Published in January by Random House Worlds, “Detour” is the new sci-fi mystery novel from veteran TV writer Jeff Rake (“Manifesto”) and bestselling author Rob Hart (“The Warehouse”)
Packed with thought-provoking essences from ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘Lost’, this spooky space adventure is perfect reading for fans of books like Andy Weir’s ‘Project Hi Maria“, as a spaceship crew returns from Saturn’s blue-green moon Titan to find that the Earth left behind has become a completely different place.
“I’ve been writing TV for about 25 years and brainstorming high-concept ideas that could be a potential sci-fi show,” Rake tells Space.
“I came off ‘Manifest,’ a show I created that started on NBC and ended up on Netflix. That show ended three years ago, and I was asking myself what’s next. I got some broad strokes for ‘Detour’ and went in to talk to my agent.
“We put it out, and one of the agents said it felt a bit novelistic and asked what I thought about developing it as a book, and then down the line, maybe adapting it for TV. It was incredibly intimidating for me. I didn’t know how to write a book, so they ended up finding me a partner and sending me a bunch of books to read after I got to The War Harthouse.”
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Having been familiar with Rake’s “Manifest” series, Hart absorbed the first “Detour” pitch and immediately knew he had to be the one to work on it.
“What Jeff is so good at, and what I love so much, is when you take a really big-swinging, crazy sci-fi idea and then humanize it with really strong characters,” says Hart.
“But obviously the big question was whether we were going to be able to work together. I have a lot of talented friends that I would never work with in a million years because I want to continue those friendships. I was encouraged by the fact that Jeff is a TV guy and TV is a very collaborative medium. We hopped on a Zoom and just hit it off and we were on the same wavelength that we could do things with and I could do things. and he said, ‘This sounds great, let’s do it that.’ From there it was mostly down to the races.”
Rake was particularly interested in coming up with another idea similar to “Manifesto,” one that combined science fiction and grounded family drama, something centered around parents and children and all the things you can think of when you talk about emotions and families.
“This is the near future, like 2030,” Hart adds. “I’d say if Neil deGrasse Tyson read this book, he wouldn’t be thrilled. I definitely took liberties with the technology, but there’s a new type of ion engine that’s roughly based on technologies we’re looking at now that would cut down the trip drastically. It was dropping a satellite into orbit around Titan to collect data on potential colonization.”
Why did they choose Titan as the destination for the crew?
“I’ve always been a geek about the fact that Mars is kind of bad for colonization for a number of reasons,” declares Rake. “Whereas Titan makes more sense for establishing a colony. It was fun to play in that area like, ‘Everybody always does Mars, let’s do something different.’
Taking on the first book in a space odyssey series no doubt required a generous investment of research time, looking at human spaceflight, astrophysics and orbital mechanics to give the project an authenticity. Fortunately for Rake, he was paired with a true research geek.
“I’m a big fan of space stuff and recently re-watched ‘Interstellar,'” admits Hart. “They literally made new discoveries about black holes based on the research and the special effects that the movie did.”
“I didn’t necessarily do what Andy Weir does, where all the science in his book checks out; that’s crazy. But I have enough of a general understanding of the importance of artificial gravity to maintain bone density for an astronaut while they’re in space (…) I always live by this saying that things don’t have to be right, but it’s 10% possible to be limited. The story.”
Reaching Titan is no easy feat, and getting the story off the ground required a plausible method of traveling to Saturn’s moon and back. “What I was most excited about was that I got to design a ship for deeper travel in our solar system,” explains Hart.
“I imagined that it had rotating wheels to create artificial gravity, and we hired an artist to do a rendering of the ship to put in the book, and it made me so incredibly happy. I knew right away that I wanted there to be a diagram of the spaceship in the book.”
“Omvei” is available via bookstores and online stores now. You can read an exclusive excerpt below!
“CASE FOR TITAN” BY PADMA SINGH
SUMMARY
For decades, humanity has viewed Mars as our next stop in the solar system. Over the past few years, technology in ion propulsion has increased exponentially, shortening a potential trip from years to months. As such, politicians and the general public alike have been asking: when will we finally set foot on the Red Planet, made famous in these circles by scientists like Carl Sagan and writers like Ray Bradbury and Andy Weir?
But as the scientific community is widely aware, Mars is an inhospitable, barren desert. Although we know the planet has ice, and therefore water, the effort to access that resource remains monumental. Not to mention the planet’s thin atmosphere, which would not protect humanity from cosmic radiation.
To survive, humans had to wear shielded, printed suits. And to thrive, we have to spend billions just on mining equipment, digging up resources and constructing underground habitats. We’re looking in the wrong place. We should instead focus about 400 million miles past Mars, to Saturn’s moon, Titan.
Titan is about half the size of Earth, and it is so far away that a year on Titan would be about 29 years on Earth. But it has a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, 50 percent thicker than Earth’s. The surface may seem inhospitable: covered in ice as hard as granite and dunes made of plastic, with lakes of ethane and methane. The atmosphere is hazy, limiting visibility, and the amount of sunlight reaching the surface is much less, creating a perpetual orange twilight.
But humans wouldn’t need pressure suits; they only need temperature-controlled suits to combat the freezing temperatures. The atmosphere would provide good protection from cosmic rays, meaning that habitats could be built on the surface. These plastic blankets can be used to build surface-level habitats, and the ethane and methane lakes can power them. Because of the weaker gravity, a rocket launched from the surface of Titan would take far less fuel than it does on Earth—and fuel is already in good supply there.
To settle a new world, we need available resources, and we need to protect the first people who take that step. We can do both of these things on Titan. I believe that over time smaller settlements can be linked together and within a few decades we could have a thriving colony living and thriving on Titan’s surface. Thanks to Horizon’s newly developed ion-thush engines and Starblazer, the ship John Ward has built in low Earth orbit, we could be there in a year – compared to seven under previously available technology.
In the following article, I will argue that Titan, not Mars, should be humanity’s focus as we look beyond Earth…
Reproduced from “Detour” by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart.
