdom, the many sensory inputs available and the many ways a message can be delivered and realise that it’s the brain (or, if you’re nitpicky, certain nerves and nervous systems) which is the one common factor in all this multitude of messaging.

So, for my communication method I looked to the future and decided that humankind will continue to do what we’ve been doing for ages – replicate the best of nature. Focussing on the brain itself I came up with;


The Inner-Screen

The River’s solution to communication is an enhancement added to our genetic code which develops a new area in our brains. This area is capable of receiving through-the-air input (like radiowaves) but also integrates itself directly to our optical cortex, auditory areas, olfactory senses and, quite simply, everything else. For example;

Men can receive the feeling, sense and happiness of a baby kicking within a non-existent womb because another’s brain has been able to capture the memory, thoughts and feelings.

With genetic enhancements added to certain animals it’s possible to feel what it’s like to be a cat, horse or other brain-wielding being.

Inner-screen applications can be made which link to the rest of your body and given you a heads-up-display of your current health and wellbeing. Or inner-screen applications which link to other systems such as GPS – meaning you never need a map again.

My proof reader Claire probably most aptly described it as a ‘smart phone in your head’.

Like today’s phones inner-screen’s can ‘fail’ or break. But instead of modern day cracked screens or broken batteries inner-screen users suffer headaches and blinding lights should they try to use a broken system.

The main challenge when devising system’s for a future world is to go beyond what the modern day can do. With so much technology at our fingertips (and working where I do, I see the latest mobile products months before they’re launched) it can be hard to see beyond this to a future where our highest technology is just yesterday’s ignorance. With the inner-screen I hope I’ve made a step in the right direction.

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Jan 08 2012
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The River

The Hollow-Earth

This article is part of a series exploring the technology and concepts found in The River.

One aim of the early chapters in The River is to bring the reader up to speed on what has happened between now and the future world I’ve created. The history of the Forgotten-Times (a dark age of man set in the future’s history) is briefly explained and, what’s more, our planet is described as having changed from an ocean-covered ball of rock heated by magma to a Hollow-Earth powered by a perpetual energy core.

As ever when I originally wrote about the Hollow-Earth I didn’t do any research and made up my own reasons behind its existence. But after completing my first draft I took a wider look at other people’s creativity and was fairly surprised to find other Hollow-Earths mentioned not in science fiction, but in old genuine science-theory.


Hollow Hell

Chapel, bell tower and penitential beds on Station Island. The bell tower stands on a mound that is the site of the original cave which according to various myths is an entrance which leads inside the earth to a place of purgatory.

Before modern-day metaphysical views on religion people genuinely believed heaven and hell to be physical places on Earth.

Think about it, Hell is the dark, fiery pit you go to if you sin and don’t ask for forgiveness. Hades is God of the underworld where those who die go, but also those who find certain caverns or entrances on Earth can enter. Sheol is the pit or abyss where Jew’s go upon death to be ‘removed from the light of God’.

If you’re an early animal gaining consciousness for the first time and you see fire bubble from the ground and your companions die and rot you can easily understand the idea that the dead go literally ‘under the earth’. Added to this is the fact that the Earth, prior to the modern age, was almost unimaginably large from individuals perspective you understand how the idea that Heaven and Hell could be physical places in the real world is actually fairly similar to the metaphysical idea of Heaven and Hell being ‘somewhere’.

As ever, as ideas get passed from generation to generation they get adapted, changed, improved or broken. With human’s liking certainty over the unknown the idea of the dead going ‘somewhere under the earth’ was changed to a literal place, city, set of caves or even to the idea that under the Earth the entire planet is Hollow.


Halley’s Hollow

Edmond Halley, the renowned 17th century physicist, who measured the orbit of the comet which now bears his name, once put forth the idea of the Earth consisting of a hollow shell with two inner shells and an innermost core. He believed atmospheres separated these shells and each shell had its own magnetic pole. He believed his Hollow-Earth hypothesis answered many anomalies such as strange compass readings and the Aurora Borealis (which he perceived to be ‘escaping gas’ from one of the atmospheres).

Other people have suggested the Earth is Hollow with a small star at its core. Many (such as Raymond Bernard) even think people live under the surface and visit us in UFO’s.

Again and again there are people who’ve believed in the Earth being hollow (with or without shells and suns) to the point that in the 19th century people wanted to head to holes in the North and South poles and enter these areas! Even American Presidents were open to the idea (although the strange beliefs of American Presidents is sadly not just an issue left to older times!)

But with the continuing and relentless pace of scientific discovery the idea of a Hollow-Earth fell flat hitting walls of new information and new knowledge. The Earth would be better explained through plate tectonics, magma flows and iron cores.

So it’s at this point that I deviate from those that still believe in Hollow-Earth theory and join a heady bunch of interesting people, science fiction writers.


In Fiction

Probably against the backdrop of beliefs and openness to ideas in his time Jules Verne wrote ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’. Encountering new places, animals, vegetation and Dinosaurs his intrepid explorers found a whole new world under our feet. Even today his story is still interesting and has spawned an entire genre known as ‘subterranean fiction‘.

Onward from this well-known example there are much more modern-day takes on the idea of getting underground. From the ‘MYST’ universe containing an entire race of people underground to modern-day Hollywood fluff such as ‘The Core’ where scientists delve into magma streams, the idea of a Hollow, or accessible centre, Earth is very much alive.

The Hollow-Earth in The River

In the River humanity goes through the Dark Age. After this time the Earth’s molten core is replaced with a perpetual energy core. The core eats away at molten rock until a thin 200km thick skin of rock is left around the Earth. Eventually the Core’s power is harnessed and used in environmental technology to keep the new Hollow-Earth alive.

These cores, and the Hollow-Earth provide part of the backdrop of my universe. I like to think my idea is fairly unique, but as you can see, I’m really only standing on the shoulders of giants.

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