At The Bright Empire....

brantley wrote: www.brightempire.com/Heart.pdf

Heart of Darkness was begun by Shadar in 1995. It was one of a number of the stories from his Sharon Best days, including Little Firebug and Dark Supergirl – both now archived here at Superwomenmania -- that defined what is now often called Aurora Universe 2.
But Heart of Darkness was the only one to be continued after I came along. I had begun collaborating with him in early 2003 on completing the story, but that effort was aborted after our update had appeared that March – just before Sharon Best took his vacation, returning as Shadar a few months later.
Off and on since then, I’ve made edits and additions on and off the boards to the 2003 text, with Tarot Barnes also taking part. Some changes have to do making Avalon National Laboratory part of the structure of the Army weapons research system, others with strengthening the backstory. I came up with Engelbrecht, as a malevolent counterpart to Jim Caultron; and Klimenko as a decent man who could come to the aid of Allan and Keith plus an enhanced account of Vickers and the Arion Prime Alya. It was Tarot who figured out how Karalyn should be revived.
It’s been over 20 years since the original conception, and 13 years since the last version at the old Velorian.org site, to which Shadar has recently made substantial edits relating to Caultron’s character in the first part of the story. But there may still be readers out there who long to revisit the AU2 of yesteryear. This version of Heart of Darkness is for them.
-- Brantley Thompson Elkins

brantley wrote: Of course, I can't come close to the poetic power* of Cordwainer Smith, but I can try to put an imaginary history together the way he did.

--Brantley

* one example from his novel Norstrilia:

<<“It was not the site of the earth which surprised him – it was the smell. .... This earth and air smelled alive. There was the odor of plants, of water, of things which he could not even guess. The air was coded with a million years of memory. In this air people had swum to manhood, before they conquered the stars. .... It was the wild free moisture which came laden with the indications of things living, dying, sprawling, squirming, loving with an abundance which no Norstrilian could understand. No wonder the descriptions of the earth had always seemed fierce and exaggerated!>>