Revising the Oceana Class Starship

It's been called many things.

Monster, behemoth, leviathan.

The Oceana class starship featured prominently in Dark Horizon is big.

Really big.

Really, really...

Well, you get the idea.

Over the last nearly six years Dark Horizon has been online, I've often, sometimes with the most gentle of prodding, wondered if the Oceana class starship wasn't too big.

The past several months, this wondering has turned into thoughtful reconsideration. Finally, I have made the decision to reduce the size of the Oceana class.

Instead of more than a length of two kilometers, the ship will be about 1.2 kilometers. Instead of sixty some decks, it will have forty-five.

While this might seem a substantial difference, after looking over the various stories where the size of the ship was an issue, I came to realize it actually isn't. To my surprise, this change only required minor modification to a few stories, probably most of it you wouldn't notice in the course of reading.

Now for the positive side.

I think this reduction in size makes the ship more believable, and makes it fit more within the established size and designs of ships we've seen in the various shows and movies.

Not to worry, the ship is still plenty large. It still plays the role it was designed for--- to present the hubris and folly of the promise that bigger is always better, and of demonstrating where such thinking leads. As most of you know, the Oceana class has been a troubled ship class throughout Dark Horizon, and that has not changed.

The ship is still a monster.

But now, a more believable monster.

As this change required certain revisions, I decided to take the opportunity to make changes in some places where I felt improvement was necessary. I have also reworked the images in the earlier stories to match the aspect ratio of the later images, and to make improvements in some of them.

Most of the revisions have taken place in the first installment, "Forms Change." There are a couple of spots in that story which have troubled me for other reasons, so I made a few other minor alterations as well.

In the other installments, most of the changes involved things like deck numbers, and other details related to the size question, but there were some places where I felt I could improve the story by making a change in a word here and there.  In a small number of other places, I reworked entire scenes.  However, there wasn't any essential change in the narrative.  The characters and events remain as they have been.

I think these changes will make Dark Horizon not only a better site, but a better story.

If you have an opinion on this either positive or negative, please send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing what you think.

-Michael Gray

August 27, 2008