I just wanted to post a quick note about Olympus Descending, since several comments have been posted about it. When I started to cast about for a Dominion tale that would explore that world--in order to fulfill the very thrust of the Worlds of Star Trek--Deep Space Nine series--I did exactly that: I explored what had been seen, said, and implied about the Dominion during the course of the television series itself. One of the things editor Marco Palmieri and I discussed at that time was the idea that I should attempt to answer the question of just why the Founders sent out one hundred essentially infant Changelings alone into what they deemed a universe of hostile "solids." As I reviewed all the source material about the Founders, I encountered numerous inconsistencies, and even some contradictions. I also had to wrestle with the notion, put forth more than once during the run of the show, that Changelings did not communicate via words when linking, and often did not even really communicate in any fundamental way when linked--which I can tell you was something quite difficult to deal with, given that I communicate in words, as do my readers!
Anyway, the explanations and understanding of why the Founders sent out a hundred "infant" Changelings into what they considered a dangerous, unfriendly environment made virtually no logical sense. I had to ask myself, why the Founders would really do that, and why would they hide that reason? I further wondered, why does anybody send anybody anywhere? The process took some time, but ultimately what I came up with was that the Founders were not sending out so many of their "babies" as scouts--to my thinking, a thoroughly preposterous idea--but as beacons, as unformed and therefore at-risk markers who would necessarily draw somebody who cared about them to them. But who would that be?
Considering the manner in which the Founders had set themselves up as deities in the minds of the peoples they controlled, it seemed only natural to me that they must themselves understand, in a very internalized way, religious belief. The Founders never claimed to have created the universe, and they believed that they had themselves evolved from "solids" into what they believed was their superior form. For some religious people, such an evolution would imply the hand of a divine entity.
When I'd reasoned all this through, it made a great deal of sense to me, and it still does. I knew, though, that some readers would find fault with it, or at the very least, find it implausible since nothing of the sort had been explicitly depicted in the show. Still, it all hangs together, and for me, it adds depth and believability to the Founders, and also provides more believable reasons for why they took some of the actions they did. If I failed to convince some readers of that, then I failed in my mission. I knew it would be difficult, but that was not sufficient reason to back away from the challenge (and really, it was more reason to make the attempt, as far as I'm concerned).
But all of this did not simply come and go in a single story; rather, these concepts were introduced in Olympus Descending, and they await additional exploration in future DSN works. I'm looking forward to discovering where these ideas take us. I proffered quite a few details in my Worlds of Star Trek--Deep Space Nine entry, and there's a considerable number of directions in which the Founders can now be taken, some of which I think have not yet even been imagined by readers. We'll see.
Okay, so maybe not such a quick note...
