The Milky Way is dying. Intergalactic civilization rose and fell 10,000 years ago. Greedy imperialist factions trade savage blows to control the impoverished, drug- and disease-ridden planetary systems left behind by ten millennia of chaos.
There is one sign of hope for a galaxy on its last wings: the Whales. Whales are ancient technology, the lone remnants of the intergalactic civilization. Criminals, soldiers and outcasts form ramshackle crews that chase after the Whales, capture them and disembowel them, revealing anything from crude oil to medical panaceas to weaponized atom-splitters—forgotten technology from the distant past. And there is a prophecy that within one of these Whales lies a secret with the power to revive intergalactic civilization. That whale is Mobius…
In discussing his motivation for writing the screenplay for the 1956 John Huston film adaptation of Moby Dick, Ray Bradbury said, “Moby-Dick is the most American novel that has ever been written… Blasphemy—that’s what we are. We’re a blasphemous people. We have always been… Our technologies, our sciences, our medicines… We fear death. We make people live to be older. This is all blasphemous. Ahab is really the instructor of our blasphemy.”
Bradbury argues that the ‘Americanness’ of Moby-Dick is its blasphemy, its profanity towards God—and therefore that blasphemy is an especially American quality. He locates the blasphemy of America in its scientific and technological achievements. Bradbury is positioning Moby-Dick in an America defined by its burgeoning technology (including the technology of nuclear annihilation) just as much as America in the 19th century was defined by its rapid imperialist expansion.
My conclusion is that no setting could be better for the 21st century American to experience Moby-Dick than in the distant future, in outer space.
If Ahab’s blasphemy remains one key to the text of Moby-Dick, what greater blasphemy is there than the relentless pursuit of capitalist, imperialist, and technological expansion beyond our earthly realm? In ages long gone by in my adaptation, MOBIUS, Earth’s galactic conquest over the Milky-Way as well as distant galaxies has risen and fallen in man’s greatest overreach yet.
Moby-Dick is often heralded as one of the great novels of all-time, but it takes basically a literary scholar to read and fully understand it. Well, I’m no professional literary scholar, but I studied the book and Herman Mellville pretty damn closely. I’d like to present the genius and timelessness of Moby-Dickto you in sci-fi form.
Prepare for this adventure to gradually unfold. Not just over days, but over weeks, months, and possibly years. This is an adventure so grand and ambitious that the world–and me, the author–may not be ready for it.
But I need to give it a try. On this blog. Here and now.
I like to describe it as Star Wars meets Fullmetal Alchemist meets Moby-Dick. The story is based on the events of Moby-Dick chapter by chapter, but extrapolated on to a grand scale. Once a month I will post a blog post extrapolating on the themes of Moby-Dick the novel and how they resulted in Mobius the sci-fi adventure. I will be posting just about a single page a day. Perhaps even less.
What are whales? What does Moby-Dick look like in outer space? What are the ships and the crews? Where is America and what is the deep blue sea? All of this you will find out in due-time. Bare with me as this adventure unfurls.
I need to move slow enough to allow the creative process to catch up to the ambitious creative product, and purposefully enough to let the characters develop and shine through. I hope you stay with me on this journey into the blackest, brightest, most distant regions of space and time!
over the offing 
Will be following every exciting creative adventure. Great writing!
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Bring on Mobius! 🙂 I’m in for the ride!
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I’m hooked already….
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