By Michael Grossberg
Two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran has been busy writing fiction -–just not more long-awaited novels in his award-winning Aristillus lunar-revolution series. At least, not yet.
Corcoran is best known for writing The Powers of the Earth and its sequel Causes of Separation, which respectively won the Prometheus Awards for Best Novel in 2018 and 2019. Together, the first two novels in Corcoran’s Aristillus series (named after a lunar crater) tell an integrated and self-contained story centered on an underground lunar colony established by Chinese, Nigerian and American refugees from the economic authoritarianism of Earth’s major nations.
Worlds apart from that future scenario is an alternate history where Rome never fell, and in which printing presses, air travel and electricity were developed centuries earlier than in our own timeline.
Corcoran has outlined two more novels as sequels to complete his Aristillus series, and says he’s in the process of writing one or two “Heinleinesque” Young Adult novels set in the same fictional future.
He’s also recently released Battle Road, a novella set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse and the sequel to Caterpillar.
THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER
Perhaps most intriguing and newsworthy, though, is Thirty Pieces of Silver, co-written by Corcoran and Lawrence Railey.
The 89-page novella, set in Railey’s alternate history of Heretics of the Catacombs, is reportedly the first of several works of fiction planned in this alternate history.
And it’s an intriguing one, rich with possibilities, according to the the Amazon description:
“Every society worships something. In our world, in the 21st century, we worship consumerism, or sexual liberation, or the Party…but in the alternate history cyberpunk world of Heretics of the Catacombs, where Rome never fell, where moveable type was invented in 1125, lighter-than-air travel in 1350, and electricity in 1450, society still worships the the One True God, and venerates His saints and apostles.
Worship always involves physical artifacts. In some societies it’s rainbow flags. In others, little red books of the Party founder’s saying. In the eternal city of Byzantium and the rest of the Roman Empire that never fell, it’s relics – a fragment of the True Cross, a tooth of an ancient saint, a piece of a centuries-old transistor radio.
Venture into the neon lit world of Byzantium in the futuristic year of 1754 Anno Domini, when cybernetically augmented monks chant as they swing incense burning thuribles, surgically enhanced hookers flirt with hackers in underground bars, Viking mercenaries sell their guns to the highest bidder, and Aztec traders offer chocolate, gold, and illegal cocaina.
…and in the background, behind the mist and the drizzle, beneath the electroluminescent-lit towers and churches, below the filth and the riches, the forces of Good and Evil do battle in the darkness.”
Corcoran gives Railey credit for conceiving the alternate history.
According to Railey’s bio, the Florida resident has done extensive development in AI technology as a founding partner in an AI startup. He has been a Florida club DJ for over 20 years under the names Dystopic and Florida Regime, and was called to testify against major record labels in defense of Napster in the 2000 lawsuit.
Nothing else has been published, as yet, within this same series, but Corcoran says he and Railey hope to begin collaborating within the next year on a novel set in this alternate history.
Meanwhile, as previously reported on the Prometheus Blog, Corcoran is now focused on writing an novel under contract with the new publisher Ark Press – an independent work of science fiction, unrelated to any of his existing series, and due for publication in 2026.
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