Tucson, Arizona / October 2025

Hey, Cosmic Ramblers, I’m Dr. Tom Shepherd (not medical), the sci-fi author who writes the Star Lawyers series. [“Arrested on an alien world — who you gonna call?”] I’ve been writing this Cosmic Ramblings blog for my newsletter, and I’d like to invite you aboard for the ride.

This week, let’s talk about world-building. We’ll tiptoe along the boundary of cosmology and fiction to consider a surprising fact of your existence, i.e., that you exist at all.

It’s not natural. you know… the Universe, with billions of galaxies, each filled with billions of stars and planets. Life in its grand diversity — including self-aware creatures like you and me — cannot be easily explained. The most “natural” state would be dark, primordial nothingness of an empty Cosmos.

But here we are. And since you’re reading these words, we can say with 100% probability that intelligent life exists in the Universe. Based on the sheer numbers of worlds out there, a lot of people find the likelihood of intelligent life beyond Earth as close to 100% as probability gets.

Now, here’s where it gets cool and metaphysical. Where did intelligent consciousness come from? Some say God, or an Olympian arrangement of eternals, or the force of Nature. Whatever you call that motivating source, it had to be intelligent consciousness, because the part can contain no property not present in the whole. (If you see a mouse, there are mice in the evolutionary options of the Cosmos.)

This is wandering too close to religion, which was not my intent but might be inevitable when considering world-building. People look at the landscape of life, find it a mystery, and create a backstory for daily reality. The story evolves as science fixes the details.

In my sci-fi novels, the struggle to survive, thrive and drive forward often causes characters to reflect on this mystery of life. They may be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or atheists — the great questions reappear in whatever culture or era where humanity looks to the stars with wonder about the meaning of it all.

As a sci-fi author, one of my ongoing challenges is world-building. For me, that involves creating the richness of a living society with its unique customs and traditions, foods and holidays, local and regional politics, and their major religions. Considering the diversity present on the only planet we know to harbor intelligent life, crafting a whole new biosphere is both a staggering problem and an extraordinary opportunity to build a world. Let there be light… and a little dark for conflict and adventure.

I look forward to exploring new worlds with my readers. Let the journey continue.

Tom Shepherd / Oct 2025