Three years ago Tommy Hancock of Pro Se Press put out a call for stories for an anthology entitled Alternative Air Adventures. Stories were to be aerial adventures set in worlds without any fixed wing or helicopter aircraft. Intrigued, I quickly signed up.
Flight without fixed wings immediately brought dirigibles to my mind. I have been fascinated with airships since I was a boy and was taken through the enormous hangar used by the USS Macon by my Dad. Since then I have accumulated quite a library and knowledge of Airships.
The Germans arguably built the best Zeppelins so I decided to make my heroes the crew of a German Zeppelin. Since I did not want Nazis involved I invented a world where the German had won WWI and twenty years later a cold war among the European powers existed. From there it was easy to conjure up a brushfire colonial war in Africa between England and Germany starring my hero Max and his Zeppelin the L-107.
Flight of the Wasp ended up being a fun little story that led off Alternative Air Adventures and I am quite pleased with it. If you’re looking for something fun and different to read pick up a copy of Alternative Air adventures. There are some imaginative stories there.
Once I completed flight of the Wasp I quickly moved on to other work. However, my friend Terry had loved my story and would not let it go. He kept badgering me to write a sequel to Max’s zeppelin adventure. Initially I wasn’t that excited about it but finally I gave in and came up with a sequel. The story was longer and more involved but also turned out to be a pretty good air adventure. Again I thought I was finished. But Terry once again demanded more, telling me that what I had written wasn’t a pulp adventure but great alternate history fiction.
This got me thinking; he was right. While I hadn’t set out to create an alternate history world, that was just what I had done. So I tinkered with some outlines and in the end decided I had enough to write a whole book about the adventures of Max and L-107 in Africa.
So this winter, in addition to writing my recently finished Purple Scar novel I also completed parts three and four of my Zeppelin saga. I then expanded Flight of the Wasp a bit, added a prologue and an alternate history timeline and ended up with over sixty thousand words.
What I am doing now is assembling and editing these four stories and I hope to have the whole thing ready to send off to a publisher soon. Tentatively it is called Zeppelins over Africa. The four stories each stand alone but linked together are the story of a nasty little war in an alternate 1930s Africa.
The fun thing is; my alternate world is there waiting for more stories. I want to move on to other things now but I have future plans to return to Max’s world. There are lots more airship stories to be written. Perhaps some American airships . . . huge descendants of the USS Macon and USS Akron scouting for the US fleet in the Pacific. And what about the Japanese? They would have airships . . . wouldn’t they?
I’ll keep you informed on Zeppelins over Africa as it progresses. Next week I’ll talk about new writing projects I’ll be working on this summer.
Happy reading
With all of this conflict, shouldn’t the French Air Fleet of Madagascar try to take advantage of the chaos and confusion?
In our world, France was still firmly in control of the island until after WWII.
Yes, in my alternate world France is technically allied to England. But there are several things to consider:
Madagascar is a fairly weak colony of France. They tend to leave the Indian Ocean to England while they concentrate their few and inferior airships to protect and patrol the Mediterranean and Atlantic approaches. They have limited naval and air assets in the east African theatre to deploy.
England does not consult France when it sets off this new round of hostilities in Africa. They are hoping for a surprise coup. France is as surprised as anyone else. This is why both England and Germany attempt to end things quickly and both are surprised at how the conflict continues to grow.
In fact all four stories in Zeppelins over Africa take place over a span of perhaps six weeks or so in October through December of 1935. Near the start of the winter wet season in Africa.
Flight of the Wasp starts out fairly simply but at every German counter move the British up the ante instead of calling for a ceasefire and the conflict quickly threatens to get out of hand. A general war would certainly draw in France and probably others as well. Every country remembers The Great European War and wants to avoid this kind disastrous war again.
This is why I like my alternate world. There are myriad possibilities for limited conflict with the threat of general war hanging over everyone.
I hope other swill enjoy it as well.