I spoke to the writers behind the trippy new sci-fi novel ‘Detour’: ‘Things don’t need to be 100% correct, but they do have to be believable’

“I’ve been writing TV for about 25 years and was brainstorming high-concept ideas that could be a potential sci-fi show,” Rake tells Space.

“I was coming off ‘Manifest,’ a show I created that started on NBC and ended up on Netflix. That show wrapped up three years ago, and I was asking myself what’s next. I landed some broad strokes for ‘Detour’ and went in to talk to my agent.

“We pitched it out, and one of the agents said it felt sort of novelistic and asked what I thought about developing it as a book, then down the line, maybe adapting it for television. That was incredibly intimidating to me. I didn’t know how to write a book, so they ended up finding me a partner and sent me a bunch of books to read. I stopped reading after I got to Rob Hart’s ‘The Warehouse.'”

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Astronauts return from a trip to Titan in Random House Worlds’ “”Detour”(Image credit: Random House Worlds)Astronauts return from a trip to Titan in Random House Worlds’ “”Detour”(Image credit: Random House Worlds)

Being familiar with Rake’s “Manifest” series, Hart absorbed the initial “Detour” pitch and immediately knew he had to be the one to work on it.

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“The thing that Jeff is so good at, and the thing I love so much, is when you take a really big-swing, crazy sci-fi idea and then humanize it with really strong characters,” says Hart.

“But obviously the big question was were we going to be able to work together. I have plenty of talented friends who I’d never work with in a million years because I want to continue those friendships. I was emboldened by the fact that Jeff is a TV guy and TV is a very collaborative medium. We hopped on a Zoom and just hit it off, and we were on the same wavelength. I started riffing and hitting him with ideas for things we could do with the story, and he said, ‘This sounds awesome, let’s do it.’ From there, it was pretty much off to the races.”

A stunning NASA image of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Rake was particularly interested in coming up with another idea similar to “Manifest,” one that combined science fiction and grounded family drama, something centered around parents and children and all the things you might consider when talking about emotions and families.

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“This is near future, like 2030,” Hart adds. “I will say that if Neil deGrasse Tyson read this book, he would not be thrilled. I definitely took liberties in terms of the technology, but it’s a new kind of ion engine that’s roughly based on technologies we’re looking at now that would cut down the trip drastically. It was to drop a satellite in orbit around Titan to collect data about potential colonization.”

As to why they chose Titan as the crew’s destination?

“I’ve always been a geek about the fact that Mars kind of sucks in terms of colonizing for a bevy of reasons,” declares Rake. “Whereas Titan is more reasonable for establishing a colony. It was fun to play in that space of like, ‘Everybody always does Mars, let’s do something different.'”

Taking on the first book in a space odyssey series no doubt required a generous commitment of research time, looking into human spaceflight, astrophysics, and orbital mechanics to lend an air of authenticity to the project. Fortunately for Rake, he got paired with a true research nerd.

“Detour” authors Rob Hart (L) and Jeff Rake (R). (Image credit: Random House worlds)

“I’m a big fan of space travel stuff and recently rewatched ‘Interstellar,'” admits Hart. “They literally made new discoveries about black holes based on the research and special effects that movie did.”

“I didn’t necessarily do what Andy Weir does, where all the science in his book checks out; that’s insane. But I’ve got enough of a general understanding of the importance of artificial gravity in maintaining bone density for an astronaut while they’re in space […] I always live by this adage that things don’t need to be 100% correct, but they do have to be believable within the confines of the story.”

Reaching Titan is no mean feat, and getting the story off the ground required a plausible method of traveling to Saturn’s moon and back. “The thing that I was most excited about is I got to design a ship for deeper travel in our solar system,” explains Hart.

“I envisioned it as having turning wheels to create artificial gravity, and we hired an artist to do a rendering of the ship to put into the book, and that made me so unbelievably happy. I knew right off the bat I wanted there to be a diagram of the spaceship in the book.”

“Detour” is available via bookstores and online retailers now. You can read an exclusive excerpt below!

“THE CASE FOR TITAN” BY PADMA SINGH

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For decades, humanity has looked to Mars as our next stop in the solar system. Over the last several years, technology in ion propulsion drives has increased exponentially, shortening a potential trip from years to months. As such, politicians and the general public alike have been asking: when will we finally step foot on the Red Planet, made famous in these circles by scientists like Carl Sagan and writers like Ray Bradbury and Andy Weir?

But as the scientific community is widely aware, Mars is an inhospitable, barren desert. While we know the planet has ice, and therefore water, the effort of accessing that resource remains monumental. Not to mention the planet’s thin atmosphere, which would not protect humanity from cosmic radiation.

To survive, humans would need to wear shielded, pressurized suits. And to thrive, we would have to spend billions just on mining equipment, to dig up resources and construct underground habitats. We’re looking in the wrong place. We should instead be focusing about 400 million miles past Mars, to Saturn’s moon, Titan.

Titan is roughly half the size of Earth, and it’s so far out that a year on Titan would be roughly 29 years on Earth. But it has a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, 50 percent thicker than Earth’s. The surface may seem inhospitable: covered in ice as hard as granite and sand dunes made of plastics, with lakes of ethane and methane. The atmosphere is hazy, limiting visibility, and the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface is much smaller, creating a perpetual orange twilight.

But humans wouldn’t need pressurized suits; they’d only need temperature-controlled suits to combat the freezing temperatures. The atmosphere would provide ample protection from cosmic rays, meaning habitats could be built on the surface. Those plastic dunes could be used to construct surface-level habitats, and the ethane and methane lakes could power them. Because of the weaker gravity, a rocket launching from the surface of Titan would take far less fuel than it does on Earth—and fuel is already in ample supply there.

In order to settle a new world, we need accessible resources, and we need to protect the first humans to take that step. We can do both of those things on Titan. I believe, over time, smaller settlements can be linked together, and in the space of a few decades, we could have a thriving colony living and flourishing on Titan’s surface. Thanks to Horizons’ newly-developed ion thrust engines and Starblazer, the ship John Ward has been constructing in low-Earth orbit, we could be there in a year—as compared to seven under previously available technology.

In the following paper, I will make the case that Titan, not Mars, should be humanity’s focus as we look beyond Earth…

Reprinted from “Detour” by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart.