Author's Notes (4/3/08)

I have added a new short story taking place in the Ulysses universe, "The Needs of the Many."

I would like to mention that I have developed a plot for a two-part story I would call The Kraken, following in my tradition of naming stories in this universe after works by Alfred Tennyson. It would essentially be my version of Nemesis in that the Romulans would be very involved… but unlike Ulysses, I don't plan on borrowing any plot elements. At least not from Nemesis.

Author's Notes (7/23/07)

I want to thank everyone who has reviewed Ulysses. I had never written fiction of any kind before I wrote this story and I'm absolutely thrilled that people like it as much as they have (and that I wrote it at all!) For many years, stories have popped in and out of my head – what ifs – but I never wrote them down before Ulysses and now the unrelated story Wayward Sons. Ulysses was written as my own "this is what I would have liked to have seen" for the end of Voyager – I wrote it more for my own sake than anyone else's. Still, many of your comments made me plain giddy. I think Ulysses is great and I'm pleased that others do as well. Now, to address any questions:

Moocow asked: "One quick thing is that why did the future have Transwarp instead of Quantum Slipstream, you would've thought that the debrief would be included in the last Pathfinder project and they would just buff up their computers and use that instead of recycling a repolished warpdrive."

I spent a good ten minutes contemplating this very question. I decided on Transwarp for a number of reasons. First, while Voyager sort of got Quantum Slipstream to work, they never got it right because of the lack of computing power. Second, Slipstream required building a whole new engine while Transwarp just took the installation of a single transwarp coil – when you're in the process of preparing to fight a war or fighting the war, you're going to go with the path of least resistance and Transwarp is just more practical, especially when you've already got a background in the engine technology (the failed "Great Experiment" with the Excelsior). Finally, even if Starfleet couldn't get either of the drive technologies to work, they were fighting the Borg and would undoubtedly find a way to salvage some components during the course of the conflict. Were all things ideal, they would have gone with Slipstream, but Transwarp was just more practical all the way around. That, and I was trying to limit the amount of technology that I used – the story had enough technobabble as it was.

Desiring that Diviner Day

The sequel to Ulysses. It's up in its entirety now.