#sciencefiction

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∆ 2026.04.08 — Victuals?

Wherever story intersects a meal, ya betcha! Bolt (a day angel with wings) has arrived looking for a friend at an up-and-rising victual​ists' red popup tent restaurant. This is from the current chapter.

…[l]ots of chatting feathers and friends merrily eating, their plates ringing when struck with flatware, swinging big glasses of amber-red sudsy beer. Still hot inside, despite the cooling miracle, the popup smelled of sweat, beer, grilled food, and sweat. Happy people with food, in other words. Mid-tent, grill illuminated by multi-color directional sprites, three day angels threw down crimped saffron dumplings, brown noodles, blocks of fermented tofu, and knots of cabbage-shred, beside what might be mackerel or pickled river-pike to the grill that got spiked to what dish demanded it. A fledgling rushed over with a slopping pot of batter. The sizzling competed mightily against the …

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

Nicole’s brain is slowly being taken over by an ancient, magical artifact, a small fragment of a magic city. She seeks a cure, before the city can destroy her sanity and then eventually, take her life by replacing her mind. Racing against time, she gathers pieces of the city, hoping to find an answer among them.

@bookstodon

(Left) The cover of Jigsaw City, by Owen Tyme. The background is a futuristic city of sky scrapers covered in greenery, with water ways in place of some streets. The background has been divided by dark lines that cut it up, into a jigsaw puzzle. The foreground is a hexagonal coin with an indentation in the center that follows the same shape, with raised lines forming a hexagram in the center, which has a smaller one turned at a ninety-degree angle inside the hexagon at the center of it. The smaller hexagram has another inside it, a pattern that repeats until the lines become so fine and indistinct, they blend together. (Right) There's a pool of lava at the base of a rocky slope, with some sharp rocks sticking upward out of it and the following text over the top: “I’m immune to heat and fire. I can easily carry and protect one of you…” “Ye’d need to deliver an army to make a difference, not one person!” “I *am* an army.” (Bottom) https://books2read.com/JigsawCity

Chapter 35 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on : https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Since the Monkey King broke quarantine and Nicole is too sick to pursue, deputy Ozabella and a squad of Ulkun do the job, tracking the monkey's DNA.

What they find at the end of the trail is completely shocking...

@bookstodon

2026.04.06 —Can you create a character/place/storyhook/device on the spot, if you need to? If so, share an example.

Yes?

Gratis: If you write it, I'd like to read it.

Over many months, people began to realize the girl wasn't the person she had been before the coma. She wasn't. For her, it was always the sense of being in a different body, wearing a shell, sometimes with bouts of emotional claustrophobia. While she had previous memories of the middle school girl she now was, she had previous memories all through university that overlapped: research, internships, mentorships, graduations, men. She felt vaguely swindled that she hadn't turned in her finished Ph.d. thesis the day before… before—before whatever happened. The girl's friends liked the new brainy her, who deftly handled all the juvenile jocks and bullies, but the girl's older sister was convinced she'd developed multiple personalities. …

As the crew of the Artemis II journeys to the Moon, so can you - 16th Century style with a zany cast of commedia dell'arte characters as envisioned by medieval and Renaissance writers! "Arlecchino, Emperor on the Moon" blasts off next 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

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

Amelia and The Book of Newts are in conflict. She wants to explore her feelings. It wants to explore space, taking back the gift for mathematics and piloting it gave her. She’s left unable to plot a direct course home. She’s desperate to see the man she loves, lest she lose him forever and The Book is in her way…

@bookstodon

(Left) The cover of The Next Horizon, by Owen Tyme. The black silhouette of a man and woman embracing. They stand atop the dark side of a planet or moon in space, which has a slim crescent along the right side. The background is the stars of space, but some have been highlighted with a heart shape that surrounds the couple. Everything is in shades of blue. (Right) Deep space, displaying the edge of an orange and blue gaseous cloud from a nebula, while most of the stars appear golden in color. Floating in space is a square, red leather book with the image of a newt stamped on the cover. Over the top of everything is the following text: “You can back down and cooperate, right now, or Marta will hit you so hard, you should reach a tenth the speed of light…” “No one will ever find you again, but even if someone does, there’s no way they’ll have the capacity to safely slow you down, before you’re gone to them!” (Bottom) https://books2read.com/TheNextHorizon

"He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in."

I'm currently engrossed in Ursula K. Le Guin's 'The lathe of heaven', constantly reminded of what she said in the introduction to 'The left hand of darkness': "I write science fiction, and science fiction isn’t about the future."

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.