The Galaxii Series – What’s It About?

Hello, friends and fans!

I thought I’d tell you more about my Galaxii Series. What’s it all about – and why’s it spelled funny?

First of all, Galaxii is an epic futuristic saga that relates the struggles and adventures of diverse characters, each realistically portrayed with their own unique interests, circumstances, and each has their own challenges and obstacles to overcome: career-minded Space Fleet officers, solo adventurers and rogues, and Corsairs – the space pirates who made the space-lanes perilous to travel in their pursuit of autonomy, wealth and notoriety. The good guys aren’t always what they seem, and neither are the villains.

Galaxii is what is today called “space opera” and is basically a good-old-fashioned sci-fi adventure! At the moment, there arefour books in the series. If you enjoy reading them and want more, don’t despair – the next book is already under construction!

Also available as audiobooks!

I first started working on the story that would eventually become “Blachart”, in about 1986, though it was then titled “The Red Star”. It was later redrafted to become “Galaxy” by sometime in 1987, and again to become “Galaxii” in 1990 – and the reason why I did this was because I thought it looked unique and way cooler – so there you have it! Prove me wrong? Anyway, in the end, this redraft became the basis for all the various stories and characters in the Galaxii Series as it is today.

Here’s a little nugget of info for you – part of the overall story of the series that was completed long after the first book (Blachart) was published, became “Best Served Cold“, which was published as a standalone prequel to the series. It is set many years before Blachart.

I set Galaxii�in the not too distant future – at a time when Earth has risen to become the unified seat of a largely peaceful and prosperous stellar Terran Empire. The series relates the struggles and adventures of some of my favorite characters, each with their own unique interests and obstacles to overcome: career-minded Space Fleet officers, solo adventurers and rogues, Corsairs – space pirates who in their pursuit of wealth and fame, turned the less-traveled space lanes into perilous journeys – and aliens of all persuasions.

To give you an idea, when I started writing Galaxii, mobile phones were still science fiction and seemed a bit like something out of Star Trek when they first came onto the scene back in the early 1990’s! The first time I even saw one in real life was in 1994, and it suddenly caused me to put everything I’d already written under scrutiny! As time went by, the less specific I was about the actual dates in my series timeline! Let me briefly explain why:

Back in 1990, I’d originally set the date for World War 3 in the original first book (which later became “Best Served Cold”) at 2020! (Imagine my surprise when fiction very nearly became fact just 3 days into 2020!) Looking back, I think it was wise to edit all those references to exact dates out during subsequent rewrites and revisions of the books that came after that – I mean, what good would it do for my readers to read about a future war that never took place …last month? Suffice it to say, I set the earlier stories ‘sometime in the 21st century’, so I’ll leave it at that!

Galaxii is and was always intended to be home to my more serious, darker stories, and I feel the titles in it today represent that original intent well. Underlying topics or themes addressed in each of them – including second chances, mercy vs cruelty, and crime and punishment fit this vision well. For the most part, the general antagonists in Galaxii are the Corsairs, space pirates who are descendants of people who fled Earth generations previously, shortly after the nuclear devastation of the Third World War.

The primary locations for the Galaxii titles is aboard various starships – the Antares, the Mordrake, or the Munray, depending on which set set of characters features in a particular story. In this future time, the sphere of influence of the people of Earth is pretty damn big – and it’s called the Terran Empire, with the outermost expanse of territories on the fringes of claimed space referred to as ‘the Outblack’.

As a point of interest, I based my later series (Quantum, Panic! Horror In Space, and Threaders) in the same universe, but at different time-periods and also the character sets do not interact with each other, so there’s no pollution of their storylines or conflicts about who the main characters are and other messy stuff that results from that sort of thing!�

If you’re interested, you can check out the two guide books below that give more detail (and diagrams!) of the ships and tech you’ll see described in Galaxii. You can also find (and enjoy) the books of the series by clicking on the buttons below as well!

The series was received pretty well I think, and it’s been available in various forms since 2006 (and with tons of gradually improved covers over the years). The first three books have been turned into audiobooks, narrated by Nigel Peever and Edmund Bloxam.