Dauntless

A few people have reminded me that Dauntless, the tentative name for the sixth Blood on the Stars book, is also the title of the start of Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. I’ve read many of the Lost Fleet books, and enjoyed them, but I hadn’t really thought about it when I named Captain Barron’s ship Dauntless.

I did borrow the name, as sort of a tribute, but the source was much older than the Lost Fleet books. Dauntless was also the name of several of Kimball Kinnison’s ships in “Doc” Smith’s classic Lensman series.  The Lensman books are old now, and enormously dated, both in writing style and in depictions of society, but they were hugely inspirational to me years ago, when I was nine or ten and first read these books.

For those of you who haven’t read the Lensman series, I can’t say whether you’ll be able to look past the dated nature of so much of it, but if you can, you’ll be amazed at the vast scope of it all, the sheer audacity of a six book series tackling several billion years, two super races, a desperate, multi-generational struggle to control not just one, but two galaxies.  For a kid just getting into science fiction (and this is back in the 70s), it was mind boggling in its scale.  I think my love of worldbuilding can trace its roots back, at least in part, to these books.

So, now you know why Dauntless is called Dauntless.  And you also know why the upcoming book six might get a slightly different name.