I read an article about an island in New York that is owned entirely by a single family (including a distant First Lady). Being a science fiction writer, I transmogrified it into a tiny planet with a black hole in the middle …
… which pulls in ancient aliens who could build things with black holes in the middle. Which sent me looking for other things they could build — like O’Neill cylinders and hollow asteroids.
And then I saw an opportunity to cast the Coast Guard as the Space Patrol — the homely little brother of the Space Corps (the Navy). A semi-retired admiral popped up and a young ship captain (who has since been displaced by his femme warrior executive officer).
Throw in the aliens engineered to maintain the ancient alien space drives and some robots to keep things up to date. And turn it dark with a robot rebellion 50 years back … and the rebellion failed.
Things pile up. Barnacles attach themselves to the spar, as C.S. Forester said. Characters start to speak up, intrigues arise, and before you know it, words will appear.
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