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#sff

63 posts50 participants1 post today
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.11 — Could your SC do your job?

I'm retired. Pretty much any of them could do that. To the extent that the main series antagonist is also a secondary character, getting to be retired is the WHOLE POINT of her existence from her point of view!

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

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

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Dr. Amy H. Sturgis 📖

To my delight, my month-long "Meet #TheLastMan" module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) #online via #SignumUniversity has been confirmed. It will run in June 2025.

This #MaryShelley novel is one of the most relevant books we can read right now, and I can't wait to discuss it with students!

Teaser: youtube.com/watch?v=tzV-5T-td3

More info: blackberry.signumuniversity.or

YouTubeMeet The Last Man with Dr. Amy H. Sturgis (General Humanities module)By Signum University
#ScienceFiction#Dystopia#EcoGothic
Replied in thread
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Kay :heart_bi: :tinoflag:

@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
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#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.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSMarsNeededWomen

The cover art for Mars Needed Women. It reads: "Mars Needed Women, An SF novel by R.S." The background is of the Mars surface with rover tracks, big rocks, rusty sand, and a greenish sky. There is a black triskelion over an image of Mars that shows the north polar cap, which is a tattoo described in the story.
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Beneath Ceaseless Skies

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.
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Curious Magpie

"... 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.
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#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.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#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.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#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.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #romance #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory #RSMarsNeededWomen

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Dr. Rachel Reddick

More on what I've been reading lately: Terminal Alliance, first book of the Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse. It's as funny and delightfully absurd as it sounds, but I found it a little frustrating that the Big Twist (that I figured out from reading the book jacket) took way too long to materialize. The loss of human culture (due to said apocalypse) made me really sad, too. Not 100% sure when I'll go back for the sequels.

Two humans and a millipede-like alien standing on top of a miniaturized space ship. The humans have spacesuits. The woman in the center has bottle of cleaning fluid and a mop. It's very dramatic. Terminal Alliance, by Jim C. Hines
#amreading#books#sff
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Lizmonster Writes

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. 🙂

Cover for Condition of War by Elizabeth Bonesteel
#fiction#militaryScienceFiction#milsf
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