Why yes, I am comparing my book to…my book. The version I wrote in 5th grade when I was ten, and realizing I was obsessed with being a rocket scientist.
I want to set some context up for you all. I decided pretty damn young what I wanted to do with myself in my life. I was nine, to be precise, and I wanted to be a rocket scientist. Prior to this I wanted to be starting pitcher for the New York Yankees, and a T-Rex (not a paleontologist, an actual T-Rex thank you very much). SO Rocket Scientist seemed more attainable. But at 9 there were precisely 4 things I could do about it: work really hard at being good at math (that lasted like 6 years) save all my birthday money for Space Camp (that wasn’t worth it, to be honest) memorize every fact I could about the solar system (Venus’s day is longer than its year!) and write stories about nine-year-olds being selected to run Space Stations and Missions to Mars.
Thus started a trend of my long-suffering elementary school teachers assigning innocent “short story” assignments only to have me deliver multi-chapter behemoth novels a month late because I didn’t understand the “short” concept. Bless my mother for staying up late and typing them out from my chicken scratch first drafts, because at that age I could only type a letter at a time with my index fingers. Those stories would have been submitted by the time I left college if I had transcribed them myself. I really did have a subtle moment though where I thought “maybe what I really want to be is a writer?” because I really liked writing these stories. And yes, they were all science fiction. Like I could possibly write anything else. Anyway, I obviously managed to stick to my original plan and became a rocket scientist. Okay, I apparently also stuck to my tertiary plan of being an author too. Jury is out on the T-Rex part. Let’s get to comparisons.
Okay, right off the bat: Space Station X (Original Flavor) centers around a 10-year-old living on a space station drinking the most adult beverage a 5th grader could conceive (coffee!), and her name is “Sandra.” Space Station X (The Knockoff) centers around a 30-something reclusive lesbian with a crippling caffein addiction, and an aggravating attraction to her coworker named “Saunders”. From there, I, uh, deviated.
For starters, the Station didn’t even look like an “X.” Instead I had some fraught comment that the Station would change its name to “X” because it was sad its favorite “kid in space” was leaving it forever. Okay maybe I didn’t deviate too much. But this story rips shamelessly from like 4 different science fiction media sources at once. It’s a clear allegory for Star Trek Deep Space Nine to the point I’m glad no one sues grade schoolers for copy-write infringement. I mean, just look at this Klingon/Darth Vader love-child of an alien nemesis (Space Station X: The Remix doesn’t even have aliens… how dare I?).
The whole story hinges incredibly on the idea that the main character is the last hope of a Station under siege from an alien menace. She grabs her space blaster (of which there are apparently spares laying everywhere like loot crates in an open world videogame) and she sneaks around her beloved Space Station with her best dude-friend. The aliens wreck her Station and she is threatened with returning to Earth, which she seems pretty beat up about. So she runs away. Okay… I thought I deviated from this story significantly, but main character being pissed at Earth and running away tracks…
Anyway, Sandra gets trapped by the aliens, discovers their weakness and returns triumphant to her Station with the answer to all their alien-based problems. She saves the day and is heralded as a hero, before deciding she has had enough of staying on a Space Station for 6 (not 10!) years. So she heads home. Aside from my blatant rippoff of Star Wars terms (“We lost so many droids!”), my impromptu math lessons (there were 27,000 people on the Station, and 700 were slaughtered by aliens. How many does that leave behind?”), I’d say that I could sue myself for some copywrite infringement. It definitely needed some spit and polish though. This first draft is rough. I mean, just read my opener:
(okay someone else has an obsession with sweet tunes too, I’m going on a nostalgia trip while reading this guys). And, spoiler alert: I do not tell anyone about my grandfather’s tragic cargo bay accident.
Obviously Space Station X (First of its Name) lacks a nice little romance sub-plot. But considering its an obvious self-insert, I would say it 100% still has a lesbian in it, even if that lesbian didn’t come out for another 5 years (and made herself straight and married in the sequel). And yes, there was a sequel.
I had to go on hiatus because my Junior High teachers caught on to my gig and stopped assigning me short stories. It wasn’t until a stunning three years later in 8th grade that I penned the follow-on, with subterfuge, intrigue, betrayal, and blatant theft of concept from James Cameron’s The Abyss. The writing shows my growing maturity as an author (8th grade brought big changes, I swear), and the complexity of the story line shows I had a stronger grasp on how to draw readers in… but I apparently lost the last 2 chapters, and the old iMac we used to type it out is long since kissing the bottom of a landfill so who knows how it ends. The mystery prevails. Point is I was hooked on this story telling business enough that I committed to a sequel a whole three years later (which is a damned long time in grade school).
Shouldn’t be a surprise then that I wrote a sequel to Space Station X (Second of its Name) as well. And hell, I even managed to stick to some themes here too. Fortunately, unlike my first iteration of a main character, who finds herself an affable and entirely forgettable trophy husband, my revamped main figures some of her shit out. Good thing I managed to split Sandra into two characters when I wrote my final masterpiece, because otherwise this lesbian romance would be more like a parakeet in a serious committed relationship with its mirror.
I certainly didn’t bother telling potential agents and publishers I could compare my work to that of a wistful earlier version of me. But going back and reading what I considered the early-early inspiration for what finally made it into print is fun. I wanted to build off a concept I had already explored. I knew I needed to pull some major changes (and admit my character was as gay as I was), but I enjoyed the idea that I could take some innocent concept I drummed up as a young star-gazer and sully it beyond compare to the point of publication. I apologize deeply to all my old teachers who so excitedly promised they would read Space Station X (the Gritty Reboot). Yes I made you read that sex scene.
Anyway, keep an eye out for the Space Station X sequel sometime next year, and if you get a chance, please consider backing the Space Wizard Science Fantasy Backerkit project that is releasing a whole new set of books this season (my sequel is featured in part 2 this fall). I am forever grateful for them taking a chance on me.
https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/73337004-b3b4-46aa-8062-a586575a5ce4/landing
AZ ROZKILLIS 