[Christopher]

TerraUnam wrote:

---

Yes,

Lirahn

did seem a bit of a retake on Ariel from the Buried Age in both character and plot. I'm not unhappy about it. Different enough, but the two characters did seem to be very much cut from the same pattern.

Well, the major difference is that

Ariel was more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist whereas Lirahn is simply power-hungry. If anything, with Lirahn I wanted to go against my usual pattern of writing antagonists and feature one who was an out-and-out villain. Though I ended up portraying the other major villain in the book the same way, so I wondered in retrospect if maybe I should've gone a different route with Lirahn.

I guess they both use their superior intellect and personal allure to manipulate people, but with Ariel it was subtler. Lirahn is much cruder and more blatant about it, more coercive, in that she actually imposes her will telepathically rather than simply being ultra-persuasive in her speech and body language.

Second,

The Defence Force of Delta recruits people on the basis that they get off on violence as a fetish.

. You're going to [in]famous for that one.

Well,

Gateways: Doors into Chaos gave us our first look at the Deltan defense forces and portrayed them as fairly aggressive, putting forth the idea that Deltans embrace all their passions equally. I was just trying to find a way to reconcile that with the more serene portrayal of Deltans I was building on from the development notes for TMP.

Fourth, what is it with you and cybernetic cellular implants and cybernetic organisms in general? First the Choblik, then the Manraloth, now the

Selakar

. And then

the 29th Century TIC troops went into battle with temporary cybernetic implants.

It seems to be a favourite character type of yours. I like it too, I just wonder why you choose to use that type of character.

Well, those have different origins. The Choblik were a race I created for my original SF back in the '80s; at first I just wanted them to be terrific engineers, and eventually it occurred to me that it would fit their mindset if they modified their own bodies with technology. I later refined that into the version of the Choblik seen in my Trek fiction. As for the Manraloth and the

Zcham (not the Selakar),

I just figure the integration of technology with biology is the future. We're already at the point where the line between nanotechnology and biotechnology is blurring -- researchers are making nanostructures out of DNA molecules, things like that. So I figure eventually the distinction will be blurred to the point of meaninglessness, that biology and technology will be one. (I think the Borg are a really, really crude way of portraying cybernetic organisms -- it was an obsolete portrayal when it was new.)

Besides, it's just different. We've seen so many hyper-advanced Trek races that evolve huge brains and psi powers or go incorporeal or whatever. It's a cliche, and it's evolutionarily silly. So when I deal with hyper-advanced species, I want to do something different from the convention.

As for the

future security troops, I actually based them on the security forces from the unsold Final Frontier animated series proposal that was in the news a few years back, with 26th-century security officers using "bugs," cybernetic implants derived from Borg technology, to link their minds. There's another more direct reference to that later on.

Fifth,

Jenna Noi. Loved everything about her. Also a bit of an Ariel character cast into the Federation mould, I thought.

Not sure what you mean by that.

How is Jena like Ariel? She's not really a seductive or manipulative character (although she could be maybe a little depending on how you read the "talk in the shower" scene with Shelan), and not misrepresenting her agendas beyond keeping certain things secret.

But I'm glad you liked the character. I really enjoyed writing her.