By Derek Schlennstedt
Healesville resident and freelance writer Peter Wood has taken his first foray into the world of published fiction after his book Attunga was published on 11 March 2017.
The tales of the Terran Diaspora portray events occurring in the 22nd century, 200 years in the future.
The book, ‘Attunga,’ Aboriginal for higher place, follows three protagonists, Wirrin, Thom and Calen and their adventures while living in a large great habitat floating in space near an asteroid belt.
But when Calen encounters a baby dolphin with special abilities, life on the great space habitat changes forever and he and his friends become involved in a conflict over domination of the solar system.
Peter takes his inspiration from Ray Kurzweil’s singularity, a non-fiction book that delves into artificial intelligence and the future of humanity.
Attunga, although being set in a futuristic world encompasses varying degrees of traditional Aboriginal names and values.
Peter said the book started as a short story but once he began writing it ended up being over 400 pages long.
“The tales originally started as a mind game about what the future might hold after reading singularity by Ray Kurzweil, who is a futurist.
“I started roughing out specifications for a self-contained space habitat with considerable living space and the technology needed to sustain it and then one night, from out of nowhere, came the idea of writing a short story to show what life on such a space city might be like,” said Mr Wood.
“And of course it went from being a short story to a big novel.”
The book took a year and half to write and Mr Wood has plans to write a prequel called ‘Mparntwe,’ which is set 100 years before ‘Attunga’.
You can buy the book at Peter’s website https://diasporatales.net/purchase/
