Elinor M Brent-Dyer. On Mars.
Aug. 14th, 2015 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceOh people, my people: it struck me today as I walked home from the library, that while all my Mars fiction thus far has proved tolerably serious, I do have another area of interest; it needn't all be about redeeming unhappy Edwardians.
The driving force of this series of works thus far has been, "If Mars were a province of the British Empire, of course [X] would have gone there" - but today I am feeling a terrible temptation. I want to say "If Mars were a province of the British Empire, of course the Chalet School would have had a sister foundation there..."*
It would - of course! - be called the Crater School. And it would sit on the rim of a crater lake, where the girls would go boating in summer and skating in winter; and the sanatorium for tubercular parents would be a couple of hours' march around the rim; and there would be girls - and staff - from all over the Empire and beyond, because diversity is already built into the Martian population; and, and, and.
And the first book (possibly the only book; this might be a one-off, because there is a limit to fun) would be called Three Twins at the Crater School, and I really, really want to do this.
It's not a project for a traditional publisher. I'm thinking Kickstarter, or more likely Patreon: a chapter a month, maybe, with a volume to follow via Book View Cafe, perhaps...
Or is this rank idiocy, would nobody care? I dunno. I will stop giggling soon, and let the idea settle, and see...
*Context for the bewildered: here's the Wiki article about the Chalet School, but it gives no sense at all of the charm of these books. They're built on 1920s attitudes to class and sex and so forth, and are thoroughly unsound in many ways - but on the other hand the author (and her girls!) were firmly anti-Nazi well before the war, and the general conservative/religious tone doesn't harm the sheer delight of the series. Which still has fans in many unexpected places. I'm not the only left-wing novelist, f'rexample, with a special place in my heart for the Chalet School. And I'm very far from the only SF fan: Farah Mendlesohn and I talked about the series at a convention once, and had a knowledgeable roomful of audience.
The driving force of this series of works thus far has been, "If Mars were a province of the British Empire, of course [X] would have gone there" - but today I am feeling a terrible temptation. I want to say "If Mars were a province of the British Empire, of course the Chalet School would have had a sister foundation there..."*
It would - of course! - be called the Crater School. And it would sit on the rim of a crater lake, where the girls would go boating in summer and skating in winter; and the sanatorium for tubercular parents would be a couple of hours' march around the rim; and there would be girls - and staff - from all over the Empire and beyond, because diversity is already built into the Martian population; and, and, and.
And the first book (possibly the only book; this might be a one-off, because there is a limit to fun) would be called Three Twins at the Crater School, and I really, really want to do this.
It's not a project for a traditional publisher. I'm thinking Kickstarter, or more likely Patreon: a chapter a month, maybe, with a volume to follow via Book View Cafe, perhaps...
Or is this rank idiocy, would nobody care? I dunno. I will stop giggling soon, and let the idea settle, and see...
*Context for the bewildered: here's the Wiki article about the Chalet School, but it gives no sense at all of the charm of these books. They're built on 1920s attitudes to class and sex and so forth, and are thoroughly unsound in many ways - but on the other hand the author (and her girls!) were firmly anti-Nazi well before the war, and the general conservative/religious tone doesn't harm the sheer delight of the series. Which still has fans in many unexpected places. I'm not the only left-wing novelist, f'rexample, with a special place in my heart for the Chalet School. And I'm very far from the only SF fan: Farah Mendlesohn and I talked about the series at a convention once, and had a knowledgeable roomful of audience.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-08-15 09:56 am (UTC)