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@lightweight In #SFF #book "The Moonday Letters" by Emmi Itäranta all the rich people have left the climate and disaster wrecked Earth and live elsewhere, like on Mars. Not because it was an ideal choice but because of what Earth had become. Activists want to change that!

I loved the book. You might enjoy a brief scene at a performance venue where a virtual star is a recreated icon instantly recognised for singing
"Is there?"
The crowd sings the next 3 words

#books
goodreads.com/book/show/594310

GoodreadsThe Moonday LettersA gripping sci-fi mystery wrapped in an LGBTQIA love st…
Continued thread

#ScribesAndMakers 2504.10 2/2 — Show us a book cover you like. What makes it special?

Well, I like the cover I mocked up for my web-novel. What makes it special other than I did all the work? It sets the tone for what isn't seen in the story since most of the scenes either occur inside domes on Mars or inside an arcology on Earth. There's a lack of contrast between living on Mars and Earth.

The image is from Jezero crater. When the protagonist's eldest daughter finishes training 2,000 young people her age to wear Mars suits, in celebration, she asks to visit in a scene late in the book because it's so "famous."

The Mars globe in a Triskelion is the tattoo all the Mars contract colonists imported from Earth wear on their right forearm.

I like the overall effect of the image and the metallic wire lettering, with the tiny bit of asymmetry, as it evokes a sense of quiet desolation. With a very thin atmosphere, Mars is often very quiet and I see the cover as contemplative.

Not sure whether a publisher's marketing department would think it would sell the book, however.

More in #AltText

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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Live in BCS #429: "The City of Tears" by Molly Tanzer (a new tale of Thevin Galois).

"She was not alone. The dream-city was a metropolis, densely populated with people from lands Thevin knew and lands she did not. Most of her companions on the ramparts lay insensate on the ground, crying as if their hearts were breaking. The cacophony of their wails did not unsettle Thevin. She was used to it."

beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/st
#fantasy #sff #shortstory

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Artwork
Beneath Ceaseless SkiesBeneath Ceaseless Skies - The City of Tears by Molly TanzerShe was not alone. The dream-city was a metropolis, densely populated with people from lands Thevin knew and lands she did not. Most of her companions on the ramparts lay insensate on the ground, crying as if their hearts were breaking. The cacophony of their wails did not unsettle Thevin. She was used to it.

"... Ursula Le Guin famously argued that the goal of science fiction is not to predict. She made this argument in the context of The Left Hand of Darkness, a book which Jo Walton not-quite-so-famously pointed out “is one of those books that changed the world, so that reading it now, in the world it helped grow, it isn’t possible to have the same experience as reading it in the world it was written in and for.” Prediction, under such circumstances, becomes irrelevant. Le Guin helped readers prepare for a world of relaxed gender roles and presentations, and in so doing helped them build such a world. But this was rare at the time and remains a challenge even today, when science fiction draws as often on social science as physics. And preparation for the future was unevenly distributed even among Le Guin’s readers—as anyone can report who’s attended a talk by a man who can’t name any female authors other than Le Guin ..."
#reading #sff reactormag.com/beyond-the-torm

Reactor · Beyond the Torment Nexus: How Does Science Fiction Help Us Prepare for the Future? - ReactorLet's talk about preparing, not predicting — and grappling with uncertainty.

#PennedPossibilities 640 — MC POV: Tell us about the good habits you have.

[Devil-girl:] I'd been asked this question and it hadn't occur to me that habits could be good or bad. It was while I was training for my first prize fight, so I asked Rabbit, who was doing roadwork with me, running the pedestrian path between Northfork and downtown along the river.

He said, "You read."

"Doesn't everyone?" I asked.

"Well, if it were the newspaper, the funnies or the sports page—" He was a little winded. "—I might understand, but a book? The pavement is uneven, too!"

I was getting a twofer, levitating the tome three hand widths before my face. It allowed me to properly swing my arms and shadow box as I ran. "I've got good peripheral vision. You wanna look? It's on quantum thaumadynamics—"

"No thanks. I'm a muscle nerd not an egghead."

"But… is it a good habit?"

"Only if you don't trip and break your pretty neck."

"Don't worry." I giggled. "I won't."

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2504.10 — Antagonist POV: How do you feel about the government?

[Rainy Days gives Thorn Rose a big hug for asking such an insightful question! Even after the pressure Rainy Days put the young woman under to test her mettle and the hell she'd force her to deal with (20K words), she had hoped she'd finally ask, but hadn't been holding her breath…]

The government is a work in progress, pretty much like always. These days I keep the central population under tight regulation. Instead, I perform my social experiments in the autonomous regions. It rather irked me, however, when their leaders took their freedom to choose and chose to enslave people by criminalizing them. The dragon lords were unhappy when I told them to knock it off, then outraged when I started this war to assert my authority? In what way is an autonomous region actually sovereign? Come on!

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.09 — How much room for the fantastical is there in your work?

I write both SF and SF Fantasy.

In Mars Needed Women, it was all science. The only thing fantastical (if you can call it that) about it is how I chose the setting (already successful Mars colonization) and manipulated situation (bankruptcy, no contact with Earth, Men doing the dangerous jobs, Mars dust affecting fertility) to gradually reduce the percentage of men in the population, allowing the women to break the male dominance of the culture and over the society (entrenched patriarchy).

In the Reluctance Series, the one thing that is fantastical is the physics at the root of the science in the story. The people, the situation, the state of the Earth, and the technology used all grows from this. Were you or I to be transferred there, once you got the 411 on the special new laws of nature, you wouldn't feel like you were living in a fantasy world at all.

In Inklings, currently on hiatus, it is all fantasy. There's a lot of room for the fantastical, like an MC who through sacrificing herself can converse with animals.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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CONDITION OF WAR preorder is up!

Believe it or not, it’s coming out on June 3. Here’s the blurb:

Accused of destroying a Corps warship, the crew of the starship Galileo must prove sabotage—or face the wrath of what’s left of Central Gov.

When the Central Corps warship Capricorn—silent and unresponsive, light-years from her last reported position—threatens a civilian space station, the former Corps starship Galileo comes to the station’s aid. But Commander Elena Shaw’s attempt to disarm the warship culminates in its destruction, and despite evidence Capricorn was sabotaged, Central is happy to direct public ire at Galileo.

To vindicate their ship, the crew must reconstruct Capricorn’s final journey, seeking proof of what really destroyed her. But Elena finds an alarming pattern in the evidence they uncover. It seems Capricorn’s fate has roots not in sabotage, but in a weapon Central has been keeping secret—a weapon Elena has encountered before. A weapon whose origins may not be entirely human.

Turns out Galileo has a stowaway, hiding in plain sight. And that stowaway might link Elena to Capricorn’s destruction after all.

It’s been seven and a half years since Breach of Containment was released. For my characters, it’s been six weeks.

I started writing this book in the fall of 2016, but an awful lot has interrupted my progress. It’s not even just The World[tm], although that’s a big piece of it, for me and everybody else.

I’ve been through two agents. I’ve self-publisehd an anthology and a standalone novel. I’ve learned more about marketing than I thought I’d need to know, and I’ve actually enjoyed it, which is extremely weird.

Covid turned up and turned everybody’s lives upside down.

I’ve had a whole lot of family Stuff. Both my parents were diagnosed with dementia. We moved them out of their home, cleared the place our, and sold it. (Right before covid hit. One small bit of luck.) My father died. My mother doesn’t know who I am anymore.

The Kid has gone off to college. We have acquired a third cat (my mother’s). When The Kid is home for breaks, she brings her own cat, so even when she’s here we’re all outnumbered by felines.

This country has broken my heart, and that will never go away.

I gotta say, I’m tired of having my heart broken. Heartbreak is for kids; it should involve a few nights of ice cream and too much wine, and then fade away into sad nostalgia. It shouldn’t remove enormous chunks of our hopes and dreams and leave a bleeding, cavernous wound. But here we are.

I have read this book so many times now I have absolutely no sense of it anymore. It takes my people further along on their journey. Everybody grows and changes, which isn’t a big shock. I’m not the writer I was when Elena, Greg, and Jessica first started this journey.

I’m just as idealistic, though. I expect that shows.

Anyway. The link above is to Amazon US. For now, it’s available at all Amazon geographies, and at barnesandnoble.com. Getting the others up is a touch more complicated, but that should happen over the next couple of weeks. I’ll update links as they become available.

The prologue is up on my author site, if anybody wants to give it a shot. CW for violence, death, and lots of cussing, so I guess I haven’t changed that much. 🙂

#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 9: How much room for the fantastical is there in your work?

I'm a fan of the 'one impossible thing' school. (I admit SECONDARY has two, though - time travel and genius bioengineering.) I take that and figure out how people - and cultures, and engineering, and governments, and religions, etc. - would *realistically* use and respond to it.

The fun, of course, is picking a premise that has *many* fantastical consequences...

#WordWeavers 2504.09 — What’s the most prevalent form of communication in your world besides talking face-to-face?

Messengering and post. This is true in the moonshot era as it is in the Interstellar era. The people have no use for electricity, which begs the question as to how in the moonshot era the fastest method, telegraphy, works. In the interstellar era, it boils down to walking the post one direction and then walking it a different direction. It would be spoilers to explain that trick in more detail.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 639 — Does your MC have any pets?

None of the recent stories have pets. However, dogs and horses are mentioned, the latter for a needed referent. Think satyr. I will resist describing actual horses in a story until I need to shock the reader from their assumptions about what the reluctance world really looks like…

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers 2504.08 — Share a song lyric you've written or heard that resonates with you. (Give credit if it's not your song.)

I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean that allegorical songs can't impress me. Allegory (incidentally as it were) by Murray Attaway is a strangely uplifting and mystical song that never fails to bring pictures to my mind and a sense of awe that brings me chills.

Coincidentally, or perchance not, the lyric snippet below inspired a chapter titled "Allegory" in Reluctant Moon. Thorn Rose takes her friend Streak outside the city to watch a meteor shower, knowing the precise time it will start. Seems the weather service had tracked the trajectory of a piece of the sky struck from the heavens.

I've included a listen link and a lyric link.

Lyrics: genius.com/Murray-attaway-alle
Listen: youtube.com/watch?v=wYVYSLS04Z

Sudden move in the stars, whenever I look to the skies
I can get lost, stand in a mirror and know that I
Am a fragment of something greater than I
Specks of dust in a moonbeam gathering shape
And potent of greatness waiting to light

Even the wind in the trees is the allegory
Everything that is and ever will be is the allegory

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#WordWeavers 2504.08 — MC POV: What are the 3 most important things you always take with you when traveling (besides money, ID and keys if applicable)?

I don't care much for things. Oh, I'll use them, and properly value them, earn them when needs be, but only knowledge and people have real value. I wasn't born into wealth, but upon my parent's death, when I was five, the powerful decided I was somehow special. Wealth, training, and responsibility followed. I don't know exactly when I stopped being a kid who nerded out on magic† with her childhood friend, when I morphed into someone else's sharp tool. When I grew old enough to pass as an adult, with great precision, calculation, and planning, I ran away never to be found. My elite life wasn't what I wanted, what I needed.

Since then nothing, no thing, describes what I want or desire, other than simply my freedom to study and learn. When you don't have a place to return to, or a place to live, they call you homeless. I gave my former life up, and when I find a new situation that sours, I can give everything up again. Snap, like that. Being home-free is a freedom from being made to do what I dislike, or what's wrong. I've traveled across the continent on foot. I've lived in homeless encampments. The three things I take with me are a tarp, a bedroll, and my book of magic.

Those are things, of course. I take my skills, my common sense, and a sharp tongue, also. They keep me safe.

————
† Magic is a simplification of a physically quantifiable repeatable phenomenon.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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