Troy Stieglitz makes his debut in Futures this week, with the touching tale of Melissa. By day, Troy is an environmental chemist, but he kindly took some out to explain the origins of his latest story — as ever, it pays to read the tale first.

Writing Melissa

A recent article on time dilation had me thinking: what if interstellar travel was commonplace? Of course there would be implications regarding relativity, but how would that affect the lives of a crew aboard a starship? A few months’ ‘ship time’ could mean that years had passed on Earth. The world that the crew returned to would be very different from the world that the crew had left.

The science of time dilation and space travel were not explicitly discussed in the story, but the story would have been impossible without these two concepts in the background. The plot passed my litmus test for proper science fiction: if the science were removed from the story, could the story still exist?

My goal when writing Melissa was to explore the aspects of a character’s life that are usually behind the scenes in other science-fiction stories. For example, the protagonist is the captain of a military starship, but the adventures associated with that profession are not the focus of the story. The true focus is on what the captain leaves behind each time he departs from Earth.

I considered how time dilation might affect the captain’s relationships. Would his loved ones resent his absence from their lives, or would they respect the sacrifice he’s making for the good of the planet?

An internal battle between the captain’s feelings of regret and his sense of stoic duty creates the story’s tension and conflict. He realizes that he has a responsibility to his family, but he also has a responsibility to protect the citizens of Earth. How Captain Carter Harrison has chosen to balance these responsibilities has brought him to what could be his final reunion with Melissa.