#sciencefiction

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I just finished reading "How to live safely in a science fictional universe," by Charles Yu, and I have to tell you about it.

We follow a time machine repair guy kind of through time, but also not through time, with his dog and pilot, who also don't actually exist. It's so ridiculously fantastic, but also heartfelt.

It's a science fiction story of family written in physics and maths, and it was so fucking delightful to find such a thing!

The cover of "How to live safely in a science fictional universe," by Charles Yu. The cover features a bountiful array of assorted retro futuristic pistols and blasters and rayguns, and one doggo.

Let your imagination gallop with these speculative horse stories. From spaceships bearing gifts to a little girl's wish gone awry, enjoy these tales.

📚💙🪐🐴

https://books2read.com/horsesaremagic

Ebook omnibus: https://books2read.com/TheWizardsScion

Levi Jacobs always dreamed of being like his father, the greatest wizard in the world, but had no understanding what it would be like. Follow Levi’s journey from bumbling teen to a great hero, while the young wizard learns to master magical powers that are initially completely beyond him and barely under control.

@bookstodon

The ad flyer for the series The Wizard's Scion. (Background) View of a planet from space. (Top Center) A black flying saucer surrounded by this text: Trolls, boogeymen and witches, oh my! Just another day for a young wizard. (Top Left) The cover of Troll Song displays a woman in battered, muddy armor with her two swords crossed against the neck of a dwarf. (Lower Left) The cover of Forgotten Legends displays a child reading in bed as a black, smoky monster with red eyes peeks out from under the bed. (Lower Center Left) The cover of The Third Wish displays a wizard on top of a mountain, looking to the sunset, over a city of sky scrapers that have plants growing on them. In his shadow is the red eyed creature from Forgotten Legends. (Lower Center Right) The cover of Dark Moon displays a witch and wizard fighting back to back, holding pistols, while objects fall around them, with the moon behind their heads. (Lower Right) The cover of The Inverted Glass displays a line art hourglass with a white figure in black sand at the bottom, with a black figure in white sand upside-down in the top. Balanced on a scale are a heart and a feather. (Upper Right) The cover of The Wizard's Scion: The Complete Series displays several figures in silhouette representing the main characters, as they traverse a wormhole. Behind them is a red-eyed octopus.

Chapter 34 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Nicole experiments with Bevna's speed spell, to catch up to the Monkey King.

She's initially distracted by the beauty of the very nearly frozen world surrounding her, but soon begins to grow sick from the magic coursing through her body, getting back to the task at hand...

@bookstodon

20260403: For which characters do you come up with a backstory?

There's an implication in the wording of having come up with a backstory for various characters before writing.

I've come up with a backstory before writing so rarely, I think I can say I never really do that. As I write a story, backstories suggest themselves by the actions of the characters or reflections of the narrator, who's usually in 1st person. Almost every character has a backstory in my stories, and often some of it gets into the novel.

In one story, the narrator remembers being "used" by gangsters and inducted into the mob, and explains her PTSD, that can be triggered by what to them is analogous of the sounds gunfire, as having lived through a gang war, having lacked the courage to prevent it when she could have. I later wrote …

A TENSE SCIENCE-FICTION THRILLER with the swashbuckle and spice of fine romantasy. A battle-hardened warrior finds herself on a mission with the royal heiress who broke her heart, but bigger things than love are at risk. Gorgeous worldbuilding! B PLUS

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/this-gilded-abyss-rebecca-thorne/1143299450?ean=9781250422125

@bookstodon

OTHERLAND: RIVER OF BLUE FIRE (1997)
Acrylic on Watercolor Board - 24" x 18"

In his Otherland series, Tad Williams has transported readers to a perilous "virtual world" of the imagination where anyone's fantasy can be made real. 1/6

A man in brown duster and tan cargo pants stands thigh deep in a river of virtual light, rendered in white against a wash of blue extending outward light to dark. His back arches as he extends his arm desperately up to reach for a yellow feather. On close examination to the left of the figure, the light incorporates shapes of a girl wearing sunglasses, the face of a clown, a 6-armed deity, a trio of neanderthals, a beetle, and a fish with mouth open pursuing a dragon fly. On the right, light pattern images include variations of a human in fetal position. The river winds and thins to the horizon where jagged mountains sit silhouette.

Putting this out there again, because I'm unsure how reach works in the Fediverse and how I can connect to the people I want to find:

Any SFF/horror writers out there writing in unorthodox styles, formats, or mediums? Mild or extreme, books with other stories in the footnotes, flash fiction universes, or stories told via geocache, doesn't matter. I wanna connect!

After the amazing Artemis II launch yesterday, we have our own moonshot coming up!

Journey to the Moon with a zany cast of commedia dell'arte characters as envisioned by medieval and Renaissance writers! "Arlecchino, Emperor on the Moon" blasts off on Saturday, April 11 at the Ohio State University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies conference on "Star Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance Imagination"!

See more about the event: https://cmrs.osu.edu/events/star-gazing-astrology-and-astronomy-medieval-and-renaissance-imagination

The USA has Ring of Fire and HPMOR/Project Lawful and Cross-Time Engineer. Chinese technocratic cybernarchists have "Lingaeo" where clever young people isekai to the Ming Dynasty and launch an Industrial Revolution. (I am very sorry to have to use all these words in one sentence. Its not my planet I just live here). https://afraw.substack.com/p/first-dig-the-latrines

Humanity is returning to the moon, and the future feels like it has finally started...

...and I just published a novel set in that future, based on Artemis. Check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FWKPYLN1

https://www.amazon.com/Moonbase-Armstrong-Robert-B-Marks/dp/1997846004

Ebook and paperback: https://books2read.com/TheInvertedGlass

After encountering the worst life has to offer, including the death of his wife and child, destruction of his home world, an addiction forced on him by the one responsible and a third of the galaxy falling under the heel of that tyrant, Levi Jacobs, a wizard, seeks to unravel the secrets of time and fate.

@bookstodon

(Left) The cover of The Inverted Glass, by Owen Tyme. The Background is a pink and purple nebula in space. The foreground is largely line art, in white, with a black shadow outline. At the center is an hourglass. The bottom has black sand, with a white figure standing in it. The top has is an inverted mirror image of the bottom, with a black figure in white sand. The hourglass serves as the balance point for a set of scales, which hold a heart and a feather. The heart is on the left and the feather on the right. The heart is lower than the feather. (Right) Lying in blue sand is a heart made of the same sand, full of cracks. It glows from the inside in a warm, yellow color. Over that is the following quote: Nicole felt an extreme kind of loss, realizing she’d been stolen away from the afterlife, just before finding out if she deserved punishment or not! “How dare you do this to me? Why?” “I’m always in need of strong spirits and I’ve seen none stronger. You have unique talents I refuse to see go to waste.” (Bottom) https://books2read.com/TheInvertedGlass