I have no doubt that first time readers of my series, Tales of the United Nations Off-World Legion, must puzzle at the thought of sternwheelers plying the Seleucus Lacus on Samsara. Of course they might, for the stories take place eighty-seven years in the future, over one hundred and fifty years after these vessels of fashionable yet practical conveyance fell out of use. So I have no doubt the reader must look slantendicular at the book, offer a chuckle at the thought of parts of a steamship being transferred through hyperspace jumpgates to a colony twenty light years away. But I digress.
One of my fondest recollections from childhood is being a chubby pink cherub enjoying the first of many summer days on the beach in Penticton, British Columbia, playing on the tired decks of the S. S. Sicamous. A sternwheeler of some fame, she is one of two of the old CPR lake steamers of repute ( the other is the S.S. Moyie in Kaslo) left in BC. In her day, the Sicamous was the queen of Okanagan Lake until the railways made her superfluous. She then sat unloved for years until she received a second chance as a beach attraction in Penticton. On those days where I played in foc'sle, imagined I was a pirate as my friends and I chased each other amongst the davits and hog posts, she was a restaurant of somewhat dubious repute. Given new life as a museum in the new millennium, she nears her hundredth birthday a refurbished and beautiful vessel surround by the steam tug Narramatta, and the diesel tug, CN Number Six. Every time I return home for a visit I make the pilgrimage to the site of so many great childhood memories. I walk the decks, run my fingers over the handrails worn smooth, enjoy the tactile sensations of cold steel, the modest smell of oil and old leather and close my eyes and remember the daydreams of childhood where I steered a sternwheeler of my own through the chop of a late summer breeze or the whirling squalls of snow in January. That lovely old ship was what inspired me to join the Royal Canadian Navy, and I therefore thank her every time I return home for the path she led me on. But I was inspired to employ sternwheelers again for another reason. To read about their use in the early days of BC and the Yukon was to read about the ultimate in practical tools. Easy to build - be they a simple raft or hull with a boiler and wheel like the recently discovered wreck of the A.J. Goddard to the stately lake and river palaces like the Sicamous, Bonnington, or Nasookin, these were vessels that could be built anywhere and sailed anywhere in almost any kind of weather and water condition.  And so, as I imagined my future colony, poor and spread out along the rough shores of the Seleucus Lacus, I wondered, could sternwheelers make another appearance? Built simply from local wood using easy to fabricate parts (boilers, tubing, pistons) or maybe imported fusion generators for an electric sternwheeler for the more well to do? Why not? I thought. Not so impossible and the colour introduced is a lot of fun. Their first appearance is the Naimaidan Regina in The Scarlet Bastards. An hour later, in the last light of the day, the decks crammed with the garrulous Moldavians, and our scenarius of jawans riding shotgun, the Naimaidan Regina gently shambled away from her wharf. Jets of steam shot from her rusted boiler and tubing while thick blue smoke rose from her single sooty funnel. Captain Thoe moved about like a dervish, chivvying here and chastising there while the immigrants huddled in every available nook and cranny away from the pervading cold. Fremantle Freya is sternwheeler free save for a reference of sinking one. "Genius?" MacShaka exploded in mirth. "Was it genius who decided tae put a 105mm cannon on a paddlewheeler? Where's that paddlewheeler now?" Sanghera-Singh was indignant. "How was I to know that it would not take the recoil? Besides," he shot back, "the Legion bought him another boat and we found the recoilless rifle worked well as a substitute at the Coloe Saltus!" My upcoming novella, given the working title of "The Beaches of the Coloe Saltus" features sternwheelers again as the character of Alexander Sikunder Armstrong is exposed to the horrors of a beach assault on a Black Hand fort. So I allow myself this fantasy as unlikely as it may be, for it brings back those memories of youth and the wide-eyed fascination of all things nautical that led me on to my career as a sailor. Suspend your disbelief, dear reader, and enjoy. Indulge in my romance.