Then, as I was fond of doing, I wondered "What could I make out of this?" I decided it looked like smoke coming out of a rocket. So I drew in the rocket -- a rather crude, star-shaped rocket.
It all started in the Spring of 1996. I was taking a Computer Organization class Tuesdays thru Thursdays from 2:00 to 5:00, and I always had trouble paying attention. I would doodle in the margins of my paper just to stay awake.
One day in particular, I was doodling abstract curves. I made two, and then
I connected them with a straight line.
Then, as I was fond of doing, I wondered "What could I make out of this?" I
decided it looked like smoke coming out of a rocket. So I drew in the rocket --
a rather crude, star-shaped rocket.
And so began Star Force.
This doodle (after being refined a little) became the emblem for Star Force,
and the ship (after a lot of detailing) became the Starfighter. Because I was
in the "star" motif, I decided right then that I would only have 5 Starfighters (since
there were five points on a star) and the launch chamber (which wouldn't be designed in
detail until later) would have a star painted on the floor.
I had already been using Joshua Carpenter in my other (failed attempts at) fiction stories, so I naturally chose to use him again for this, and I chose four other members from various other sources. (For more on that, see What's in a Name?)
Of course, five fighters weren't enough to defend the entire planet against the evils in the universe, so smaller, "mass-produced" fighters had to be made. Thus was born the Fighters and eventually the Fleet Carrier that housed them.
By now (several weeks later, but still during the same class) I had become so caught up in everything that everything came almost naturally -- the "outdated" science vessel, the Star Force Transport, the Escort Fighters, and even ships for the (then unnamed) Xurians. I kept all of my work together in a pad of Graph Paper, except the original sketches and a few others.
I carried my graph paper around with me in my bookbag that next school year. I would work on Star Force after I finished my homework and while I was taking a break. It was coming along better than I had ever hoped. Then tragedy struck. My bookbag (including all of my school books, my calculator, my graph paper, and plans for the Viper and even a Diplomatic Shuttle) was stolen!
Star Force died that day.
Over Christmas 1996, with the help of another pad of graph paper and mt preliminary sketches, I started rebuilding it from the ground up. The Vaxxons got a name as well as their own language. And Star Force got a chance at a new life. It became known as Project Phoenix, and I adopted the motto:
"From the ashes of the old will arise another, with renewed strength and beauty."
During the first part of 1997, Star Force was recreated. Over the summer, the Xurians got a name and I wrote the First Contact story (twice!!). By the beginning of the school year, I was determined to put everything on the web where no one could steal it from me. I got a new e-mail account on November 5, and on November 15 I had a site on GeoCities.
I added theories (some inspired by discussions with my Net-friend Eric Saltsman), character profiles (putting my "general ideas" about them into a more concrete form), and ship schematics. April of this year, I took the next big step -- I submitted my page to search engines from AltaVista to Yahoo.
No one knows where Star Force is headed, including me. I have dreamed literally hundreds of story lines and ideas for the series, but I never would have dreamed that a simple little doodle in a boring CS class would have turned into all this!
Return to the "Behind the Scenes" Page
