Oh yes, we both reached for the blaster

I'm slogging along in the tiki book. (Also went and purchased Ritual of the Savage because it really is a well-written mystery novel). I have enough of the beats for the first sequence to be properly tiki-adjacent, and I have become comfortable with not sustaining that particular focus in the other sections.

On the other hand, the more I work on the monster-on-a-ship section of the book, the more it turns into Alien. Even without the cassette futurism. And the mining and jungle adventure and "SHADO" sections...? But as much fun and informative as iterative outlining is, I need to press on and draft the first sequence and really find out how this universe works.

Sigh.

The trouble is, more and more I understand how I am driven in writing not by cute concepts or even the basics of story, but by a different thing. The theme thing. You could call it "message" but that's too heavy-handed.

There's stuff I want to talk about in the next Athena Fox story. I'm not going to bring any insights, I don't have a big philosophical point to make, but it interests me and drives me to want to write that story. And the tiki book just doesn't have that thing.

Okay, sure, there's a bit of a riff on invented cultures v. appropriation, and an argument for leisure as a goal to itself. And the real tiki as of the second or third revival here has an element of urban archaeology which is mildly intriguing. I'm getting some of this by presenting an invented origin of tiki in this alternate world, in much the same way "Donn Beach" invented himself and the story of how he came to open the Beachcomber.

The Early Fox, though!

Purpose. That's what that one is about. All the way down to the selfish gene, Lucy crossing the savanna with child on her hip. An archeologist who has found a nihilism so deep that even suicide is too much trouble. The aging DOE guy who will hold to his purpose of keeping his atomic secret until he dies. The first humans to migrate into the Americas and the possibility of the last humans if it turns out Fermi asked the load-bearing question and we experience the Great Filter ourselves. And Penny, still trying to find hers.  

Really, what hope do mixed drinks with little umbrellas have against that?