Andreas asked Ryk E. Spoor:

I just read Skyspark and found it a great addition to the Boundary Universe. I found it intriguing how the underwater society depicted bore some superficial similarities to the one in James Cambias's "A Darkling Sea", especially when it came to the vocabulary of the inhabitants. Were you inspired by that book? How did you come up with the mechanics of the society?

Ryk E. Spoor No, I actually had not heard of that particular story until you mentioned it.

When I was writing _Portal_ and had decided that the real climax of the book would be meeting re-evolved Bemmies, I had to work out a lot of details so I knew what these people were like. My general attitude is that while aliens are going to be *physically* alien, they will be comprehensible to us and, often, very much like us mentally.

I wanted them to have metal tools, but the major limitation of an underwater society is that they can't have fire. I toyed with the idea of there being air-filled caves scattered around the bottom, but I couldn't figure out a good way to justify it; even with Europa's low gravity, a hundred kilometers of water exerts a *lot* of pressure.

But then I remembered that the original Bemmies were masters of genetic manipulation, and the reason for there being advanced life *on* Europa was that they had designed and introduced that life so that they could colonize Europa. They would have been aware of the no-fire problem, and would have wanted to address any problems ahead of time.

So... could there be a biological solution?

Sure enough, I found that there were indeed plants and animals that concentrated metals, and titanium in particular, which was ideal as a material for use under salty water. Thus I could justify an engineered strain of plant that concentrated metal to useful levels, and have the new-Bemmies be able to breed those plants to improve or change the resulting shapes.

There was no photosynthesis going to be happening under kilometers of ice, so all life was going to have to get energy from some other source; I figured that would be "black smokers" as in our deep oceans, which are at similar equivalent depths given the variation in gravity. Jupiter's tidal forces allowed an explanation for active geology in such a small body, so I felt fairly comfortable with that concept.

This meant that concentrations of such vents would be good areas for Bemmies to live -- high concentration of nutrients, lots of other creatures living there. Vent areas, then, become something like good farming areas, while the farther from the vent and higher above the ground you go the more desolate and/or dangerous things can become.

Physically, I justified the fact that they retained eyes because bioluminescence was an important marker and useful for living in a world that was mostly dark but had key luminescent factors, but they would have other senses, the most important being a "skinsense" which is based on the lateral line of fish and ampullae of Lorenzini in sharks -- it senses electromagnetic phenomena with extraordinary sensitivity, amounting to something which can sense the activity of life at distance. They would also have sonar, both passive and active, to allow them to navigate even in completely black unknown areas.

I wanted them to be primitive enough that they would encounter us carrying spears, and I based their general behavior around the concept of a tribe or pod-sized organization.

But I also wanted it clear that these were RATIONAL creatures. Their environment severely constrains their technological development, but they would not be uneducated savages at their core. They might have a religion, but it would not dominate their existence, and an intelligent member of their group would be able to step beyond religion and see the truth of the event.

With those thoughts it became pretty easy to write "Skyspark".

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