Station Zero

Continuing a short series about the Railhead trilogy, salvaged from the wreck of my downed website... When I was working on Railhead it felt so stuffed with stuff that there didn't really seem to be room for aliens as well. I already had lots of non-human characters and creatures to introduce - sentient trains, androids, AIs, and genetically engineered dinosaurs. But obviously you can't have a sprawling space opera universe without aliens, so it was always my intention that the trains of the Great Network would eventually make contact with the trains of other civilisations. That happened in the second volume, Black Light Express , and by the time  Station Zero begins, aliens from all these different species are starting to find their way to human worlds, and the society established in the first book is poised on the brink of huge changes. Initially, I was quite keen to make my aliens properly alien. But gosh, it's difficult! It's very hard to invent a li...