CO2: I DREAM THE WORLD

I dream the world. Each person, each creature each plant that inhabits it, from the shape of the coasts and the depths of the sea to the pattern of the stars in the sky, but it is transformed from a series of black pixels on a screen into frames that you can loose yourself in, as you clock the splendid details, by the skill of the artist. I have come to realise that the writing is secondary to the image in sequential art ( that's comics to us-Ed. Oh and by the way when are you going to stop pillaging Incredible String Band songs for titles?). Making the setting believable is the first step in this process, and this takes many hours of living in your head like a hermit.

This past fortnight I have been conducting a conversation concerning the motive power of the airships in CO2. I have to confess I had been anticipating this question. I had seen a line of development from the one person fliers of Dragon Empire that soundly defeated the slow, lumbering airships of The Church of The Holy Footprint in the Second Dragon War. Discovery of this new technology would have plunged The Church into both a practical and a theological dilemma. Practical because they had to develop countermeasures that would stop their airships from being shot out of the sky and theological because the engine was powered by a series of explosions and carbon dioxide was a waste product. I viewed the development of the bioethanol engine as heretical science that is adopted by The Church as a short term expedient measure that has never been rescinded because it is essential to their infrastructure.

So when David asked me what powered the airship I was able to reply Wankel engines ( look it up on Wikipedia-Ed). I was waiting for him then to ask me what powered the airships up to the end of the Second Dragon War. This had taken a little thought and what I had arrived at was that in 1830, Maple White, a Balancer in the Southern American Continent had found out on the pampas, a series of isolated valleys. Living in these valleys were the last Giant Sloths. The discovery of this untouched Eden led The Church to blockade the area to preserve the habitat.

Later, when adaptions of animals were seen by The Church as theologically acceptable, a search took place for an animal with the least mass and the most strength to power a theoretical super weapon-the airship. I am sure you are ahead of me, yes, the poor old Giant Sloth got the gig. And in the first of the Maplin Heresy Sequence you will see above the streets of Barcelona, the airship of The Head of The Church, powered by an adapted Giant Sloth. As I say it's the artist who are the real heroes, not us authors.