Savenging the shores are the penitents—those who resist its siren lure. Among them is Mae Jameson, who encounters Siofra, a mute girl, wandering alone by the shore and returns her home, only to discover the girl's father, rogue scientist Carl Magellan, hanging from a noose. He's been murdered. Unwilling to leave the matter in the hands of the facility Carl abandoned years ago, Mae takes Carl’s journals, which detail his obsession with the Caul and its mysteries, and sets about investigating a dangerous conspiracy where someone believes they can use the secret of the Caul to shape humanity's future—and aren't afraid to kill to keep control of it.
Colin stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the novel:
My novel Exo is a science-fiction murder mystery inspired by a real-world setting. This meant that there were four key areas that had to feel as authentic as possible and required a mixture of research and speculative imagination to help me bring them alive in both my mind and, hopefully, in the minds of my readers.
These four aspects were the future Earth I’d created (the science fiction), how a person is killed and how someone goes about investigating a crime (the murder), the big science-fictional idea that drives both the story and the murder (the mystery), and, lastly, the location that had inspired my novel in the first place (the real-world setting). Each of these aspects required rather different research methods, though, of course, research in one area was bound to bleed into others.
Science fiction
My story takes place a thousand years from now on a ravaged and dangerous Earth that humanity abandoned centuries ago. As a former geology student, I have some sense of deep time, though a millennium isn’t even a geological eye blink. And though I officially gave up any academic relationship with science over thirty years ago, I’ve continued to read widely across popular science literature, being an avid subscriber to New Scientist magazine. Pre-dating all this was the science fiction and fantasy bug I caught as a child (thanks, Star Wars!). Over the decades, I’ve read hundreds of books and short stories in these genres, which have not only provided so much reading pleasure, but also – amidst the sense of wonder and enchantment inherent in both genres – plenty of food for thought. Being immersed in the science of the day and speculations about the future gave me a ready-made, pick-and-choose toolkit as I set about building my future world. How was the future to differ from the past? How had those changes come about? How did politics work? Who was in charge? What had we done to the Earth? Not only did thinking about this stuff help bring the world alive, but this background work also started to shape and inform my story and plot. If Earth was dangerous and had been long abandoned, who were the people left on it, and what were they doing here? What was driving them? Why were they still around? To my mind, the best science fiction and murder mystery stories aren’t just about the science or the crimes but about the struggles of the characters who live in these worlds.
Murder
This was the area I was the least sure of, though I’ve read many classic and contemporary crime stories over the years. It was not just that I knew only the basics about how the criminal justice system worked. In my story the criminal justice system of the future had fundamentally changed – working under the auspices and with the permission of powerful interplanetary corporations – and I was setting it on an abandoned Earth where there was no law enforcement because there weren’t supposed to be any people there. My protagonist Mae is in her eighties. She had once been a Service agent – a kind of policewoman – but she’d abandoned that long ago. I was left with a series of questions. What happens when you find a body? How do bodies decay? How do you work out how someone was killed without forensics? Who decides who should investigate? What happens when people disagree over what to do? How do you go about investigating a crime? The specific details that had not changed – forensics, decay – I could use the internet to research (I was astonished by the specific resources available for crime writers!). My other questions became fundamental to the story and characters, in helping to reveal their world and, crucially, their behaviour and motivations. Who was helpful? Who was obstructive? Whose was acting suspiciously? Mae had to find out why.
These four aspects were the future Earth I’d created (the science fiction), how a person is killed and how someone goes about investigating a crime (the murder), the big science-fictional idea that drives both the story and the murder (the mystery), and, lastly, the location that had inspired my novel in the first place (the real-world setting). Each of these aspects required rather different research methods, though, of course, research in one area was bound to bleed into others.
Science fiction
My story takes place a thousand years from now on a ravaged and dangerous Earth that humanity abandoned centuries ago. As a former geology student, I have some sense of deep time, though a millennium isn’t even a geological eye blink. And though I officially gave up any academic relationship with science over thirty years ago, I’ve continued to read widely across popular science literature, being an avid subscriber to New Scientist magazine. Pre-dating all this was the science fiction and fantasy bug I caught as a child (thanks, Star Wars!). Over the decades, I’ve read hundreds of books and short stories in these genres, which have not only provided so much reading pleasure, but also – amidst the sense of wonder and enchantment inherent in both genres – plenty of food for thought. Being immersed in the science of the day and speculations about the future gave me a ready-made, pick-and-choose toolkit as I set about building my future world. How was the future to differ from the past? How had those changes come about? How did politics work? Who was in charge? What had we done to the Earth? Not only did thinking about this stuff help bring the world alive, but this background work also started to shape and inform my story and plot. If Earth was dangerous and had been long abandoned, who were the people left on it, and what were they doing here? What was driving them? Why were they still around? To my mind, the best science fiction and murder mystery stories aren’t just about the science or the crimes but about the struggles of the characters who live in these worlds.
Murder
This was the area I was the least sure of, though I’ve read many classic and contemporary crime stories over the years. It was not just that I knew only the basics about how the criminal justice system worked. In my story the criminal justice system of the future had fundamentally changed – working under the auspices and with the permission of powerful interplanetary corporations – and I was setting it on an abandoned Earth where there was no law enforcement because there weren’t supposed to be any people there. My protagonist Mae is in her eighties. She had once been a Service agent – a kind of policewoman – but she’d abandoned that long ago. I was left with a series of questions. What happens when you find a body? How do bodies decay? How do you work out how someone was killed without forensics? Who decides who should investigate? What happens when people disagree over what to do? How do you go about investigating a crime? The specific details that had not changed – forensics, decay – I could use the internet to research (I was astonished by the specific resources available for crime writers!). My other questions became fundamental to the story and characters, in helping to reveal their world and, crucially, their behaviour and motivations. Who was helpful? Who was obstructive? Whose was acting suspiciously? Mae had to find out why.
Mystery
Because I was writing a science fiction murder mystery, I had two mysteries – a whodunnit and a what is it? Science fiction often features a big, dumb object. Something to give the reader the ‘wow’ factor they’re looking for. Mine was weird. It was the Caul – the deadly entity into which the oceans had slowly transformed: get too close and you’re irresistibly compelled to enter; enter, and you are instantly annihilated. This was why a few scientists were still on Earth, studying it, but it was also why others lived by the shore. These were called penitents – like my detective, Mae – and they somehow resisted the urge to enter the Caul. The Caul had also birthed strange hyperdimensional objects called clusters. Both the Caul and the clusters were mathematical in nature. To write convincingly about them I had to research topology – the mathematics of multi-dimensional shapes. I read a number of books, both non-fiction and fiction. Some were technical. The maths itself was utterly beyond me, but the ideas were breathtaking. Perhaps the most famous book about exploring other dimensions is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland. This book became folded into my story
Because I was writing a science fiction murder mystery, I had two mysteries – a whodunnit and a what is it? Science fiction often features a big, dumb object. Something to give the reader the ‘wow’ factor they’re looking for. Mine was weird. It was the Caul – the deadly entity into which the oceans had slowly transformed: get too close and you’re irresistibly compelled to enter; enter, and you are instantly annihilated. This was why a few scientists were still on Earth, studying it, but it was also why others lived by the shore. These were called penitents – like my detective, Mae – and they somehow resisted the urge to enter the Caul. The Caul had also birthed strange hyperdimensional objects called clusters. Both the Caul and the clusters were mathematical in nature. To write convincingly about them I had to research topology – the mathematics of multi-dimensional shapes. I read a number of books, both non-fiction and fiction. Some were technical. The maths itself was utterly beyond me, but the ideas were breathtaking. Perhaps the most famous book about exploring other dimensions is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland. This book became folded into my story
Setting
Exo was inspired by a visit to Dungeness, on the southeastern coast of England. This small triangle of pebbled wilderness juts into the sea and is often shrouded in fog. It has a road running along it with a few small houses, lots of shacks, a couple of lighthouses, a number of decaying (as well as still used) fishing boats and, at the road’s end, a now decommissioned nuclear power station. It was the juxtaposition of all these elements that brought to mind my abandoned future Earth. I first visited in 2004 and I’ve visited numerous times since, my explorations giving me further ideas and inspiration. The decaying fishing boats became rusting rockets. The old lighthouse became a temple long abandoned by its worshippers. The wooden huts became the shacks of the few, last inhabitants eking out a living on a dangerous shore. The power station became a research facility studying what had happened here. The shingle headland and the sea itself became zones of danger and distrust, where a murder could happen beside a frightening annihilating entity and only a stubborn former policewoman could be trusted to solve it.
Science fiction. Murder. Mystery. Setting. The four fundamental keys to Exo, and all requiring a combination of research and inspiration, the one dependent on the other.
Colin Brush posts about writing and copy as colinthecopywriter at his website and on Instagram and Bluesky. Exo is now available via all major booksellers.
