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Fleet Quintet #4
Commences
Although COMMENCES is the fourth novel in The Fleet Quintet, it can be read FIRST.
Billions of years ago, before the artificial universe, there was the Fleet.
Fleet personnel number 50, or Dett, sees a spacial dissociation in Fleet space and realises the control sector is broken.
She interacts violently with Fleet personnel 410, a Magician and time strategist who has been running a continuous cast for aeons. Trapped in a time loop, they fall in love before being torn apart in the cast’s multi-dimensional war.
Dett begins a search that forces her from Fleet space into the artificial universe. A bloody encounter with Fleet personnel 2 takes her onto different planes of reality, from her primary attractor to Garanthal, a planet plagued with alternate timelines. 2 never fights back but he has also had a revelation that goes beyond Fleet space. Driven insane by a crucifixion tree, 2 wants 410 as a time engineer to unify the primary attractors, so beginning a new Fleet.
But the Fleet are in complete disarray. All the rules have been broken. The remaining Founders reconvene the Fleet only to witness an irretrievable split.
The fourth novel in The Fleet Quintet, COMMENCES begins where the old Fleet ends: a surreal trip from a stone angel in a ruined garden to the angel Archturan whose ambitions for the Fleet are the most dangerous of all.
Billions of years ago, before the artificial universe, there was the Fleet.
Fleet personnel number 50, or Dett, sees a spacial dissociation in Fleet space and realises the control sector is broken.
She interacts violently with Fleet personnel 410, a Magician and time strategist who has been running a continuous cast for aeons. Trapped in a time loop, they fall in love before being torn apart in the cast’s multi-dimensional war.
Dett begins a search that forces her from Fleet space into the artificial universe. A bloody encounter with Fleet personnel 2 takes her onto different planes of reality, from her primary attractor to Garanthal, a planet plagued with alternate timelines. 2 never fights back but he has also had a revelation that goes beyond Fleet space. Driven insane by a crucifixion tree, 2 wants 410 as a time engineer to unify the primary attractors, so beginning a new Fleet.
But the Fleet are in complete disarray. All the rules have been broken. The remaining Founders reconvene the Fleet only to witness an irretrievable split.
The fourth novel in The Fleet Quintet, COMMENCES begins where the old Fleet ends: a surreal trip from a stone angel in a ruined garden to the angel Archturan whose ambitions for the Fleet are the most dangerous of all.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 20, 2017
6 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
About the author
Susannah J. Bell
25 books28 followersSusannah J. Bell is a writer of science fiction and other strange and surreal works. She was born in London but grew up in South Africa, escaping when she was twenty to be a writer. Not able to find much success in London, she dreamed of living in other parts of the world: the Scottish Highlands, New York, Mars, but never got much further than travel guides. Nowadays, she would like to live in a tower in a forest and dreams of travelling to the fantastical worlds of her imagination. Her writing has taken her from the familiar landscapes of Mars and Io and Titan, to worlds far beyond ours, even to the edge of the galaxy. She has explored other dimensions, realms, and space beyond. Within her writing, she explores different styles, voices and concepts, always returning to the theme that fascinates her the most: immortality. She has published several series such as The Fleet Quintet and The Exodus Sequence, and is working on a new series of novels, as well as a large literary work, more Exodus Sequence stories, and biographical short stories. She hopes one day to complete the fifth Fleet novel. She loves the sound of falling water, is passionate about trees, and is happiest when writing. She still lives in London.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 1, 2018
The Birth of the Fleet Quintet
The Fleet Quintet began originally with Commences, at that time a novella. My intention was to write something about the beginning of the universe – but not the physical universe: the universe of beings or entities or spirits, people who looked like people but didn’t have bodies of flesh. Non-corporeal entities have always intrigued me more than any other.
I wanted to fill Commences with impossible magic, most of which proved to be so impossible that I couldn’t find the words to describe it. The result was a gloriously incomprehensible mess.
I followed this with a short story, Access Denied, about a mindwalker called Gomenzi. Once I discovered that this ultra-cool spy turned out to be an ex-Fleet being and that Fleet space was called space alternate – or alter-space – the first whisper of the Fleet novels was born. A very short story called Baby Doll wrapped up Gomenzi – permanently, it seemed.
Another novella followed, Flesh for Sale, and suddenly the entire Fleet Quintet appeared in front of my eyes: I had the titles for all five novels, though not necessarily the stories. At that time I had no idea what the fifth one was to be about, only the terrible depravity it was to contain.
The Fleet Quintet became my Great Work: it was something I was going to write one day when I was a real writer. One day when I had enough confidence as a writer to pull it off. One day when I was more mature. I had no idea when that day was going to be or what it would entail for me to get there, but when the day finally arrived, I wasn’t expecting it.
By that time, I had dropped writing altogether, started a degree, had a baby, followed by my Eureka moment, then started writing screenplays. I developed Access Denied into a screenplay that absolutely didn’t work – the story was enormous. The characters had vast back stories. And the story was sucking me in to a vast black space called alter-space and there was no escaping. The time had come. It was time to turn novellas and short stories into a five-novel series. My Quintet was ready to be born –
... something of a stillbirth, it transpired, as my first attempt at turning Commences into a novel was a dismal failure. But with Access Denied already developed, it proved to be wonderfully easy to get going with Gomenzi and Nigel and the far-off distant Fleet. I worked on Flesh for Sale in the same way: I developed it as a screenplay and turned it into a novel that proved to be my best ever. I was on my way. The Fleet Quintet was in full throttle.
Without taking breath, I continued with the fourth, V. Gomenzi. An intensely dense novel that covered the impossible time frame of the first three, this novel took me twice as long as the others and by the time I was done, I was running on empty.
Realising by that time the weakness of Commences, it got a full rewrite and the writing came from the bottom of a bottomless pit. I was half-dead with exhaustion from V. Gomenzi and with my mother dying in the middle of it, it became the most gruelling task I have ever undertaken. I also managed to have a veritable personality change just before the editing process – resulting in a novel more brutal than I could ever have hoped for..
But it was still too weird and after much consideration, I decided to make it the fourth Fleet novel as its tone followed more aptly that of V. Gomenzi.
The last Fleet novel remains – to date – unwritten but the story has become clear. I know exactly what it’s about, which is a lot more than I knew in the late nineties when it all began.
Uncovering the complex plot of the Fleet Quintet has been like having tiny sections of a vast painting revealed to me because to see it all, all at once, would have been terrifying. And it’s as if the painting was already done when I first began to uncover it, the story was already told: I just had to find a way to release it from the darkness into novels that people could actually read.
The Fleet Quintet began originally with Commences, at that time a novella. My intention was to write something about the beginning of the universe – but not the physical universe: the universe of beings or entities or spirits, people who looked like people but didn’t have bodies of flesh. Non-corporeal entities have always intrigued me more than any other.
I wanted to fill Commences with impossible magic, most of which proved to be so impossible that I couldn’t find the words to describe it. The result was a gloriously incomprehensible mess.
I followed this with a short story, Access Denied, about a mindwalker called Gomenzi. Once I discovered that this ultra-cool spy turned out to be an ex-Fleet being and that Fleet space was called space alternate – or alter-space – the first whisper of the Fleet novels was born. A very short story called Baby Doll wrapped up Gomenzi – permanently, it seemed.
Another novella followed, Flesh for Sale, and suddenly the entire Fleet Quintet appeared in front of my eyes: I had the titles for all five novels, though not necessarily the stories. At that time I had no idea what the fifth one was to be about, only the terrible depravity it was to contain.
The Fleet Quintet became my Great Work: it was something I was going to write one day when I was a real writer. One day when I had enough confidence as a writer to pull it off. One day when I was more mature. I had no idea when that day was going to be or what it would entail for me to get there, but when the day finally arrived, I wasn’t expecting it.
By that time, I had dropped writing altogether, started a degree, had a baby, followed by my Eureka moment, then started writing screenplays. I developed Access Denied into a screenplay that absolutely didn’t work – the story was enormous. The characters had vast back stories. And the story was sucking me in to a vast black space called alter-space and there was no escaping. The time had come. It was time to turn novellas and short stories into a five-novel series. My Quintet was ready to be born –
... something of a stillbirth, it transpired, as my first attempt at turning Commences into a novel was a dismal failure. But with Access Denied already developed, it proved to be wonderfully easy to get going with Gomenzi and Nigel and the far-off distant Fleet. I worked on Flesh for Sale in the same way: I developed it as a screenplay and turned it into a novel that proved to be my best ever. I was on my way. The Fleet Quintet was in full throttle.
Without taking breath, I continued with the fourth, V. Gomenzi. An intensely dense novel that covered the impossible time frame of the first three, this novel took me twice as long as the others and by the time I was done, I was running on empty.
Realising by that time the weakness of Commences, it got a full rewrite and the writing came from the bottom of a bottomless pit. I was half-dead with exhaustion from V. Gomenzi and with my mother dying in the middle of it, it became the most gruelling task I have ever undertaken. I also managed to have a veritable personality change just before the editing process – resulting in a novel more brutal than I could ever have hoped for..
But it was still too weird and after much consideration, I decided to make it the fourth Fleet novel as its tone followed more aptly that of V. Gomenzi.
The last Fleet novel remains – to date – unwritten but the story has become clear. I know exactly what it’s about, which is a lot more than I knew in the late nineties when it all began.
Uncovering the complex plot of the Fleet Quintet has been like having tiny sections of a vast painting revealed to me because to see it all, all at once, would have been terrifying. And it’s as if the painting was already done when I first began to uncover it, the story was already told: I just had to find a way to release it from the darkness into novels that people could actually read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review