The basic "problem," if you will, is the Pythian Cycle. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
Details after the JUMP.
So, yeah. Pythian Cycle.
Man, that looks familiar.
So we know it's happened before it will happen again.
From the show itself, there are three iterations of the Cycle: on Kobol, on Earth I and in the Colonies.
(By Cycle, if you're confused, I'll explain. Mankind creates Cylons, Cylons revolt, world is destroyed, exodus of some people to a new world. Basically.)
The details of the Cycle on Kobol and Earth I aren't really known. We know the world got destroyed in both cases. We know Cylons revolted on Earth I. We know there were exoduses of survivors from both Kobol and Earth I.
The details of the Cycle on the Colonies is much better known and documented. Cylons created. Revolted. Nukes. Exodus.
In Lords of Kobol, I fleshed out the details of the Kobol Cycle. Thanks to a plethora of unused ideas, I even created a somewhat different Cycle for Kobol in Book Four.
SPOILERS follow
My storytelling problem for Book Five (other than the previously discussed Prequel Trap) is that I've forced myself to devise yet another iteration of the Cycle.
Because Zeus, et al, are themselves Cylons, I've already established that they were created millennia before on Kobol back when it was called Larsa. This means Zeus and crew are part of the exodus side of the equation in the previous Cycle (which would be the first iteration of the Pythian Cycle).
If you think about it, you can see my conundrum.
Yes, I have a basic structure already in place for my story. Cylons, revolution, nukes, flee. Nice.
The problem is simply that you know this story. You've seen it on screen in full on BSG. Two other versions of that story were alluded to. One of those was fleshed out in my previous work.
It's like a unique Prequel Trap. You know what's going to happen so I have to make it interesting for you.
That's my challenge. I need to mix it up. The basics of the Cycle will still exist ... but there will be some surprises. I will tell you that I've swapped the usual order of a couple of elements (not directly mentioned in this post). Plus, the nature of Larsa versus Kobol can make for far more interesting stories (I'll go into more detail on this in a later post).
Am I setting you guys up for a fall? Am I tamping down expectations, just in case it doesn't turn out well?
Hard to say right now. I've got an outline finished and I've written the first chapter. So far so good.
Book Zero ... Book Five ...ehhh
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