A New Title for Music Of The Stars

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled on an idea for a new title to my solitary Science Fiction book.  It had been titled Music of the Stars, which was so non-descriptive it might as well have been Song of the Nightingale.
The new title is:  Music of the Galactic Voyager, which is a little better, but not enormously better.  Here’s the cover:

It hasn’t been changed very much; I’m not as energetic about window-dressing as I used to be!
The story is about actual space travel, as a phenomenon in its own right, and not as a setting for more well, exciting might be the word we want here, adventures.  It is going to take off like a lead balloon in conventional Sci-Fi circles among conventional Sci-Fi readers.  In that genre, I must say, love, and family, and relationships and things that some sorts of people consider mushy are sidelined, so that the politics and the mechanics and other science-fiction-type aspects can come to the forefront.  As for me, romance, and art, and play and curiosity trump all those other things.  One of my favorite fantasy writers is Marion Zimmer Bradley, and her stories are full of the kinds of things that I value highly.  I have read many of her books, if not all, and I love them.  But this story of mine is probably going to be classified as hard science fiction, because the fantasy element is practically absent, and I think that’s the most appropriate description of the story.  Only one person has bought the book, which costs all of two dollars and fifty cents, and I’m only restraining myself from giving it away free because it would be a slap in the face of that noble buyer.

In the story, they discover a planet, which the majority of the Ship leadership think is not suitable for colonization.  But there is a stubborn minority who insists on staying on the planet, which puts serious constraints on the resources of the Voyager.  I finished the story a couple of years ago, only to find, on reading it over, that it had been left in a very unsatisfactory state.  (Okay, yes; I’m rotten to the core, so shoot me.)  I am determined to write what amounts to a new last chapter, which will leave things in a lot better shape, if not perfect shape.  And I will make it free for the one person who has bought the book.  That will take some quite fancy footwork.

Kay H. B.