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#sf

47 posts29 participants1 post today
Public *
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 636 — Are your characters superstitious? CW: A-theism.

In Mars Needs Women, May Ri when caught not praying during school prayer (in a public school!), her anger flares and she proclaims she's an a-theist. Note the spelling. May Ri is so NOT superstitious that at one point in the book (when she's trying to terminate an unplanned pregnancy and is being forced to watch videos) she says:

"I'm an a-theist, raised Clear Thinking by my father. My mother died when I was 5. She ceased to be, that's all. Your invisible friend is a farce; there's no 'better' place to go. Like all animals, [my mother] stopped being; this will, too. I have to take care of now, and will."

I can't speak about other characters in the story. Some are religious, but the topic doesn't come up. However, in May Ri's world view, there is no place for anything super-natural. She's an engineer, after all.

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

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.06 — SC POV: Are you capable of killing a person? CW: Spoilers

[The Onēsanue, Reina Īto from Mars Needed Women:]

These men were threatening women's lives and terrorizing them and their children. Why? Because of some biblical rights that may have been applicable centuries ago on Earth, but on Mars? Then they were going to take over the space station in an effort to destroy all the progress we'd made as women on Mars. If you mean, could I kill someone like a samurai with a sword were I trained? Probably not. I did ask my friend to see if she could repurpose some technology to knock a shuttle out of the sky. That would have washed my hands of it—but when she said she couldn't do that, I reprogrammed some flight software. I guess the answer is yes.

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

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Public *
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#ScribesAndMakers 2504.02 — What do you want to work on this month?

  1. Now that I've completed Mars Needed Women, I'm going to turn it into a book. I've already figured out how to create an ePub for my beta reader. The web version will disappear, so if you haven't gotten to it, you've got until about April 10th. So far, I've added material to almost all the chapters, and a glossary. Since it's only 25k, I am thinking of adding some writer's processes appendices. Since I was restricted to 5,000 words for each of the 31 chapters, 350 of which were hashtags, I had to practice samarai concision, becoming hyper focused on word choice, and ellipsis such that the words implied what needed to be said but couldn't be included. The prose is sometimes too sparse. I'm also correcting some science errors and fixing foreshadowing faux pas.
  2. I am returning to writing Reluctant Moon.

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

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.05 — Sum up your current WIP in five words.

Daemon astronaut angel's best lover.

Okay, it's a kick in the head, innit? Actually a fair summation of plot lines in Reluctant Moon. This one should go with it:

The moonshot novel is SF.

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

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 635 — Are there any specific cultural influences that shaped the world or characters in your story

Two major cultural influences, one not so good and one good. Contrast.

The main character comes from an end-stage religio-fascist oligarchy. She live's in Chicago. She's also an atheist and bristles under restrictions put on women. I work to give an impression of an Anglo-Saxon culture suffused with religion and hypocrisy, but I never describe the main character other than at least one of her children have dark hair like her. With a name like May Ri, you wonder about her heritage. Constricted by patriarchy, she chooses Mars hoping for opportunity.

On Mars, the first child born on the planet was borne by a Japanese refugee. She learns Japanese from her mother and teaches it to the other Nisei (first generation Martians in Japanese), and the cultural aesthetic plays a part in the plot, as do some specific Japanese words.

Beyond that, I drop hints all over that the colonists are culturally diverse and are from across the planet—and poor because who signs what's essentially a slave contract to work on Mars and bear children? The Nisei with absent fathers and overworked mothers (who build the colony) are raised communally and increasing develop their own society free of gender roles and constrained sexuality. A trans character plays a role, and skin color is seen a beautiful.

The people back on earth don't like this. Mars Needed Women is a story of cultural and planetary conflict.

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

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Public *
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#PennedPossibilities 634 — MC POV: How much do you value companionship? Do you always keep people around, or do you prefer to be alone?

[Devil-girl] An odd question. I've never really thought about it. Companionship is good, and I enjoy it when people are around, like when I train at the gym or am at work. What I do is all about teamwork, so I'm good with people. Yet, I don't always keep people around. I really do like to throw open all the windows and study a good book. I live in a converted dance studio, so two walls open to the outside and the other two are mirrored. Laying on a mat, with the breezes, and the quiet you get living in a university town. Hmm. I guess I'm finding more use for what people call friends. I've certainly found a lot of use for men…

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

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Public
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.03 — How do you navigate scenes with many characters?

Carefully. I don't want to step on anyone's toes or disrupt them saying their lines.

In the Saying the Quiet Part Aloud department, I will admit that most of the advice I give is actually analysis of what I've written. I don't necessarily plan these things out, or have check lists. Sorry. What I do is simply write what I think sounds right, then go back and study whether it worked. I have plenty of experience (close to 2M words written), so I often get the sense of it right.

"Intuition!" you scoff, adding, "That's not helpful."

Here's a speed bump I navigated. Kyv is the current POV. I'm handing off to May Ri (the so-called princess).

...The book plate lit up. Kyv recognized the woman on vid[,saying]. "The Princess of Mars and her Five Daughters!"

May Ri, in her alighter outside, watched the growing crowd of men, wiry, lightly muscled, androgynous for that, all moonborne, adapted to 1/6th gravity. No weapons. She sighed. "You saw the vid of the nuking of Hershel?"

Handing off a POV is one way of navigating, I did that between those two paragraphs by transferring succinctly from the book plate (think cellphone doing FaceTime) Kyv is looking at to who he is looking at on said book plate. This is a 3rd person technique.

Beyond that, dialogue attribution is another technique I use. He said, she said. And you get to add a bit of visual or noise at the same time, which I call character tags. Indeed, you can avoid the said-ism in back and forths if the characters have an accent or manner of speech, but you have to be careful about that. While this seems like 3rd person also, keep in mind 1st POV characters often describe what's going on around them, and they do that in 3rd person, more so if they are telling a story of what happened to others.

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

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Continued thread
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

“The Victorian era witnessed the emergence of a new genre of science fiction, dystopian literature… Oliphant’s short story ‘The Land of Darkness’ is an important and overlooked example”

—Dr Oliver Tearle on Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Land of Darkness’

5/7

interestingliterature.com/2017

Interesting Literature · Dante Among the Machines: Margaret Oliphant’s ‘The Land of Darkness’In this week’s Dispatches from the Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers a curious dystopian story by Queen Victoria’s favourite novelist The terms ‘dystopian’ and ‘ecology’ both g…
#Scottish#literature#19thCentury
Public *
Henri Lœvenbruck

Cycle de Dune, check.
Maintenant, je me remets dans Fondation.

Pour en avoir tant lu, je me demande si la SF a déjà produit quelque chose de plus abouti que ces deux cycles, d'une puissance colossale, qui résiste au temps, voire se bonnifie, confrontée à notre triste évolution.

#SF
Replied in thread
Public *
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#ScribesAndMakers ##TTMD @sfwrtr @Nisaa

I see you are coming back from burnout. Any tips on how to avoid it?

I did answer that one so be sure to search the #TTMD hashtag, but my best answer was to ensure you can communicate to someone with your writing, if communicating is what counts for you. Since 2015, I have had a fan fiction outlet that generates feedback and page view to which I can write. However, being able to write replies to all you folk on Mastodon is also good.

I’m excited to see you are publishing your book to Mastodon in chapters. What made you decide to publish it that way?

I found a set of 31 women's rights prompts for March. Since the card was in French, the month name read "Mars." An SF feminist idea popped into my head. I took up the challenge. The result is pretty good (says the author immodestly), likely commercial quality with careful revision after fixing some science mistakes. Sadly, I've burnt my 1st Publication Rights sale by publishing even temporarily online. I'm now busy revising and adding material, and think I can make a go of selling it, probably as a self-pub.

Wanna read the completed story? It should be available for the next week: Mars Needed Women: eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/11426181

What’s a question you wish someone would ask you about your work?

How do you think Mars Needs Women does feminist lit differently?

I interpreted your question asking for a question as specifically for the web-novel, but it's applicable to my other works. How? By writing women embracing being female, but neither shamed nor accepting their fate. The story depicts women both as stuck in their role models thanks to their society, and redefining themselves and their roles when they seize the opportunity. The main character has to get married (but she does choose the gorgeous guy!) and has five daughters, but she's avoided the housewife trap on Earth as an engineer on Mars. Women are shown liking sex, nursing their infants in social situations, working on important projects, and convincing their husbands to assist in child care. Because the MC has a temper, she fights back when men in power interfere with the developing women's society. With the help of her daughters who become important side characters in the story, she finds cunning opportunities for the first generation of martian girls, and together they break open the patriarchal power structure that the conditions on Mars is causing to unravel.

PS: Sorry I took so long to answer. I was pretty messed up after the marathon compose, revise, publish grind during which I wasn't sleeping well.

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

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The cover art for Mars Needed Women. The background is of the Mars surface with rover tracks, big rocks, sand, and a greenish sky. There is a triskelion image of Mars, which is a tattoo in the story. Credit NASA and ESA for the photos. The back cover reads as follows: Shanghaied May Ri struggled when the EM goon clamped an aromatic wet rag over her nose and mouth... Waking weightless and nauseated—stuffy head pounding, being floated somewhere—despite grogginess, she eyes-closed punched someone, spinning away to bounce off a wall. The click of cartilage, the thump off a bulkhead, the blare of a warning horn, and "Rig for ring spin!" rang in her ears. A tech clapped a bag over her mouth before she vomited up her last meal, while enduring the blonde's glare as blood beaded around her nose. May Ri glowered back. Sitting on the wall, dragged on her butt, her inner ear then her innards soon informed her the wall was becoming the floor. From the author: “A hopeful deeply-dystopian feminist SF story, with thinly veiled jabs at our current world's bad actors making for a bad future. Please note the past tense in the title: Mars Needed Women. The story's women are going to work to bring down the system, at least that part that's oppressing them, in a massive unscheduled disassembly.”
Eldritch CaféRS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe)Attached: 2 images My feminist SF web-novel *Mars Needed Women* is complete! 23,300 words in 31 chapters, one chapter posted each day throughout March, the last posted 23 minutes ago as I write this. Check out the cover art. To read, either use the hashtag #RSMarsNeededWomen or this link to the first chapter: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178 The full novel is in the thread. Just scroll to read. > “A hopeful deeply-dystopian feminist SF story, with thinly veiled jabs at our current world's bad actors making for a bad future. Please note the past tense in the title: Mars Needed Women. The story's women are going to work to bring down the system, at least that part that's oppressing them, in a massive unscheduled disassembly.” I'll leave it up for you to read for at least a week. After that, I'm revising it for later secondary publication. [Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.] #BoostingIsSharing #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera #writer #author #sf #sciencefiction #scifi #feminism #gender fiction #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon
Public
Christine M.

#sf #worldcon2025 #travel #uspolitics #Seattle

This year, the Science Fiction Worldcon will take place in Seattle in the USA. Which means - among others - there are concerns regarding travelling to Seattle from abroad.

Below you find a statement from the Worldcon Chair addressing these concerns. The in-person con will not be cancelled, but a Virtual Membership is on offer with virtual panels.

Details to follow.

Per aspera ad astra.

seattlein2025.org/2025/03/20/s

Public
Brett Hodnett

When writing the acknowledgements for my novel HUMAN it occurred to me that one of the greatest debts I owe is to all the authors that I’ve read throughout my life. Not only classic literature, fantastical tales and heartbreaking stories, but also non-fiction, whether about #science or #history, #economics or home renovation. In fact, why stop there? I must also include scientific papers, newspaper articles, blogs, and all the various and sundry writings I’ve ever come across.
Together, they provided me with the rich tapestry of stories and facts which have smashed around in my head and resulted in creative thoughts of my own. They also provided me with the knowledge of how to write. I never really learned how to write a story, I’ve only intuited how to do so through reading what others have written.
So I would like to thank everyone who has ever let loose written words into the world. I’ve made HUMAN free this week for all #FediHumans. Visit bretthodnett.com/FreeHUMAN.htm and use the code ‘fedihuman’ to get your free EPUB.

bretthodnett.comHUMANA remarkable exploration of family, society, and what makes us human, HUMAN will take you from the post-apocalyptic world of the near future, to the two very different societies that emerge 15 million years later, where those few surviving individuals have evolved to become something that we might not fully recognize as human.
#Human#WritingCommunity#SelfPublishing
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