The Francesians is book three of the Green Comet trilogy.  Books one and two are Green Comet and Parasite Puppeteers, also available here.

After their conflict with the deadly Visitor, and their expedition to the moon of the ones who sent it, Elgin and Frances leave the Makers -- the violently primitive species that created the apocalyptic Visitor -- and head back to Green Comet, only to discover that dark forces have been active in their absence.  They can turn away and avoid a confrontation with the Francesians, if they want.  They don't have to take on the responsibility of freeing Green Comet from the Francesians' reign of repression.  The people let it happen and maybe they should be allowed to get themselves out of it.  They don't have to take on the responsibility, but they will, because they didn't save their people from annihilation only to let them live in darkness.

How it happened

Green Comet began in 1994. It also began before then and after then. I’m sure most books are the same. They’re impossible to pin down to a specific date, depending on what you use for criteria. But let’s use 1994, since that’s the year the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smacked into Jupiter. At that time I was active in the Science conference, one of the Usenet newsgroups. Another member posted, asking for ideas he could use for a disaster story. I suggested some non-ecliptic comets on a dangerous orbit. I wonder if it was a coincidence that the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact appeared in 1998. Probably.-)

The idea began simmering in my mind, and I even wrote a couple of short stories to explore the concept of living on comets, but it was mostly conceptual until about 2004. I decided then to think about it seriously. Since I had a menial job at the time I could spend the whole day thinking about it, and jot down notes after work. I knew I had a story when Elgin and Frances showed up. In 2009 I finished with that job and that’s when I put pen to paper with the aim of getting the story written. Three years later it was ready to publish. Three more years for the sequel, Parasite Puppeteers, and two more for The Francesians, to complete the Green Comet trilogy.

I won’t be writing any more books about Green Comet, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t. That’s the point of publishing it with a Creative Commons license. You’re free to take the characters and other story elements and expand on them. Providing you adhere to the principles of Creative Commons, no one is going to come after you waving their copyright club. So, write a story, draw a comic or animate a video, or do whatever creative thing you do with it. I only want Green Comet and its characters to continue to live, free and open. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting on with the next story. I can already see bits of it, and it looks like fun.

About Jim

Jim has fought forest fires and controlled traffic in the air and on the sea. Now he writes stories. He lives in the Okanagan Valley with his wife, Carolyn.

Connect with Jim

The Green Comet blog: https://greencomet.org/

Contact me: https://greencomet.org/contact/

This book is published under a CC BY-SA license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the content for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. License details: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Cover image from a photograph by NASA – public domain

rjb