The Origins of Stasis

Origins of Stasis:

Novel By: Kelly Steed (with input from co-author Colleen Elliott)

Colleen and I grew up together and often talked about writing as a team. We’re lifelong science fiction fans so it was natural for us to choose that genre. We envisioned doing a series of space opera novels; but series take a great deal of planning and research. We needed something shorter to really cut our teeth on so we decided we’d do a short story first. Our aim was to enter it in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. During Harlan Ellison's commentary on Sci-Fi Buzz, he made some derogatory statements about space operas, which made me want to try something more along the lines of classical science fiction. Though neither Colleen nor I were very versed in this area I saw it as a challenge to be we should meet head-on. The only problem was neither of us had any story ideas.

One evening, I watched a documentary on cryonics, the freezing of a deceased person in liquid nitrogen for later revival once the technology has reached a level where corrective procedures can be undertaken to restore life to damaged tissues. I was intrigued so I stayed up to watch the rerun of the program so I could take some basic notes. Then I did some brainstorming. The theory behind cryonics supposes that the souls of the people who have paid for cryonic freezing hang around in some sort of limbo until their bodies are resuscitated. It got me thinking about cryonics in relationship to reincarnation and I began to ask myself a series of questions: What if that person’s soul was no longer available? What if they passed all the way over to Heaven or Nirvana or had been reincarnated into another body? Here’s this empty physical shell that’s been restored to perfect health, what might be in a position to take advantage of it? Should mortal man tamper with the natural progression of life and death, and what could result from such tampering if it is allowed to continue? I called Colleen and discussed it with her. She hopped on board and bam Stasis was born.

The first priority was research. We simply didn’t know enough about cryonics. Colleen searched her encyclopedias and came up with a lot of information on cryogenics; the industrial application of freezing in liquid nitrogen. Some of it was useful. I searched the Guide to Periodical Literature at the local library and came up with some vague cryonics information. We knew in order to make the story complete the reader would have to know in detail how the freezing, storage and revival were accomplished. Glossing over it would have been a cop out. So while we were stymied for the hard science part of the story, we continued to forge ahead and concentrate on character and plot development. We hoped to be able to get the scientific and medical information to fill out the plot later.

About mid-project, I was able to get a computer, which gave me the access I needed to obtain reference resources. I had been involved in doing historical research since I was thirteen and majored in history in college, so I had the research experience and took on most of that part of the project. To be honest, I struggled with the technical information at first. I had to make the scientific and medical portions accessible to me as well as the reader. Before I could write anything I had to look up all the terms both medical and technical to be sure I understood it, so you can imagine, I had pages and pages of notes. I also looked into forensic medicine to get a good grasp of what happens to a body after death because cryonicists have to halt the decaying process, a process which goes very quick. I also poured over a medical encyclopedia. After I had that section flushed out, Colleen and I got together and read through it.

Work on Stasis as a duo was sporadic at best because we live about 40 miles apart so scheduling time together was a problem as were high phone bills. I sent Colleen a lot of my stuff via snail mail. She would come to my apartment and spend weekends, and when her dad went out of town and she housesat, I'd go there for a week. We'd each chose parts to work on individually and then when we got together we'd read through the entire manuscript and edit the pieces so that they fit in with what we already had written. My husband was on hand for many of these sessions. It really helped to have a removed third party’s opinion. After the read through, we'd decide what areas still needed to be explored and choose sections to work on for next time. I set up work sheets back when I had a word processor that we used to record what needed to be done for each chapter. They were invaluable!

We subsequently discovered that Stasis’s story was too broad in scope for a short story so we decided to go for novella length, as we’d still fit within the guidelines for the Writer’s of the Future Contest. Later it became increasingly clear that novella length was too constraining to tell this story so we decided to forgo the contest and write a novel.

During this time, I had also been working on other writing projects and was getting many rejection letters. One in particular was very nasty. As a result, I experienced some serious writer insecurity and wondered if we were on the right track. Colleen felt we had a good story and wasn’t really worried about it. I entered Stasis in the First Page Contest sponsored by G. E. Pierce Communications in 1997. Stasis wasn’t completed yet. I suppose I needed to know if it was worth completing or not. The judges evaluate the first page of a novel for its hook and premise. We took second place. That was all the incentive I needed. It took us five years to write Stasis, but in the end, it was worth it.