Author Topic: The Inspiration Behind Project Tau

Jude Austin · Post by **Jude Austin** » 09 Jun 2020, 00:22

Hi guys!

My "Ask the Author" thread has taken off (YAY! Keep the questions coming, guys!

) and it seems a lot of people want to know about the inspiration behind my writing Project Tau.

Given I think it would be very disrespectful of me to just copy and paste identical answers to that same question, I created this thread to make a compilation of all my answers to that question, and answer it once and for all

In future, anyone asking about the inspiration behind Project Tau in "Ask the Author" will be politely directed here

The Inspiration Behind Project Tau (AKA: Where I Got The Idea From)

Project Tau was written in 2006, ten years before being published, at a time when CGI was nowhere near as advanced as it is now. I had a literary agent (who I later fired) who expected her clients to come up with reasons why a book would work as a movie. Sci-fi back then was very high-budget compared to other genres, so I set out to write a sci-fi book that could be adapted on a low budget. This meant nothing in the way of epic space battles (which I hate writing anyway!) or alien races/civilizations (which I sort of like writing) and no elaborate planetary sets.

It also meant that Tau couldn't be some kind of weird-looking genetic experiment

He had to be completely human, and so he had to be a clone, and playable by any human actor. Making it about human cloning also means that none of the scientists raise an eyebrow at Kalin's sudden arrival and believe Mason/Dennison's lies about him being a Project.

So honestly, there was no single moment when I sat down and said, "Okay, I want to write a novel about cloning." I do think that a lot of other sci-fi staples - huge space wars, rebellions, androids everywhere, colonization etc - have been done to death, which is one reason why I kept the tech levels in Project Tau deliberately low (that, and there are times when using a pen and paper makes far more sense than a computer

The history of the worlds is explained a lot more fully in the sequels, but there are several valid, in-universe reasons why it's not as amazingly hi-tech as you might expect). Out-of-universe, AI and robots really irritate me, which is why I deliberately wrote cultural and historical reasons to avoid their existence in Project Tau.

I also have a big, big problem with dystopian settings. Am I the only sci-fi writer who's actually optimistic about the future? Granted, what happens to poor Kalin isn't particularly nice, but that's a very extreme example; any normal GenTech lab would have had him arrested and he'd probably have been expelled from college. It was just his stupendously bad luck to run into the likes of Mason and Dennison. For people saying that it would require an Evil Dystopia for this to happen, people are being enslaved, tortured, kidnapped and murdered even as I write this (and even as you read it) yet I wouldn't consider 21st-century Earth to be an Evil Dystopia. That said, Project Tau and every single one of its sequels are not written and shouldn't be taken as any kind of analogy; at the end of the day, I wrote them purely to entertain, not to preach or instruct

Anyway, like I said, I wanted to try and write a sci-fi story that was a little different, and which didn't rely on a lot of super, hi-tech CGI. These days, it's not such an issue, but Project Tau was written in the mid-2000s, when the effects were far more expensive and nowhere near as good as they are today. So I went with cloning as a way to accomplish this, as Tau could be portrayed by a normal human actor, and it built from there. It also made it much more plausible for Kata/Kalin to be accepted as another clone.

The final part of it was that I wanted to try something new: I wanted to see if I could make the readers sympathize with the scientists at first, and hope they could regain control over Tau and Kata, or that someone would come to their rescue, and then twist things around so that by the end of the book they'd be clamoring for Dennison's blood. This is the entire reason why the beginning of the book is actually closer to the end in terms of time.

So there you have it, folks. A desire to write a sci-fi book that wasn't dystopian, and that didn't feature AI, robots, giant spaceships, epic space battles, or aliens, and one that could be adapted with a minimum of cost, written 14 years ago at a time when budget was more important to the studios than it is now

Misty20058 · Post by **Misty20058** » 09 Jun 2020, 16:43

Thanks for spending the time to write this: I really enjoyed you book and am looking forward to reading more!

ChainsawCat · Post by **ChainsawCat** » 10 Jun 2020, 20:50

It's fun to hear these necessity-as-the-mother-of-invention stories. Who would have guessed that the plot line was constrained (and therefore inspired) by a hypothetical film adaptation?

monicamu · Post by **monicamu** » 10 Jun 2020, 23:55

I found this background extremely helpful. It answered several questions for me. Thank you for taking the time to write it. It might be an idea to include this in future editions of the book - just a thought

Marion Jepkosgei · Post by **Marion Jepkosgei** » 11 Jun 2020, 09:56

Wow! I was questioning the slow unwinding of the plot but this has answered everything. I totally loved your optimistic sense. While Kalin's lucky charms wasn't on her side. I am a science student and I totally understand this.

Onyinye Excel · Post by **Onyinye Excel** » 11 Jun 2020, 15:08

Thanks for this insight. I totally appreciate these clarifications and look forward to reading another of your books.

Rauli · Post by **Rauli** » 11 Jun 2020, 18:09

That is super interesting! I never considered how different a story could be told if the book is written based on the possibility of it being turned into a movie. I always thought it was the other way around. How can I turn this book into a movie ? Sort of deal, amazing!

jhunt · Post by **jhunt** » 12 Jun 2020, 11:37

Thank you for taking the time to address this! It makes so much sense now how you got to the creation of Project Tau. Hopefully, a second book is in the works!

topdan30 · Post by **topdan30** » 12 Jun 2020, 17:45

I am yet to read this book but base on the review i have read. will sure give it a try.

Jude Austin · Post by **Jude Austin** » 12 Jun 2020, 19:40

jhunt wrote: ↑12 Jun 2020, 11:37 Thank you for taking the time to address this! It makes so much sense now how you got to the creation of Project Tau. Hopefully, a second book is in the works!

Thank you

And as you can see from this post the second book was published a while back

Yasmira_M · Post by **Yasmira_M** » 14 Jun 2020, 04:56

You have created such an incredible book and I hope you keep getting inspired to create others as good.

VivianLove · Post by **VivianLove** » 14 Jun 2020, 21:11

I appreciate this detailed explanation and your book! I was hooked from the first page! Looking forward to reading the second book

Adanna Inya · Post by **Adanna Inya** » 17 Jun 2020, 17:27

And you did a fantastic job of it. I lobe how the story didn't sound so over the top with weird planets and names. You should buy your former agent a box of pepperoni pizza. She stressed out of you, a masterpiece.

Jude Austin · Post by **Jude Austin** » 17 Jun 2020, 20:45

Adanna Inya wrote: ↑17 Jun 2020, 17:27 And you did a fantastic job of it. I lobe how the story didn't sound so over the top with weird planets and names. You should buy your former agent a box of pepperoni pizza. She stressed out of you, a masterpiece.

Thank you so much

Although the original version was far from a masterpiece; it's been worked on and improved a lot since then (the latest edition went live yesterday, and barring minor edits and corrections of any errors that come up, is probably the final edition

) There are some more planets in the sequel, but hopefully not so many that they overwhelm the reader. There are only six worlds capable of sustaining life in this book's universe, and one of those isn't even officially settled

Funnily enough, Project Tau was very nearly lost for good. I'd been with that agent about three years, and she'd yet to make any sales (I like to think I'm wiser now about what makes a good agent!) and I found out quite by accident that her approach to publishers was so unprofessional that a lot of them had actually blacklisted her

So I basically wrote her a polite email thanking her for all the efforts she'd put into trying to place the five novels of mine she had, but saying that she hadn't had any success, so I was going to try my luck elsewhere.

Thirty minutes later, I was collecting all my novels, synopses etc for another shot, when I realized that, for some reason, I didn't have a copy of Project Tau. So I had to send my agent another email saying, "Um, hi. Me again. I know I just fired you, but I don't have a copy of Tau, so can you please send me yours?" Luckily for me, she saw the funny side and sent it over straightaway

sasha_muses · Post by **sasha_muses** » 27 Jun 2020, 22:52

Wow, I never thought that a literary agent would think in that aspect, but that totally makes sense. I'm glad you fired them and got to do your own thing