The Orac of Orissa brings Chrístõ to Orissa, which was a planet I invented for the Marion and Kristoph series. Chrístõ’s mother was awarded the Order of Orissa for saving the Duke’s son from terrorists. But that was long before he was born and time has moved on. The new Duke is obviously several generations on from the one his parents knew.

Orissa itself was inspired by a picture I saw online of a city of roof gardens with people with wings flying around it. It gave me the idea that people who were descended from birds and lived in the sky, would live a sort of reverse lifestyle to us. Their gardens were on the roof. The top floor was their first floor. They wouldn’t go down to the ground at all if they could help it. Industry, laundries and the like went on down there. There would be a working class who worked down there and came up to the sunlight and air at the top at the end of their day.

I also thought of the idea of the balloons with gondolas underneath. Orissa was a sort of Venice in the air. It was pretty and nice, and civilised.

And in the Marion and Kristoph story it didn’t have to be anything else. But for Theta Sigma it needed a deeper story. Literally so. The idea of another species living on Orissa came to me as I thought about those heavy industries going on at the bottom of the skyscrapers. Where DID the fumes go? So I envisaged a species adapted to breathe those gases.

And there a couple of cultural references came in. One obvious one, of course, is the Eloi and Morlocks of H G Wells’ Time Machine. But there is a reference a bit closer to home, too. In the 1965 Doctor Who story, The Web Planet, Menoptera are beautiful winged creatures like butterflies. Optera live below ground and are flightless creatures descended from the Menoptera.

Actually, I wasn’t really thinking of either reference when I wrote about the Orac, but this story is on much the same lines up to a point. Chrístõ, of course, is the one who has to save the day, rescuing the children and so on. But if anyone expected him to fight his way through the throng of Orac, they would be disappointed. By now, Chrístõ is an experienced diplomat. He chooses a diplomatic solution. His very first peace treaty, of which he can be justifiably proud.

http://www.rdwf.org.uk/doctors/D1/s2/05webplanet.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine