The Story Behind My Writing Nowhere to Go But Mars

Do fiction authors often write why they write a particular book or story? As I was working on announcing this book and was writing a rather generic release announcement with teaser copy, something about it felt missing. Perhaps the missing feeling might have been due to my recent family loss, something I’ve not shared here. And, well, the idea for this book came from a different place for me than my other stories... a more personal place.

I heard at a science fiction convention several months back that Ray Bradbury was once asked about why he wrote his science fiction stories and his reply was along the lines of, “I write these cautionary tales to prevent these futures.”

So, why did I write Nowhere to Go But Mars?

I need to take a step back and explain the following… When I was a kid, I asked my Dad about our family history. He knew little, just the basics, but there were certain things he was sure of. Of those some critical things were outright lies. Oh, he hadn’t meant to lie. He’d only shared the lies he’d been told—and it wasn’t about some shameful secrets in the family, either. Well, not that I feel are shameful, anyway.

It was more about his parents and grandparents not wanting to talk about painful memories—and not wanting to share them with him. They’d immigrated to the United States because they were poor—and had nowhere else to go. America was their new world of opportunity—and the journey was dangerous… life or death dangerous, fleeing or leaving home, traveling hundreds of miles a seaport and traveling steerage class with hundreds is not as many as more than two thousand people in the hold of a steamship for weeks.

So, years went by and the questions about my family history, where we were from, why did they leave the “old country,” what happened once they came here went unanswered. Then I landed a job in New York City. This was before online research was “a thing” and one day I had the opportunity to attend a program, “An Introduction to Genealogical Research.” With what I’d learned, I used some of my vacation days and, well, I began researching in earnest… requesting documents, looking at Census records, learning from the documents I found, and learning about the Ellis Island immigrant experience.

It was a little eerie going to the regional office of the National Archives and sitting in a dark research room where I poured through the microfilm of passenger manifests. I found my Dad’s mother arriving as a girl with her parents, brother and sister and my Mom’s maternal grandfather’s passenger manifest, showing they indeed passed through Ellis Island.

Since then I’ve learned three of my grandparents immigrated to the United States a century ago and more. Six of my eight great-grandparents left the “old country” for this land of opportunity, seeking better lives for their families. I know so much more of their stories, having found documents, photos, letters, as well as having sought out relatives, asking questions I hoped they might have answers to—and learned so much more and continue to thanks to online resources, in particular.

Politics today aside, politics has always played a role in immigration—as it did my family.

Nowhere to Go But Mars is about people who are poor with nowhere else to go under what could easily be the new rules of mass immigration for those seeking a better future literally in a new world.

This story also serves in counterpoint to my love of science fiction—and fascination with Mars, in particular, which captured my imagination at an early age. So, putting my knowledge of the historical immigration experience with my fascination about Mars… I originally wrote a short story, the genus for this novella.

That short story earned me an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future Contest a number of years ago and has been published in two anthologies. With its publication, I knew I had a story that begged to be expanded, I’ve just spent a number of years writing and rewriting it until the irony and the daring, the challenges faced merely for the hope of a better life came through in a way I wanted it to come alive.

I don’t know what readers will think about my take on my cautionary tale of the future, the future I write about that I hope to prevent. I know my Dad was pleased with the results of my genealogical research. I think he would be pleased with my writing this tale inspired by their desperation and that of the millions of others, who did the same.

Dare to Believe,

D.H.

Click this link to find the platforms the ebook for Nowhere to Go But Mars is available in addition to Kindle and Amazon, for the paperback.