The Many Cabinets of Garak + The Unpimpable Planet Rasputin

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One of the best things about ‘Star Trek DS9’ was the side characters – Dukat, Kai Winn, Weyoun, Damar, Morn – and the King of Sideness was plain, simple Garak [who, according to Andrew Robinson, had sexual designs on Dr Bashir]. I wrote a de-con-struc about him last year so you can go and read that for a complete, muddled summary on my feelings towards him.

But what I really wanted to do was pimp the unpimpable, my absurdist [pataphysical], Anarchist-leaning sci-fi book, ‘Planet Rasputin’, and this is the first way that came into my head to do that.

Tbh, there’s no real relationship between Garak and ‘Planet Rasputin, at least none that I can remember [I haven’t looked at in over a year – finish a book, move on].

9 Slovenes + 1 Ghanaian on an ion-drive punishment ship to Mars. But not really Mars. The real destination is Luyten 726-8, a binary star system about 9 light years away from Sheffield. The ship AI is under strict orders to get them there. So, a journey into death and undeath and frazzled duration.

Actually, the Luyten 726-8 part is a twist about 150 pages in, but I think people see Mars and switch off so I’m just putting it here. Luyten 726-8 is much more exotic/exciting.

What else?

‘Planet Rasputin’ is by far the hardest book I’ve written, plot-wise and science-wise.
Yes, there is a plot, it’s not an experimental thing like ‘The Jar’ or ‘Perma Neon O.’
Things had to make some degree of sense.
The science makes no sense.
But as I’ve recently learnt from @hotwraithbones ‘s ‘X ( )-id </3’, this is pataphysics.
My physicist Chu and her prototype teleporter use just enough scientific terminology/wild theory to give you the feeling that it could work in the year 2114.

Other times it’s just a pseudo-scientific name given to a nonsense device that allows the characters to walk around the ship like they do in ‘Star Trek’.