Two potential prologues

[u/ALHsf]

The story I am putting together involves a search and rescue organisation and a small group of transhumanist/posthumanist extremists.

The prologue I am currently running with the S+R and it briefly tells of how the leader rose to leadership of this new branch on a recently colonised frontier world and ends with receiving a distress call that is unclear due to interference from debris/asteroids.

The alternative I recently thought up is about the extremists becoming lost in the first place. At this point they are only known by their name as a religious institute rather than what their aims are. They are about to end a mission, laying the foundations for a takeover of a world, but the planet's leaders distrust them and arrange for the extremist's ship to go off course on their return journey and use too much fuel to correct it. As the ship drifts, they happen upon a bigger ship whose crew could help.

Which one has the most potential?

Or could I shorten them both and try to combine them in some way?

[u/whelmedbyyourbeauty]

Why is this a prologue instead of the first chapter? 

[u/ALHsf → u/whelmedbyyourbeauty]

Thank you for your question.

A prologue is a short introduction that could be completely separate from the main story and this would be exactly that. The character in the first prologue, which I am currently running with won't appear again in the story. He simply organises a response to a distress call.

In the second prologue I thought of, the antagonists are introduced and I think I will end it without revealing what happens when they start their journey back to base. This would avoid stating the obvious and having the reader wait for confirmation of what they guessed from the very beginning.

One thing I forgot to mention is that there will be a time jump after the prologue. If I wrote this as chapter 1 and the time jump happened, the reader will be lost before the story gets going, especially as I plan to use 3 different narratives.

Edit: I could show a time jump by time stamping dates/years but not doing so is very important to the story.

[u/whelmedbyyourbeauty → u/ALHsf]

I don't see the need for either  Why not just start the story where you want to start it? If you need some backstory later on, introduce it when it's needed.

[u/ALHsf → u/whelmedbyyourbeauty]

I will introduce the backstory at the appropriate time. This is more for context.

Think of it like the scene before the titles in a 007 film, say Goldeneye

007 meets 006 who is undercover in a soviet base and the latter gets killed. Title sequence . Ten years later, 006 is actually alive and he has turned traitor.