I wanted to talk about one of the major themes of the book, and how it connects to the source material that is the true story of the Batavia shipwreck:  which is more dangerous, nature, or the dark side of human nature?

 The Batavia saga is about, among other things, survival against impossible odds on a desert island.  In the aftermath of the shipwreck, the colonists and crew battled unrelenting heat and thirst amid the harsh conditions of the Houtman Albrohos island chain off the west coast of Australia.  Many did not survive.  However, the bigger threat was the actually the mutineers.  Eventually, the apothecary-turned-merchant, Jeronimus Cornelisz, organized a massacre of over a hundred men, women and children before help finally arrived in the form of a rescue ship from the Dutch East India Company.  While nature was a serious threat, it was the dark side of the mutineers' human nature that proved far more fatal.

My novel transforms this dynamic into a science-fiction setting, and I kept the theme.  In the beginning of the novel, Captain Pelzard tells a young cadet that his biggest concern "isn't the ship, it's us."  In other words Pelzard recognized that space - nature - is harsh and unforgiving, and will "kill us all in a millisecond, and not care."  But he also recognized the greater danger was inside the human mind.  One theme of my book is that the fundamentals of human nature do not change, even across many centuries, and even when advanced technology is available.  The tech is just a patina.  

As the book goes on, the reader comes to understand that Pelzard was mistaken in his understanding of which flaw of human nature he was actually facing.  He understood the danger as coming from the human capacity to grow complacent and lazy, thus leading to a fatal mistake in managing the technology of the ship.   But he was wrong.  The real danger was much darker.  By treating First Mate Jacobs too harshly, Pelzard drove him into the arms of Chief Engineer Cornelis, who then manipulated Jacobs into leading the mutiny, which led directly to the shipwreck.  

Pelzard was right to think that a of flaw human nature was more of a threat to the ship than nature itself.  But it wasn't laziness or incompetence that was the problem - it was a combination of greed, anger, resentment, ambition, and that powerful human emotion - humiliation.  Pelzard failed to anticipate how Jacobs would react to being humiliated in front of the crew for his various infractions.  

Pelzard is, on balance, a good man who only wanted to do his job, complete the mission, and protect the ship and all the people inside it - just like the real-life Pelsaert.  But the real man and the character were both flawed in the same way.  They both failed to anticipate the dark side of the human soul that they were actually facing.  Pelzard wants to do the right thing, but he is also flawed, as a good protagonist should be - nobody is perfect.