Planet of Honey and the Apoidean Saga
In The Tale That Twines, one of the most important in-universe franchises is Opal’s Apoidean Saga books and the Planet of Honey television show based on them. Not only is Planet of Honey the novel that Opal and June work to Illuminate together, but it and the show play a crucial role in June’s memory loss and retrieval. A story within a story! I thought I would share with you all where this idea came from, what inspired my depiction of the fandom, and more fun facts about the universe.
What is Planet of Honey?
Planet of Honey is the name of the first book in a five-book series by Opaline Sweetfrond. It was originally published in the 30s and 40s of the Threadverse. It’s intended to be an example of classic science fiction as we understand the genre in the modern day. The books are long, with a dense, flowery writing style and particular attention paid to philosophical themes and esoteric questions about the universe. Its sequels are titled Honey of the Gods, Nectar of the Stars, Black Honey, and The Final Bloom, collectively known as the Apoidean Saga.
Plotwise, the Apoidean Saga follows the adventures of two main characters: Iris Springkeeper and Amber X1098. The former is a human diplomat who lives on one of the many alien worlds which took in the human race after Earth was destroyed by climate change and capitalist greed. The latter is a member of an alien race who, due to looking quite a lot like humanoid bees, are called Apoideans in English (or in Casporan, whatever, it’s been translated to English for your convenience, haha)—bees being part of the Apidae family in real life. It takes place in the “far off” Casporan year of 4040, equivalent to our year 2040.
The planet of Apoidea has recently achieved interstellar space travel, and has come into contact with other sentient races as a result. An organization called the Universally United Planets (UUP) has invited Apoidea to join as a member world—but the megacorporation Tempest Technologies, one of the biggest culprits in the destruction of Earth which has spread its influence throughout the galaxy, has another offer. They want to buy the planet and all its resources, offering the inhabitants more wealth and luxury than they could ever imagine, including fleets of the latest starship technology.
Amber X1098 is a xenobiologist and anthropologist recently hired by the Apoidean Council of Nations (similar to the U.N. in real life) to be part of negotiations with UUP and Tempest. She has a calm, kind exterior with an adventurous, curious heart. She quickly finds herself as the leading expert on humans in particular, finding a sort of dark fascination with the fact that they as a race no longer have a livable home planet. She immediately distrusts Tempest Technologies, especially its main representative, Rigel Zima, but finds many of her colleagues tempted by the megacorp’s offer of instant wealth and power for their planet.
Amber is an immature queen; she was born with the biological ability to become a Queen Mother and birth thousands of Apoideans, should she choose to be transformed by rituals involving the imbibing of royal jelly, the secretion of the Nurses who raise Apoidean young in large brood communities. Becoming a Queen Mother is one of the highest honors in the world… but Amber turns it down. Queen Mothers live pampered, luxurious lives, but they are essentially trapped in their brood communities, heavily guarded and unable to do as they please. Amber has a natural free spirit and dreams instead of visiting other planets.
Unfortunately, un-transformed immature queens are often viewed with distaste, confusion, and even disgust in Apoidean society, even to the point of systemic oppression. It is something which is not immediately visible from the outside, and so Amber hides her biological status as much as possible… with good reason, as its revelation at points in the story creates conflict for her and her friends.
Iris Springkeeper is a human with a high-ranking position in the Coalition for Peace (CFP), a nonprofit, galaxy-spanning grassroots organization which advocates for nonviolent solutions to interspecies conflict. The CFP has a reputation for being troublemakers and revolutionaries—even being called “terrorists” by some of their worst enemies, like Tempest Technologies and The Gold Standard, another galaxy megacorp. They often assist the UUP in its first contact and diplomacy missions, but do not always agree with their decisions or tactics. While the UUP rarely causes intentional destruction like the megacorps, they are highly militarized and sometimes cause harm through neglect and a tendency toward assimilationist policies.
Iris emself has Casporan ancestry which is very important to em, as e was one of the last generations to be born on Earth itself, just as the last of the population was being evacuated by the UUP (the megacorps and their rich benefactors having left decades earlier). E memorializes this ancestry with an indigenous style tattoo of an orca on eir neck and dreams of one day returning to Earth to remediate the planet, make it livable, and creating a better, more careful society there. Iris embodies the phrase “do no harm, but take no shit” in personality, being generally warm and friendly, but harsh and blunt when provoked.
Iris has a hard time being vulnerable with others. E carries an intense amount of rage and grief towards some of the main culprits of Earth’s demise—the megacorps, who are still out there and poisoning the rest of the universe the way they poisoned Earth. Secretly, e’s quite soft on the inside, all that rage being the result of deep compassion for those who died or who now no longer have a home planet. Iris loves to sing and once considered a career in entertainment, but couldn’t shake the desire to become an activist for justice and peace.
One of the main plots of Planet of Honey is the development of Amber and Iris’s interspecies romance, something which is accepted by some and considered taboo by others, especially the only-recently-introduced-to-aliens Apoideans (though we all know how prejudiced humans can be). The two species have many differences, both physical and cultural.
Apoideans, for one, do not have ears. They communicate through sign language using one or both of their sets of hands (they have four arms) and through a chromataphoric mane which changes color based on emotion. They can sense sound vibrations through the sensitive hairs covering their bodies, which like real life bees, are made out of chitin rather than keratin, meaning they are harder and bristly rather than soft. Human speech is difficult for them to learn—by which I mean, learn to understand, as they are physically incapable of speaking it—but not impossible. In the beginning, Amber largely uses text-to-speech and speech-to-text technology to understand the human characters, including Iris. Their communication becomes easier as Iris learns Amber’s form of sign language, once again utilizing technology (LED mood jewelry) to convey the emotional cue aspect.
Planet of Honey the television show takes this basic premise and its characters, but transforms the long-winded novel plot into more of an Adventure of the Week format. It aired for three seasons from Casporan year 3965 to 3968, with a very small budget and an equally small audience, at the time. During the 70s, it went into syndication and was shown often on repeat, where it became a cult classic. Eventually a movie was made, but it was a flop. If you think this sounds a lot like the history of original Star Trek, you are correct, and I will get to that!
Where did the idea/inspiration come from?
Spite. I read a book that I shall not name which was a human/alien romance story, and I really disliked it. I decided I could do better and came up with the whole idea of the Apoideans (I like bees) and everything—as an idea for a book separate from the Eternal Library series! I thought, well, I could write a scifi novel one day!
The thing is that I never have enough time to write all of the novel ideas I have. While working on The Tale That Twines, I realized I needed in-universe stories and figured this was the perfect place to use what I was calling my “beelien” idea. If I wasn’t going to have time to write it as a real book, it could at least be the basis for a fictional one in my current series.
Around this time, my fiance was rewatching a lot of original series Star Trek, something I’d never seen before. I hadn’t watched any Star Trek growing up—my mom disliked speculative fiction and TV—and I found myself liking TOS quite a lot! He went on to show me many episodes of later Star Trek series, like The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Lower Decks, as well as some of the movies. He also watches a lot of documentaries, behind the scenes footage, and YouTube about the franchise, has huge books about the history of ST, has reproductions of the scripts, has seen basically everything multiple times, and has within his brain massive amounts of ST knowledge in general.
It was his love and knowledge for the franchise as well as for other classic scifi media that inspired me to add that element to The Tale That Twines. Thus, Planet of Honey became a TV show with a history just like that of TOS, creating more dimension and detail for June’s fandom experience. I haven’t copied every single aspect of TOS history for The Tale That Twines, but they’re close enough that the comparison should be obvious to anyone who knows a little about those things.
During my main rewrite of The Tale That Twines, I added the scene in Chapter Six where June, Siobhan, and Aeronwy watch an episode of the show together. This was very much inspired by my own experience watching Star Trek with my fiance; Aeronwy’s reactions are just my own, really (except I would not have alien sex, I’m good, thanks). I both love it and love to poke at the inconsistencies and silly things that happen (the Prime Directive is a huge culprit here), which thankfully my fiance enjoys doing as well.
When I got to this scene, I realized I effectively had to write at least an outline of an episode of TV so I knew what was happening and what they were reacting to. Well, I write novels, I’ve written comics, how hard could it be? Hard. I was stumped. Thankfully my fiance is an aspiring TV writer, so he leant me a book about scriptwriting (The TV Writer’s Workbook: A Creative Approach to Television Scripts by Ellen Sandler) which had an outlining technique he liked. Here’s my original outline for the Planet of Honey episode PROFESSIONAL DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION:
1. Oh. (an event catches your audience’s attention and makes them want to see what happens; “Oh, that’s interesting.”)
Amber and Iris return to Iris’s apartment after having been on a date. They are tipsy and physically affectionate; because it’s late and they don’t want to leave each other, Iris insists that Amber stay the night, even though there’s only one bed for them both. Fade to black.
Why today? (for the drama)
The next morning they go to work together, not bothering to hide that they arrived from the same place. When they get to work, Rigel is there talking with the embassy head. He makes a joke along the lines of “Surely you two aren’t sleeping together, because it kind of looks that way,” which makes everyone uncomfortable.
2. The Little Uh Oh! (first turning point, something your character wasn’t expecting)
Amber gets called into her boss’s office and told to “be careful” about her relationship with Iris and how close they’re getting, as Rigel has filed a complaint. It is strongly suggested that they take a step back and remain “professional” or Amber will be reassigned and Iris sent back to her home planet, even as Amber insists that they haven’t done anything and last night they just cuddled/slept in the same bed.
3. Ouch! (moment of greatest jeopardy; how does your MC get into the most serious trouble?)
A picture of Iris and Amber holding hands appears in a local paper that favors Tempest Tech and is generally xenophobic. Amber has to get rid of all the papers in the embassy/stop them from being delivered. Iris catches her doing this and thinks Amber is embarrassed to be seen with em (Iris).
4. The Big Uh Ohhh! (even worse than Ouch!; what pushes your character to go on/face their fear)
Rigel reveals he sent the photo in as an attempt to discredit Iris and the Coalition for Peace. He tells Amber that Iris could never be physically attracted to her and is trying to manipulate her for political victory. He insults Iris and tries to butter up Amber by telling her she could have any Apoidean she wants since she’s attractive and an immature queen, but this backfires and Amber furiously rebukes him before leaving.
5. Oh No! (climax or confrontation, resolution)
Amber confronts Iris about their relationship. Both of them are afraid of rejection and nervous about the risks of an interspecies relationship. Both confirm that they think the risks are worth it and that they can explore what their physical relationship means together. There is some heavy makeout/petting type stuff and then fade to black.
The Twist-a-Roo (note of irony that makes the story funny or poignant)
Amber walks in on the head of the embassy in a passionate embrace with another alien diplomat. The embassy head explains that the two of them are engaged to be married. Amber confronts him about his warning and the embassy head is flustered. They agree that they should stick up for each other instead of bow to Rigel’s complaints.
6. Ah. (back to normal)
Another morning at the embassy; Rigel once again tries to call/catch out Iris and Amber for being publicly affectionate, but the embassy head brings in her fiancée and introduces them to Rigel confidently. Rigel storms off. The embassy head tells everyone to continue to be careful, even as they’re proud of their relationships.
So, the fandom is inspired by Star Trek, too?
Yep! I was born in 1990 and I’ve been in and around nerdy fandom ever since, I dunno, middle school. Especially once I got more online in the mid 00s, when I was a teen. Fandom then, for me, was on LiveJournal, DeviantArt, AIM convos with friends, and sites like Fanfiction.net. I never really fully joined anything; I’ve never written fanfic and rarely draw fanart, but I did lurk around the edges, observing. And I still do! I have always had friends with deep, passionate interests for a variety of video games, TV shows, books, and other forms of media, and I figured it was about time I represented that kind of life in one of my stories.
It was very interesting, then, to consider and learn what fandom was like back in the 70s and 80s, before the widespread use of the internet. Once again, my fiance helped me immensely with his own knowledge of these things. We watched Trekkies together and I loved seeing everyone’s creativity and passion (and all the clearly neurodivergent folk, just saying). He found some reprints of old 70s Trek zines in which the Letters to the Editor section revealed that fans have been arguing with each other about the same issues since the dawn of time. Fascinating!
I also read what became my favorite nonfiction book in 2022, Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee. It’s about exactly what the title says, haha. It inspired me a lot for The Tale That Twines and I highly recommend it!
Will you ever write the real Planet of Honey book?
Probably not. I would absolutely love to, but as I said, I don’t have the time. It will take several years just to finish the Eternal Library series, and I have other ideas I’d like to do after that which I’m more attracted to than Planet of Honey. I do absolutely want to bring it back in Book 4, though, when we return to the modern Eternal Library timeline… reboot movie universe with new CGI, anyone? Lol.