The Azure Cove Assignment: Inspirations

My new novel, The Azure Cove Assignment is the start of a loose series of books where a learning community of scientists investigates threats where local events push the envelope from science to science fiction.

The inspirations for this came from a variety of sources.

The setting is a fictional town in Orange County, California, somewhere along the coast north of the San Diego County line. Ever since I watched Twin Peaks (way back when it first aired in 1990), I’ve wanted to create a fictional town where weird and also wonderful things happen. This fascination with such places grew as Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired, and I read Lovecraft and thought about Arkham and his other fictional towns. The editor who worked on the project said that it reminded him of Gravity Falls, but that had more to do with it being “a group of lovable misfits dealing with very out there concepts.” The more I think of it though Gravity Falls would certainly fit in with Twin Peaks and Buffy’s Sunnydale as a place where there are many plots with weird events occurring at all times.

One of the biggest influences was the TV Show Fringe. This show has a lot of what I was going for: it’s a group of interesting characters investigating science fiction events. The entire cast is likable and entertaining, and it has one of my all time favorite characters, Walter Bishop. It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that my character Dr. Sarah Huber is a gender swapped Dr. Walter Bishop. There are many other influences that went into writing her even in the first draft, and that’s before she really took on a character of her own. Legendary Physicist Richard Feynman I suspect was a big influence on Walter Bishop and was definitely an influence on my character. ) And Bishop was a biologist and chemist whereas Sarah is a theoretical physicist. I was watching Fringe again before I started this project and I thought about how much I like Bishop, then I thought about some of my other favorites, and I realized that they’re all highly competent characters with severe character flaws or bad behavior that while we’re not supposed to like it necessarily, it makes them more fun to watch or read.(I also drew from things I remember a Medieval History professor I had. Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses is another good example. When I’m reading those books there’s a particular laugh I have because Jackson Lamb has just done. But these characters are almost always men. Even when there’s a strong woman character, they’re either combat bad asses or borderline scolds. I wanted to write a woman scientist who was very competent but also gets to do some of the funny but frowned upon behavior that male characters would get away with easily.

One of the big differences from Fringe is the tone or mood. Fringe can be quite bleak. Some time ago I wondered if in some sort of inverse Man in the High Castle (the Philip K Dick story), we writers metafictioned this dystopia into existence. One of my goals with Azure Cove was to present solutions and to always show science and learning as part of that solution. I wanted to write something where the characters set an example for a way forward. Another big influence is Real Genius. I felt like the tone of Real Genius was great. The character’s are dealing with some weighty topics, but it’s still a comedy. The character’s endure some of the down side of working too hard, the weight that education sometimes misplaces upon grades and jobs, but they’re still interested in learning. I wanted Azure Cove to be funny and more importantly fun. I want the stories told there to be enjoyable to read and read again. Growing up Douglas Adams and later Terry Pratchett were huge influences on me because they could strike that tone, and although I think Azure Cove as more parts science fiction than comedy, there are parts that made me laugh reading it and I hope make the readers laugh just as much.

I mentioned Philip K Dick above, and he gets several mentions in the book. The main characters in this book are heavy readers and nerds, often reference the things that interest them, and the plot of this book has some reasons why referencing Dick’s work makes a lot of sense.

I’m sure there are more influences that I’m forgetting. These are the main ones. And that’s without getting into the new material for the next book!