With the exception of listeners to Art Bell, humans have yet to confirm any life on any world beyond our own. But if one removes theology from the equation, and looks at the matter on a strictly logic-based, agnostic view, it seems silly that there would not be other sentient beings somewhere out there in the nether, if not in our own galaxy, then in one of the 499,999,999,999 other ones (if you trust the numbers from the Germans, and based on their cars, I’m willing to give them the benefit).

A lack of evidence has not quelled our imaginations on this subject, and these imaginings have found their home within the speculative genre of storytelling known as science fiction. In novels and short stories, films and television programs, comics and videogames, we’ve explored countless spectacular tales of the universe beyond our home world, stories filled with adventure, danger, action, exploration, romance, and earnestly wishful extrapolation.

I’ve been a fan of this kind of science fiction as long as I can remember. Time travel is awesome, sure. Deadly supercomputers (likely built in Germany) are great. Voyaging to the bottom of the sea also floats—well, I guess “float” is the wrong word in this case—my boat. But space…that’s where it’s at for me. Tales flush with exotic alien races, massive starships, interstellar wars, eons of fantastic history.

But as much of a fan as I am of that part of the genre, I’ve found myself more and more disappointed in it as the years have gone by. There’s a central reason for that.

Even in the realm of science fiction, separate from religious dogma, Earth still insists on thinking it’s the center of the universe.

I’m really sick of Earth-based sci-fi.

In our popular, most accessible science fiction—our movies and television—we can’t seem to remove ourselves from the story. This has always baffled me. All those countless galaxies, all those possible worlds out there, and writers seem set on keeping our little blue world at the core of their stories. Don’t get me wrong—I still love all the space properties that keep to this standard. My earliest sci-fi lovin’ was watching Kirk-era “Star Trek” on reruns, a show about an Earth ship out exploring the galaxy, and I thoroughly enjoyed (most of) its later spinoff shows. I got some more early space fun from “Space: 1999”, another show with space-faring Earth folk. “Buck Rogers in the25th Century”, the classic 80s series that gave a generation of young men Erin Gray’s disco hot pants, was also Earthy. As were both incarnations of “Battlestar Galactica”, a show about a lost tribe of Earthers out to find Earth again. Even when we get away from Earth, we’re fighting to get back to it!

The “Alien” series of films was rockin’ science fiction…based around Earth people getting into off-world trouble with nasty uglies. The fan favorite “Babylon 5” show, filled with all kinds of interesting aliens, centered on a space station built and run by Earth. “Farscape”, too, chronicled the adventures of an Earth astronaut flung out into the far reaches of space (with Muppets). One of my favorite sci-fi shows, “Stargate SG-1”, was about a U.S. Air Force team that explored the galaxy through a network of stargates. “Titan AE”, the animated sci-fi film, dealt with the destruction of Earth and the survival of its people after the cataclysm. The list, with few exceptions, goes on and on.

And if our otherworldly tales aren’t about us going to meet aliens, they’re about aliens coming to meet us—of course, “meet” isn’t often the word to describe their intentions. We get invaded a lot on our science fiction, from your “War of the Worlds” to your “Independence Day” to your “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” to your “Plan 9 from Outer Space”. Yes, aliens often want to come here and kick our asses (or take our women). Or, sometimes, they just want be pals. Honestly, though, it’s more fun when they’re trying to kick our asses. More stuff blows up and it’s less preachy.

This leads to my first problem with the Earth-based stuff. It’s the obligatory alien commentary on humanity. Granted, science fiction, at its best, is allegorical, and puts a mirror in front of us and has something poignant to say about the human condition. But in our more popular sci-fi, it generally comes down to one of two things: It’s either aliens showing up and telling us what barbarians we all are (self-loathing sci-fi), or it’s aliens telling us how wonderful we are, how unique we are in all the universe, how much they, as higher beings, would give up all their great knowledge and technology and immortality just for the chance to be one of us (self-fellating sci-fi), or at least to tell us how much potential we have, and that we can join the smarter, wiser, cooler races of the universe once we give up our religions and our cars and our nunchucks and such.

Whether it’s us going to the stars, or the stars coming to us, it’s all about Earthlings, Earthlings, Earthlings.

My second problem goes back to the size of the universe, and the possibility of all those other countless space-faring civilizations. If one assumes (and in sci-fi, we do) that there’s all this life out there, then one also has to imagine the ridiculous amount of stories there are to tell. Stories not tethered to Earth and all our limitations. Writers can create any kind of civilization imaginable, and tell any kind of story—war stories, fantasy stories, explorations of whole new religions, details of a million incredible worlds that defy science as we know it. Stories of heroes rising, empires falling, cosmic entities shaping the fate of billions, anything. With all those stories waiting for someone to give them voice, why do we keep settling for putting up tents and camping in our own backyard instead of delving into the great unexplored forest?

In 1977, George Lucas was certainly not the first storyteller to buck the Earth-based tradition, but he was sure as hell the one who did it the loudest. I was nine years old when I sat down in that crappy theater in Auburn, California, not knowing what to expect. What I didn’t expect was to get the top of my head blown clear off, and my imagination lit in ways I’d never even conceived. Lucas gave us the “galaxy far, far away”. He gave Earth the finger and took his vision to somewhere on the other side of the universe, a whole new galaxy filled with fascinating aliens, plucky princesses, evil warlords, badass mysticism and a timeless good-vs-evil struggle. The whole world marveled at this creation and embraced it, and finally realized the potential of letting go—like Luke Skywalker did leaving Tatooine behind to go out and try to nail his sister—and seeing what the rest of the universe had to offer.

And then the world promptly came back to Earth and stayed here.

Heavy sigh.

I was thinking about all this in 1991, on the night Lyon’s Heart was born.

The year before, in 1990, I had this weird idea. As sort of a gag, I decided to write a story starring a group of friends of mine. Except, in this tale, these friends, instead of average college students, were actually James Bond-type super-spies. The tongue-in-cheek story was called Assault on Rico Suave (a title that was funny in 1990…honest...). It was very over-the-top, filled with comedy, but took itself just serious enough to work as a passable action tale, too. The story ended up being a hit with these friends. And why not? Who wouldn’t want to read the adventures of a macho, idolized version of one’s self, flying around the world, fighting evil terrorist organizations, and blowing up everything in one’s path?

I was pleased with how it was received, and decided to share copies of the story with my other group of friends; I had two fairly distinct ones at the time, them having not yet achieved the level of crossover they would enjoy in the years to come. I expected similar praise from this group as well. But to my surprise, this group either ignored it completely or just scratched their heads at it.

One member of this group finally verbalized the problem.

“What about the rest of us?” he asked, bluntly.

That’s when I understood. This group of people couldn’t enjoy it because they weren’t in the story. It wasn’t about them. Therefore, it was no fun. They felt left out, and at the extreme, felt envious. Oops. I felt oddly guilty.

Turns out I was thinking about this—wanting to do something for this other group to give them the enjoyment the first had experienced—the same night I was thinking about Earth-based sci-fi’s growing level of snore. Sometimes big ideas happen like that, when two seemingly unrelated things occupy the same thinking space. When Joss Whedon spoke of the birth of one of my favorite sci-fi properties of all time, the (yes) Earth-based (or, in this case, “Earth-that-was”-based) series knows as “Firefly”, he said he was in the middle of reading the Civil War book The Killer Angels, and for some reason started thinking about the Millennium Falcon. “Firefly” was born in that moment, the story of a ship and its crew in a post-civil-war space setting. When I first heard this, I understood immediately, because much the same thing had happened to me in 1991. Except, of course, that Joss’s idea made him rich and famous and beloved by millions, and mine…had less of an impact. But mine happened first, damnit (sniff)!

I fictionalized this other group of friends as well, but they weren’t spies this time around. They were in space, on a ship together, flying around a far-off galaxy. The ship that was their home was known as the Marconi Lyon, an inside joke with this group, as a big part of our history involved hanging out late-night at the Lyon’s restaurant on Marconi Avenue in Carmichael, California. But as this story started formulating in my mind, it got even bigger than that basic on-a-ship concept. I tend to think epic. And soon, I had a story in mind about a group of crewmates that used to fly around together in this ship, with years of adventures shared between them, but that had split up when one cataclysmic event tore them apart, resulting in the death of one of them. Their story picked up years later, at the start of my tale (which had suddenly turned into a novel), with the crew spread all across the galaxy. A unexpected event—the possibility of that dead friend now having returned—started a chain of events tied directly to their final mission together, and found each of them hunted by galactic gangsters, the authorities (an organization known as Sector Authority) and an evil alien race, and having to track each other down, reunite, steal their old ship back, and unravel the mystery that had nearly been the end of all of them—one involving an enigmatic gem known as the Heart of Alchadai, one that may have brought their fallen friend, somehow, back from the grave.

Writing feverishly, possessed by this grand idea, I cranked out the massive first chapter of Lyon’s Heart, one that teased all the backstory details, introduced the Lyon’s Heart universe, and introduced all the characters (based on all these friends) in carefully-woven flashbacks. Filled with mystery, suspense, action, and the foreshadow of a monstrous tale to come, it laid all the groundwork for what promised to be a novel to stun the senses and confound the imagination.

Keep in mind that this was written by me in college. I shudder at the idea of going back and reading it now, because I’m sure the writing was positively atrocious.

Thankfully, my friends didn’t seem to know any better.

Once I headed to Kinko’s with this dot-matrix-printed, overly-thick first chapter (titled “The Heart of the Matter”—each chapter would have, I decided, the word “heart” in it somewhere; “Heart of Stone”, “Heart of Steel”, “Heartbeat”, etc.)—I passed out copies to the gang, and my expectations were triumphantly met. It was a hit. Everyone loved it, and was hungry for more. Feeding on these accolades, I got right to work on the second chapter ("Heart of Stone"), which focused solely on my friend Ken, whose character had become a warlord-fire-hire (a mercenary) after the big break-up and was leading a group of farm-types in their war against an invading clan on a dark, rocky world when the novel’s main plot dropped in and swept him up into it.

And then I fell in love and moved to Arizona.

Oops.

While I did get back to it from time to time, I never completed that second chapter, and the epic Lyon’s Heart novel lived on only in my imagination. I’ve occasionally tried to return to it, deciding a few years ago to start from scratch and do a whole rewrite (because I’m sure it really, really needs it), but have just never found the time. So the crew of the Marconi Lyon remains scattered, still awaiting their chance to reunite and unravel their great destiny.

But something good did come of it. In beginning that story, I managed to create my own non-Earth-based science fiction universe. Like Lucas’ universe, it was filled with innumerable alien races and planets and civilizations, in my creation all ruled by a vast democratic empire known as Sector Authority—kind of a combination military/police force/government. I’d learned that universe well, and found myself using it again in the mid-90s when I first tried breaking into the comic-writing business, making it the setting for several scripts of mine, including “Son Gabriel”, “Tracer”, “Traders” and others. When I took my first crack at a screenplay in the early 2000s, I set my story there as well. It became a familiar place all my own, my own canvas to create sci-fi stories on.

In 2009, I found myself in a state of unemployment, along with a historically high number of others. I figured, once it happened, I’d see if I could make some lemonade out of my predicament—I thought I’d finally get some writing done. I wanted to give screenplays another go, and had a graphic novel script, along with some other comic scripts, that I wanted to pursue. I had long since given up on the idea of writing a novel, as it was just too time-consuming and much less my venue than visual storytelling.

But damned if I didn’t start one anyway, completely by accident.

In the midst of writing a very non-sci-fi graphic novel script about a bunch of college students coming to grips with figuring out their place in life, I found myself getting the space bug again. I thought I’d channel that into a comic series, perhaps, or another graphic novel, or perhaps a screenplay (the latter of which I’ve started working on). But when one particular story idea came and stayed with me, it just called out for prose. One day I sat down at my laptop, and I found myself back in the Lyon’s Heart universe again. This time, though, the old crew was nowhere in sight. This was a new story, with a new lead character (not based on or named after any of my long-time friends) and a whole new idea. And it just started flowing. And I ran with it. And next thing I knew, the first act of The Mourning Glory was completed.

My hope is that it will not end up with a similar fate to the one Lyon’s Heart met, left in its infancy and abandoned to incompletion. My hope is to, with this story, final complete one of the several novels I’ve started over the years. I think this one has legs. But instead of doing the probably smarter thing and keeping it to myself until it reaches the end, I’ve decided to, once more, put the opening act out for people to sample, by placing it on this web page. My hope is that people will read and enjoy it, and therefore guilt me into continuing—or at least provide me enough constructive feedback (“You suuuuuck!”) to help steer me around major problems and provide me with the right advice to help make the second draft a stronger finish.

And so this non-Earth-based space adventure begins, a tale about discovering who you truly are and finding your place in the universe, something I hope everyone can relate to. I hope you’ll enjoy taking this journey of discovery with the young Kyn Tallin, and enjoy leaving your safe, familiar Earth behind and soaring out among the many stars predicted by dependable (yet stylish) German computers. And I hope you’ll let me know if this journey starts heading in the wrong direction. Your input is most welcome.

Welcome to the big-ass frontier.

Michael O’Connell
Sacramento, California
July 9, 2009