Dark Fall novella snippet #2

n7axw wrote:I realize that things are a bit out of synch in David's world. But does this book have a publication date?

Don


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Eagleeye wrote:As far as I can remember, this novella will be part of the 2nd companion volume to the Honorverse "House of Lies"

Jonathan_S wrote:I think that's a different novella set in Haven.

in the 'Next Book' thread here RFC said the novel Uncompromising Honor "may or may not come bound with a short story/novella (already completed) which tells the tale on the creation of the Bolthole and finally tells you guys where it is."

This "Dark Fall" appears to be that novella; since we know that eventually Bolthole gets set up on the hardscrabble planet these poor colonists divert to (after Haven finds a wormhole bridge between their area and a nearby star)

What do you mean by "hardscrabble?" From the first set of snippets, it seemed to be a really nice planet - they just had the very bad fortune to build their initial settlement on top of an about-to-emerge volcano. They had built back up to approximately mid-19th century technology level with a population of approximately 1 billion.

And there are a lot of differences in the astrography. The original story had the Calvin system about 395 ly from Sol, and only about 14 ly from Sanctuary and Refuge. In this story, the original target is a lot closer to Sol - about 105 ly, so Refuge and Sanctuary are a lot farther away. The story of how they got there will be fascinating, however we don't have the new astrography, other than the fact (I think) that the Sanctuary system has the wormhole terminus - it's not in a system that's some distance away.

JohnRoth wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think that's a different novella set in Haven.

in the 'Next Book' thread here RFC said the novel Uncompromising Honor "may or may not come bound with a short story/novella (already completed) which tells the tale on the creation of the Bolthole and finally tells you guys where it is."

This "Dark Fall" appears to be that novella; since we know that eventually Bolthole gets set up on the hardscrabble planet these poor colonists divert to (after Haven finds a wormhole bridge between their area and a nearby star)

What do you mean by "hardscrabble?" From the first set of snippets, it seemed to be a really nice planet - they just had the very bad fortune to build their initial settlement on top of an about-to-emerge volcano. They had built back up to approximately mid-19th century technology level with a population of approximately 1 billion.

And there are a lot of differences in the astrography. The original story had the Calvin system about 395 ly from Sol, and only about 14 ly from Sanctuary and Refuge. In this story, the original target is a lot closer to Sol - about 105 ly, so Refuge and Sanctuary are a lot farther away. The story of how they got there will be fascinating, however we don't have the new astrography, other than the fact (I think) that the Sanctuary system has the wormhole terminus - it's not in a system that's some distance away.

I really meant the colony was hardscrabble, not the planet [oops]. I doubt the edits RFC has made would tend to make the early colonists' lives any easier - so the same issue with the volcanic eruptions is likely to leave them hammered flat and struggling to survive and rebuild.

Jonathan_S wrote:I really meant the colony was hardscrabble, not the planet [oops]. I doubt the edits RFC has made would tend to make the early colonists' lives any easier - so the same issue with the volcanic eruptions is likely to leave them hammered flat and struggling to survive and rebuild.

Oh, granted. It looks like the second version has just added a piece on the front end to resolve the continuity problems in the first version. There's no obvious reason from what little we know to change the rest of the story except to fix the continuity.

Of course, that "piece on the front end" could be a thumping good story all in its own.