Tier Zero, Vol. I of The Knolan Cycle

Really…kill ’em all?

One Reader's take on "Tier Zero, Vol. I of the Knolan Cycle"

The author, at home

Pretty much anyone who knows me, also knows I’m a bit of gym rat. Which is not, despite how it sounds, a backhanded way of saying I’m a stud. I’m not. There are a ton of guys who work out in the same gym who are, but I’d never claim to be one of them. Fit, yes.

But that’s not why I led with this. Recently I met a guy doing concentration curls while I was working on traps and we got to BSing.

. It didn’t take long to get around to who we knew and what we did for a living and I copped to being a retired Marine  turned author. His polite inquiry about what I’d written morphed to apparent genuine interest when I told him I was writing a science fiction series about first contact. The gentleman, it turns out, is a science fiction buff.

After a few more questions he asked where he could buy it. I generally have a few copie in the car, so I gifted him a copy and asked him for a review. I’m as optimistic as anyone, but I’m also familiar with how many “free copy for an honest review” arrangements actually pan out, or for that matter, how many even get around to reading the book. Still…hope springs eternal.

Good news, bad news...

In my workout companion’s case, he actually did read it. A couple weeks later, (it’s not a short book) he flagged me down while I was doing my cardio, saying he’d finished the book and he had a couple thoughts. “Great,” I said. “I’ll find you when I get of the eliptical.”

I braced myself. Usually when a science fiction buff reads my work, they tend to focus on the science and (admittedly) Tier Zero asks the reader to accept a couple things for which (as yet) there is little basis in science to accept. “Shoot,” I told him. I was unprepared for what he said.

      “You should have killed everyone off,” he opined. “Like Martin does in “Red Wedding.”

I tried not to sigh. Not because I don’t think George R.R. Martin is a great writer. (He is.) And not because the “Red Wedding” chapter isn’t memorable or in keeping with Martin’s themes and the world he has created. It’s all those things.

Theme and Meaning

But it’s not congruent with the themes underpinning my work…nor would killing everyone off be congruent with the world I’ve attempted to create. Neither the Knolans nor their adversaries the Valdrōsians are remotely akin to the cultures of Martin’s world. Which brings me to the point of this post.

Authors have a theme in mind (or at least in the back of their mind) when they write. The compulsion prompting us to sit at our laptop or computer (or typewriter, if you’re old school) for hours on end, day after day would not be sustainable if we didn’t have a theme (or themes) in mind. It’s what keeps writers going when the going get tough. And it always does, if you’re trying to give birth to your vision. Writing is work. A good writing is even harder work.

Please don’t misunderstand me. My critic is entitled to his take. What would have made Tier Zero meaningful or a more fulfilling read to isn’t invalid, it’s just not aligned with my purpose in writing the story.

The Knolan Cycle's Overarching Theme

The Knolan Cycle is about the collision of values and cultures with the fate of Earth and other inhabited systems in our corner of the galaxy. As a tale of first contact, it is also about the unique and often contrary, contradictory organism we call homo sapiens. In my view, to see oursleves in all our glory and our gut churning dysfunction demands a conflict of titanic proportion with clear objectives and delineations on the surface.

It is against a backdrop of simple goals that the hard choices we confront in execution come into focus. All of us want consistency because what is consistent is relatively predictable. But as the Knolans have learned (and we are beginning to learn) the Universe isn’t necessarily all that predictable. And life tends to resist with might and main all our attempts to make it predictable.

Which isn’t to say that Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series doesn’t accomplish much of the same thing. It does. It’s just  that his approach is  different, as is his purpose in writing the series.

Besides. I like some of my characters too much to kill them off. I think you will, too. Available in both paperback and Kindle, you can purchase Tier Zero here.

The sequel, Eryinath-5, The Dancer Nebula will be released later this year. Subscribe to Dirk’s Tribe at the top right of this page to be among the first to know when Eryinath-5 will be out.

D.B. Sayers is a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel and former corporate trainer turned full-time author.

Tier Zero and Science Fiction in Literature

A Futurist’s Playground?

Science fiction tends to tap into our innate curiosity about how the future might affect our lives. One commentator on science fiction as a genre opined that science fiction is “a telescope to the future.” The post makes the case for a forward-looking deep dive into the inevitability of change, driven by man’s relentless drive to control our environment and (by association) our destiny.

I think there’s a place for that kind of thinking, whether you accept the notion in the post or not. Science fiction by definition seeks to deal with the essential unknowns associated with a future that both interacts with us as it unfolds and on which the discoveries we make ultimately have a hand in shaping our destiny. Any speculative fiction shares that efficacy, if efficacy it is.

But I wonder if it’s worth recalling that whatever advances we make technologically, those advances are made by humans. And does not a lot of science fiction get lost in a jungle of “gadgets,” often at the expense of thoughtful thematic expression? Our fascination with a hypothetical future often focuses on how the world in which we live may be transformed by gadgets. But are not humans the real catalysts of change, irrespective of what those changes are? And how that change, whatever it is affects us is only partially dependent on the technology or the practical utility of the latest i-phone app. (For example).

The Brave New World

In my view, the real focus of science fiction is and must be on how the changes we bring into being technologically affect not simply how we live, but how those changes transform our lives but how we feel about that brave new world (to parrot Aldous Huxley) and how the changes we both bring into being and by which we are affected, shape our view of ourselves. What makes humans fundamentally different, we believe, is our self-awareness.

It is self-awareness and the degree to which we are able to learn, apply and pass on the lessons we’ve learned that make us who/what we are. And while science fiction gives us an opportunity to play “what if” with technology, I’m not sure that the more important value to be found in reading science fiction is the speculative journey into our own psyche’s and how a different external reality might cause us to order our own lives, both individually and collectively.

“How would we be, if...?”

In Tier Zero, Vol I of the Knolan Cycle, the Knolans are clearly technologically way ahead of us. So much so, that first contact between the Knolans and we indigenes of Earth actually took place over 30 years ago and no one is aware of it. Yet. In Tier Zero, the Knolans are a little cirumspect about their motivations for making contact in the first place, even with the few with whom they have chosen to connect. And as the reader becomes aware of their reasons for it, it’s obvious that Knolan ideation about a lot of things is fundamentally different than our own. Paradoxically, the Knolans are in many ways so similar to us, that it’s hard to reconcile the differences between their views of themselves and their relationship with the Universe and our own, given how otherwise similar we are.

And that, to me, is the heart and soul of science fiction. It isn’t gadgets, in the end, it’s still about the human condition and how we (as humans) will be affected by world/universal views that are profoundly different from our own. Given our track record here in the US, the supposed melting pot of the world, it’s fair to wonder if our knee-jerk reaction to contact with others, however similar may not be fear, loathing or aggressive antagonism.

When/if confronted with difference from afar, will we have the kind of tolerance balanced with a healthy curiosity to learn from and share with a culture so foreign that it literally dwarfs the challenges of understanding and tolerance we’ve been obliged to confront before? For most of us paying attention, my guess is the jury’s still out. And if you’re like me, that concerns you.

D.B. Sayers is the author of four books and is currently working on two more. In his previous “incarnation,” Dirk was a Marine officer, then corporate trainer and training manager. He currently lives in Laguna Niguel a couple miles from the Pacific with he wife, two psychotic cats and 12 year old, 5 foot Ball Python named Corona.

The Truth Often Hides in Plain Sight

An alternative view of "Aliens..."

Lysia Knolan Seeker and Waykeeper

In Chapter 1 “The Presence,” the reader immediately senses that Marty’s meeting with Lysia Uupao is important, fateful, even destiny changing. Some unusual is going on, just beneath the surface, but it isn’t necessarily obvious what.

In Chapter 2, “Attáru (Awakening),” the reader learns just how fateful the meeting is. Lysia Uupao, her representations notwithstanding, is not Indonesian, or Polynesian or anything else Marty has ever met. From another world, Lysia is here on Earth (or Kurrithaal as the Knolans call it) for a reason. And it’s not obvious just what that reason might be.

While there are notable exceptions, the majority of tales involving “first contact” between Earth and hypothetical aliens postulate that alien motives will necessarily be hostile, not simply different. Is it possible that we’re wrong about that? As chapter 2 makes clear, the Knolans are not hostile, as nearly as we can tell. That said, chapter 2 doesn’t rule that out, either. What is “the Way,” and how does it relate the Knolan’s motives? For that matter, why are Knolans reproducing (clandestinely, apparently) with Earth humans? And what does it mean to be a “Seed?”

Knolan Motives for Contact

By the time thoughtful readers get to the end of chapter 2, it’s clear that Lysia and her superior, Turnia, are not of this world and that their interest in Marty isn’t an idle, passing interest. In Lysia’s case, it’s also obvious that it’s very personal. But the reader still doesn’t know the motives underpinning their interest or what to expect if Lysia does as Turnia has instructed. Should we be worried about Lysia’s designs on Marty? Should Marty be worried about them? The reader still has no idea.

Even as chapter 3, “The Mission” ends, while it’s obvious that Lysia’s personal interest in Marty goes beyond her professional interest, it still isn’t clear what Knola’s interest in Kurrithaal or its Seed. And the overarching question lurks in the background, to wit: why have not the Knolans made direct contact with “leadership” on Earth? It seems apparent that they haven’t, but why haven’t they? Chapter 3 provides no answer. And what are the “perils” to which Marty’s Awakening expose him? Whatever they are, Lysia, clearly, expects to share those perils.

Are the Knolans vulnerable to someone or something themselves? Who or what? And are their motives for making contact with Earth (Kurrithaal) then mixed by perils they believe we share with them? How might their motives toward Earth be changed if that “peril” whatever it is were not a factor?

And the Larger question?

Our default assumptions notwithstanding and assuming contact with other intelligent life is possible, how different (or similar) might they be? Is it possible that Steven Hawking’s speculations about hostile aliens is correct, or was he speculating out of an abundance of caution and prudent fear? 

The answer to this question will likely remain unknown and unknowable unless and until contact is made. And is it just possible that it depends on which alien race contacts us first? Is it all that improbable, if we postulated that there might be one species of alien interested in Earth, there might be more than one? Or that their interests in us might be at odds?

As Tier Zero unfolds, these and many other practical and philosophical questions will come up. Tier Zero is not simply a tale of First Contact, it is a speculative adventure of life, death, conflict and courage, as well as questions of ethics and courage. You can purchase Tier Zero in paperback or Kindle now.

D.B. Sayers is a retired Marine officer, retired corporate trainer/manager turned full-time author. You can join Dirk’s Tribe and stay up to date on his progress to with Tier Zero’s sequel, Eryinath-5. due out in 2021.