I'm doing some sci-fi worldbuilding that requires spaceships. So I am looking for inspiration not only on the spaceships themselves but also on how other people design them! Thanks!
At some unspecified date in the near future, an unknown agent causes the Moon to shatter into seven pieces. As the remnants of the Moon begin to collide with one another, astronomer and science popularizer "Doc" Dubois Harris calculates that the number of collisions will increase exponentially. A large number of moon fragments will begin entering Earth's atmosphere, forming a "white sky" and blanketing the earth within two years with what he calls a "Hard Rain" of bolides; this will cause the atmosphere to heat to incandescence and oceans to boil away, destroying the biosphere and rendering Earth uninhabitable for thousands of years. It is decided to evacuate as many people and resources as possible to a "Cloud Ark" in orbit, including a "swarm" of "arklet" habitats that will be able to avoid the debris from the moon—both to attempt to preserve the human race and to give the remaining doomed inhabitants of Earth something to hope for, to prevent civil disorder from breaking out on Earth before its surface is destroyed. Each nation on Earth is invited to choose by lot a small number of young people to become eligible to join the Cloud Ark.
The Cloud Ark is to be based around the International Space Station (ISS), currently commanded by American astronaut Ivy Xiao. The ISS is already bolted onto an iron Arjuna asteroid called Amalthea, which provides some protection against moon debris. Robots are used to excavate Amalthea to provide more protection in a project run by mining and robotics engineer Dinah MacQuarie. Technicians and specialists, including Doc Dubois, are sent to the ISS in advance of the Hard Rain to prepare it to become the headquarters of the Cloud Ark.
The plan is that the Cloud Ark must be self-sufficient for 5,000 years and capable of repopulating Earth once it is habitable again. A Human Genetic Archive is sent to the Cloud Ark, with the intention that it will be used to rebuild the human population. Approximately 1,500 people are launched into space in the two years before the Hard Rain begins.
Suspecting that some architects of the Cloud Ark are interested only in pacifying Earth's inhabitants with false hope (rather than creating an environment that will actually survive in the long term), a billionaire named Sean Probst realizes that the Cloud Ark will need a ready supply of water in order to provide propellant for the space station and to prevent it from eventually falling into the earth's atmosphere. He embarks on a two-year expedition to extract ice from a comet nicknamed Greg's Skeleton, using a nuclear reactor to provide power to bring it back towards Earth.
The Hard Rain begins approximately two years after the destruction of the moon as predicted; human civilization as well as nearly all life on Earth is obliterated, although some try to take shelter underground (such as Dinah's father) or in the deep ocean (such as Ivy's fiancé). Markus Leuker, appointed leader of the Cloud Ark, declares all nations of Earth to be dissolved, and imposes martial law under the Cloud Ark Constitution. Despite a worldwide agreement that members of government will not be launched into space, the President of the United States, Julia Bliss Flaherty, manages to get herself sent to the Cloud Ark at the last minute. Shortly afterwards the main cache of the physical Human Genetic Archive attached to the ISS is ruined by the thrusters of an arklet passing too closely, leaving only samples that had been distributed amongst the arks.
There is disagreement on the Cloud Ark about the best way to organize its society and avoid the debris of the moon. Some "Arkies" favor converting the Cloud Ark into a decentralized swarm of small space vessels at a higher orbit out of range of debris, rather than maintaining the central authority of the ISS. Doc Dubois wants to shelter in the "Cleft", a crevasse on the now-exposed iron core of the moon. Others want to go to Mars. Julia Flaherty starts to acquire a coterie of followers and encourages the proponents of the decentralized swarm plan.
Sean Probst's expedition has succeeded, and he has brought a comet into an orbit that will soon pass by Earth. His radio has failed and he has built a replacement by hand, and is able to communicate with Dinah MacQuarie by Morse code. However, he and his party die of radiation sickness caused by fallout from their nuclear reactor long before the expedition is complete. Markus Leuker and Dinah travel to the comet with a small crew to take control of it and bring it back to the Cloud Ark, in order to provide sufficient propellant to reach the Cleft on the moon's core. Just before Dinah returns with the ice as the sole survivor of the mission, Julia Flaherty persuades the majority of the population to abandon the ISS and move to higher orbit in a decentralized swarm, and sends a preliminary expedition to Mars. In the course of their sudden, unauthorized departure the ISS sustains catastrophic damage to many sections. The surviving portions of the Human Genetic Archive are carried along with them, but due to the Arkies' ignorance, these surviving portions are discarded or ignored. Only the digital version of the Human Genetic Archive survives aboard the ISS. The ISS and remaining third of the cloud ark combine through reshaping the ice into a support structure, and is rechristened Endurance.
During the three years that it takes for Endurance to reach the Cleft, the majority of its population die of various causes (cancer caused by cosmic radiation, suicide, bolide strikes, etc.); by the time they are within range of the Cleft, only about 30 survivors remain. Julia Bliss Flaherty's Swarm splits into two factions, who fight; Flaherty's faction is defeated. Running out of food, the Swarm resorts to cannibalism, and by the end of three years only 11 survive, including Flaherty and the leader of the opposing faction, Aïda. Aïda requests to reunite the remnant of the Swarm with the Cloud Ark before it reaches the Cleft, but secretly plans a battle for control of Endurance; as a result of that battle the population is diminished even further.
By the time Endurance reaches the relative safety of the Cleft, there are only eight surviving Homo sapiens in space, all of whom are women. One, the sociologist Luisa, has reached menopause, and the remaining seven (Dinah, Ivy, Aïda, Tekla, Camila, Moira, and Julia) come to be known as the Seven Eves. The Human Genetic Archive has been destroyed, but they have sufficient resources to use the surviving genetics laboratory to rebuild the human race by parthenogenesis. They agree that each of the Seven Eves gets to choose how her offspring will be genetically modified or enhanced. Aïda predicts that, hundreds of years from now, this project shall result in seven new races.
The narrative jumps to 5,000 years later. There are now three billion humans living in a ring around the Earth, and they have indeed formed into seven races, each one descended from and named after the Seven Eves who survived the events of Part 2. These races have quite distinct characteristics, including "Moirans" who can undergo "epigenetic shifts", radically changing their bodies in response to new environments. The iron core of the moon has mostly been used to build space habitats, but the Cleft itself has been turned into "Cradle", an exclusive piece of real estate attached to a tether that occasionally "docks" with Earth.
Humanity has divided mostly along racial lines into two states, Red and Blue, which are engaged in a form of Cold War characterized by cultural isolation, espionage and border skirmishes, mediated by treaty agreements more honored in the breach than the observance.
The orbiting races, the Spacers, terraform Earth by crashing ice comets into it to replenish the oceans, and seed the planet with genetically created organisms based upon re-sequenced DNA data saved from the escape to orbit. Once a breathable atmosphere is recreated, and sufficient plant and animal species have been reseeded, some members of the orbiting races ("Sooners") resettle the planet, in violation of treaty agreements.
A "Seven", a group of seven people with one member from each race, is recruited by "Doc" Hu Noah, to investigate mysterious people who have been sighted on Earth. As the story unfolds, they discover that some humans did indeed survive the Hard Rain on the planet by living in deep mines ("Diggers"), while others survived in ocean trenches using submarines ("Pingers"). Although these survivors have also evolved socially and biologically to form two additional races, the survival of root stock humanity separate from the Seven Eves causes turmoil in Spacer high politics. Ground conflict eventually occurs because each of the orbiting camps (Red and Blue) wishes to establish a preferential or exclusive relationship with the Earthbound races: the Diggers, although descendants of Dinah's family, interpret the Blue state's presence on their territory as an act of aggression and develop an alliance with Red, prompting Blue to seek out an alliance with the Pingers on the strength of Ivy's connection with one of their founders. Matters are further complicated because the Diggers claim all of the Earth's land surface as their own, and initially hold the Spacers in disdain (despite their high technology) for having fled the planet eons ago.
In an epilogue it is revealed that a separate, secret underwater ark had been created concurrently with the cloud ark, leading to the development of the Pingers, based on analysis of the "selfies" Ivy's fiance had sent her, using diagrams and sketches in the background as clues. Ty invites the surviving Seven (along with Sonar and Deep, representatives of the Diggers and the Pingers, respectively) back to apartments at his bar in the Cleft with the intent of forming the first "Nine".
I hope everyone is having a good day. After writing that plea to let Star Trek die and do nothing with it for a while, I decided to be a necromancer for a day. Not sure where to put it so I went with ~misc. In doing it, I know I'm probably forgetting some of the lore/timeline details. I haven't read a lot of wiki material, fan books, etc. I just watch old reruns now and then and had an idea rolling around in my mind.
For context, let's pretend everything after 2005 just didn't happen, that the TNG movies were mostly dreams, and it's 15 years later. We're relying mostly on TNG/VOY/DS9 for the setting. The show runs for four seasons, with each season being one big arc. I don't know what to call it. If you have a fun name we can do that, and if you want I can try to fill in spots where folks have questions.
ok, let's go (boldly)
Eventually, the Enterprise is assigned a rescue mission. A science guy on an outpost near the Romulans got himself into some shit with the locals and the Federation would like to avoid a violent misunderstanding. The Enterprise sets out, and when they get there do a pretty typical heroic thing - they battle some angry aliens, find the scientist, and recover his stuff for him. Aboard the ship though, they find that some of what the scientist had is odd. There are tools, weaponry of a kind they haven't seen before, that do things uncharacteristic of Federation technology. The scientist denies knowing much about it, but it's clear from how they're engaging something is being kept from the Enterprise crew. The guy knows more than he's saying, but because he won't explain all they can do is take him back home and hand over what they found.
When they arrive at a starbase and check in with Starfleet, the captain is puzzled by their reaction to his report. They acknowledge what he found, but offer no real explanation/details. He's told it's simply not part of his mission to know. Before they're done, he checks out the equipment one more time, and discovers an insignia - Federation Security, the apparatus that grew and expanded during the Dominion War. Federation Security didn't disappear when the war ended, but its role was greatly reduced. A landmark moment in that history involved a new civilian government legislating various constraints on its activities and paring back the surveillance machinery built up for the Dominion War. The captain is puzzled why this organization would be operating on a remote outpost at the edge of the territory, and tries to investigate further. He finds bits and pieces, communications to and from the outpost in an indecipherable format. He tries to find out more about the scientist, and discovers he has always been in close contact with various structured linked to Federation Security. Those monster-of-the-week encounters were all also associated with the scientist's work - he was communicating with them, and to some degree may have orchestrated some of the moments the enterprise was sent there to resolve.
Before the captain can put things together though, they receive orders to head out again on another mission near Romulan space. Along the way, strange things begin to happen. System failures, computer glitches, mechanical problems crop up and no clear explanation for them emerges. When the Enterprise reaches its destination, they are unable to locate the folks they're meant to rendezvous with. They try to reach Starfleet, but their communications start screwing up, and the engines become nonfunctional. As the crew tries to work out what is going on, multiple explosions rock the ship. Cloaked vessels are firing upon it, and the system malfunctions mean the Enterprise is more or less adrift. The ship is badly damaged, but in the nick of time engines get restored and they warp away. They set off for a starbase, but without the ability to communicate out to anyone.
When the Enterprise makes it to the starbase, they come to find this incident is already known to everyone. Across Federation space it's been broadcast that the Enterprise was attacked by the Romulans. Though it's unclear exactly why they would do that, the incident is such a surprise that folks are scared, and leadership is saying this portends a larger conflict if the Romulans don't have a good explanation for what happened. While the Enterprise is docked, the captain/crew try to get in touch with Starfleet to inform them of what happened, but everyone they speak to seems dead set on seeing the incident as an unprovoked attack. The system malfunctions and original mission details aren't being included in folks' accounts of what happened and they won't correct their stories after hearing from the Enterprise crew.
On their own, the captain and crew try to figure out what they can about the vessels that attacked them. The Enterprise didn't pick up much, but what little it did seems to indicate weaponry in some way similar to the weird stuff they found when they rescued the scientist. Before they can land on anything definitive, repairs are completed and Starfleet orders them out to rendezvous with other ships to help prepare for a border operation. Before they leave the starbase, the captain alone in his office is approached by Federation Security. He is told, they know of the particulars he's been trying to communicate, but they are ordering him to stay silent about the reality of his encounter. He must also ensure his crew stays silent too. If he tries to defy these orders, they will be removed from their posts. The captain, knowing at this point how wide the narrative has been broadcast about the attack, reluctantly agrees. The Enterprise then sets out for its next mission.
While the Enterprise is en route to the other Federation ships, the captain can't help but be fixated on that encounter with Federation Security. Something has to be afoot, but given how quickly everything evolved since the encounter with the cloaked ships, he knows he has to work out what to do on his own. As the Enterprise travels between systems, picking up different missions and coordinating with other ships, he notes areas in space where their communications will be less effective, and takes those moments to conduct investigations. During some of their encounters with the other ships, they meet people descended from characters in TNG/DS9/VOY. Through these characters, the captain comes to learn about stuff that never got told to folks, like the 29th century time traveler, covert operations surrounding Deep Space 9, etc. He learns details about what happened with each of the other Enterprise vessels, and is made to confront the idea that his Enterprise isn't like those. Those really were about exploration and discovery; his is more of a pawn in a larger scheme, the resurrection of an old image to serve a malign end.
The captain becomes convinced, there is something deeply wrong with what is happening - Federation Security seems to have a much larger role in the Federation's leadership than what was known to most people, it didn't lose the power it had accrued. At this point, the captain pulls together his most trusted crew members (the bridge crew, basically) and lays out what he's come across. The Enterprise continues its missions, and when another opportunity to work in secret presents itself, they get together.
They determine the cloaked vessels were in fact using weapons identical to the kind they found with that federation scientist. The tools he had were for intercepting and altering communications. The Romulans don't appear to have been doing anything of note anywhere near the part of space where they were attacked. As they get the details straight, a dark truth begins to emerge - Federation Security, not the Romulans, attacked them, utilizing cloaking technologies derived from some of the weird 29th century shit Voyager came across. They were attacked so as to give pretext for a conflict with the Romulans, which would mean a newfound need for Federation Security to take up a leading position within the Federation power structure. Much of the history they understood simply wasn't true - while on the surface, the Federation backed away from security/surveillance, in truth these aspects were being consolidated behind the scenes using much of what prior Enterprise excursions came across.
The captain and crew decide, they have to reach the Federation's civilian leadership with what they've uncovered. They quickly come to see though, that will not be easy to do. Their investigation allowed them to understand some of how Federation Security operates, and in a revelatory moment they see that Federation Security is practically everywhere. They can observe what the crew does on their ship computer, they can see through the cameras, everything they're doing can in some way be observed. As its dawning on them that their entire effort has probably been seen, the Enterprise comes under attack.
This time, it's a fleet of Federation ships. Communications are established, and the captain is told they are being apprehended for having sent sensitive information out to the Romulans. The captain and crew know, this is a setup, and so instead of surrendering they fight back and haul ass toward the nearest edge of Federation space. They escape. The ship is damaged but still functional, and once past the border their pursuers eventually turn back. Alone, in need of repairs, the Enterprise charts a course to an unpopulated system.
With the Federation now hostile to them, and without means of getting in contact with anyone inside the Federation, the Enterprise crew devises a plan to get their ship fixed up and contact the other, non-human species within/around Federation space. The Klingons, the Romulans, the Vulcans, so on and so forth. They work on outfitting a shuttle to be able to cross borders undetected, so they can get to the various homeworlds and see if they can inform these species of Federation Security's scheming.
With each encounter, they outwit and fight it out with the intelligence apparatus of each species, in stories based on wild shit actual intelligence agencies did. For example, in one episode they pick up some supplies only to find they've been laced with poisons. They reach the Klingons and have to deal with the Klingon KGB thinking this is all some triple agent stuff. They reach the MI5 Romulans and have to throw off pursuit by cloaked ships. They make it to Vulcan in disguise and feed false information to their Federation associates. Lots of room for half-monster-of-the-week material. In the end, they manage to reach important people with each species, and come out with a new plan to get the truth broadcast to the whole of the Federation all at once.
A coalition of ships, outfitted for secrecy/evading detection, along with a similarly outfitted Enterprise, will penetrate into Federation space on a course toward Earth. Using every dirty trick, they will attempt to distract and throw off Federation Security enough for the Enterprise to make it to Earth's big communications relay, where they can broadcast to everyone the truth of Federation Security's false flag op. They're under the gun, because while they've been doing all this the Federation has been gearing up for a bigger conflict. The border with the Romulans is destabilizing, folks are getting in petty skirmishes, the populace is being brought to thinking they must go and fight. If they don't make it in time, the war will begin proper and there's no telling where that will go.
The coalition fleet assembles, pinpoints where they've got the best chance to cross back into Federation space, and get going.
Eventually they get near the Sol system. The Federation's warships are all over the place, with enough firepower that the Coalition Fleet stands no chance in a direct encounter. Through the use of all their weird intel agent tools they manage to evade detection and throw off pursuits, but not without some having to escape and others getting destroyed. Eventually the time comes, where the Enterprise alone has to get to Earth while the fleet performs a distraction.
The Enterprise nears the moon, and figures out a way by which they can evade detection by maintaining a stationary orbit in a spot of weird stuff in between moonbases (I gotta technobabble that one I'm sorry). The captain and bridge crew man a shuttle and head out for the communications array, a big structure in between the Earth and the moon (again not sure whether that exists but let's just say it does).
At the array they encounter almost no resistance. By now they know, something is up, but they have to complete their mission so they keep on. The goal is to send out a broadcast through the array that provides irrefutable proof of what they've found about Federation Security's attack as well as what information they could put together from their encounters up to this point. The hope is that once this is out there, Federation Security will lose enough credibility that it will be isolated - the rest of the Federation will hopefully turn against it.
As they near the station they need to use, they are stopped by Federation Security's topmost people. They're offered a deal - surrender, hand over their information, the captain will be put on trial and the crew will be spared. For a moment it's uncertain how this will play out, because the experience of getting to this point has been one of continuous paranoia, suspicion, betrayal and exhaustion. However, together, they refuse, and fight it out while the captain and first officer get to where they need to be to get the broadcast done.
They succeed. The Federation, all at once, is informed of what has happened. The remaining ships of the Coalition Fleet phone home, and ships from all over the quadrant approach to take down what forces Federation Security can muster. Most of the Federation turns against FS as well, so their leaders get apprehended and their power structure dismantled. The captain and crew, exhausted, head back to the shuttle, board the Enterprise and reveal themselves to the wider populace as this coalition effort secures the space.
The show picks up again a few years later. After this incident, the Federation underwent a radical stage of transformation, in which the warmongering security apparatus was taken apart for good. In doing so, there were times of difficulty and disagreement - the other species came to learn of stuff that made relations harder to maintain, but because of the Enterprise's efforts in 2540 these ultimately were resolved. The captain and crew were eventually lauded as heroes of Federation, though none took up positions of leadership. Instead, many of them resigned, to live as civilians after having seen a bit too much. The captain stayed for a time, but eventually decided it was best for someone else to captain a new model, one that could conduct its exploratory missions without the burden of having been at the center of a big nasty scheme.
THE END
If I could summon infinite money and good actors, I think I'd focus a lot on the idea that following the end of DS9, the Federation wasn't quite the same thing as before their war with the Dominion. My read of DS9 was of the Federation slowly transforming into a security state - it was losing some of its freedom and exploratory nature for the sake of defending itself. By the end of DS9 it felt like the Federation had lost some of its spirit, and was left in a situation where it needed to seriously interrogate what it was all about. Voyager went further along in time but I don't remember it having much to say about the state of the Federation broadly.
My beef with post 2005 Trek (as in, after Enterprise was over) was that instead of heading on into the future the franchise kept going back. I wanted to know, what happened to them after the war was done, when the need for surveillance and security fundamentally changed. Did they just go back to being about discovery and science and stuff, or did they go down a paranoid, Terran Empire sort of path? I think either could have been interesting, but more importantly I think leaving off with that kind of uncertainty was a good setup for doing a show that would have landed real hard years down the line. We all lived through the emergence of things like mass surveillance and the algorithmic internet and I feel like Star Trek should have been there to show us some of what could be done with that. I would like to hope that if a deep truth got sent out into the world it would mean something, so that's what's in what I wrote here. I think there would be a lot of room in a show like this to reexamine the role of the stuff we experienced, grew up with, etc., through the lens of an Enterprise captain realizing his mission isn't what it appears to be.
I hope that was fun. Always happy to take feedback and hear what kinds of stuff ya'll think would make for a good show.
Edit: Guess I'm adding Babylon 5 to the storage drive. I don't know why I never saw it but I will happily follow ya'll's suggestion on that one, sounds good to me
No holodeck adventures, no hiding in space clouds, no musical dance numbers, no soap operas ( just a tiny bit ) and no less than subtle modeling of how people should behave.
Stories that were actually interesting and that held your attention.
Some of episode 5 was derivative from other Star Trek's and other sci-fi series, but it was done well.
Episode 6 was engrossing and with a surprise ending. I like the slow buildup of King Arthur ( Kirk ) eventually pulling the sword out of the stone ( taking command of the Enterprise ).
Episode 7. I knew people in college like Beto. I thought the actor did a great portraying such a person. I even found myself getting irritated though Star Fleet is fiction. I loved how Uhura handled him. She was kind, but she completely unmasked what he was behind his behavior.
Cas' Short Slices were a series of reviews for my favorite short stories, previously posted on reddit. Each comes paired with a full length novel or novella that comes stylistically or thematically close. These are #1 to #5 (by date of posting, not ranking!).
There are stories to read and forget. There are stories that linger in my head long after, shouting to be remembered. Then there are stories that haunt me like a ghost, that don’t need to shout for me to never let them go.
Selkie Stories… draws you into the heartbreak of a teenage girl lost in the mysteries of her broken home and the stories she tells herself to make sense of it all. It carves a window into her burgeoning relationship with her co-worker Mona and her own darknesses. In the narrator, Sofia writes pain and hope and grief and the reckless desperation only young love can bring.
Even for a short story this piece is brief, spanning a mere three thousand words. But those words pack a hell of a punch, enough to leave me breathless – and that’s a magic of its own.
Read it yourself here at Strange Horizons.
Hungry for more? Check out How To Be Both by Ali Smith, a Man Booker-nominated novel with similar themes running throughout, gorgeous prose and characters that’ll make you cry.
Sometimes when you chase after something, you find in the end that what you’ve been looking for only exists in the figment of your imagination. Inside your head, the object takes on a life of its own until it diverges from real life. It’s always painful to realize what you wanted all along was never really there in the first place.
Rachel Swirsky takes the classic story of Galatea and Pygmalion and casts all players under scrutiny. Not just the artist and his sculptor but behind them, the affairs of Aphrodite who gave life to a statue and her contentious relations with the remaining Greek pantheon. It’s a love story, but also more than that. This story explores how nature shapes who we are, the many faces of desire and how it can change into something darker, something unpleasant.
I tend to wax over good prose but it’s such a hard quality to define, let alone master, that I have to give it mention here. The descriptions are vivid and strong, each scene painted clear without falling into the pitfall of purple prose. And these words aren’t window dressing – the author knows what she wants to say and how to say it. This story is a long one – more novelette than short story – but definitely well-worth the read.
Read it yourself here at Uncanny Magazine.
Hungry for more? Check out Glimpses by Lewis Shiner.
This is a book I really love, and it’s all but unknown in these parts. Ray works as a radio repairman in 90s’ Texas, who finds one day an album by The Doors appearing in his workshop. Only thing is, the album’s never been recorded and released. Over time, Ray learns to walk down alternate timelines into the past – where he has the possibility to change things and make a difference.
Lewis tackles difficult themes such as the obligations of someone trapped in a loveless marriage, alcoholism and the struggle not to project your needs onto others. What’s more, he does them justice.
On surface level, these two are nothing alike but the parallels are there in the characters of Ray and Pygmalion, both of them are looking for something more without knowing what it is they really want.
Want something closer to Love Is… in theme? Try Galatea, by Emily Blunt. A different take on the story, presented in the unusual form of interaction fiction. It’s well-written and considered to be one of the best in it’s genre. Available online here.
There's been a lot of clamour recently for stories that aren't entrenched in darkness and grit. We're all tired of seeing depressing things in social media, in the news. Sometimes all you want is to see a ray of light shining at the end.
Enter The Dancer... where a young woman finds herself awakening on an empty flight of stairs, stretching forever in both directions. She's thrust into another world with no preparation, not even sharing a common language with the people there. Without crichtén - the coin of the stairway - she has no way past the guards stationed on each floor. And crichtén isn't something that can be bargained for. So she wanders on, lost and hungry and desperate to learn and navigate a culture entirely alien from her own.
Why I love The Dancer... is that ultimately, it's a story about kindnesses. From the guard sympathizing with her plight to the old pilgrim sharing his knowledge of the world with someone hapless as a newborn, it tells you that while the world may be cold, it isn't cruel. There are people out there who are willing to reach out to those in want, and to extend a hand into the dark.
Read it yourself here at Strange Horizons.
Hungry for more? Check out The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Much lauded by /r/fantasy, this book contains much the same warm tones and hope carried by The Dancer... If you haven't checked it out yet, I'm adding my voice to the chorus telling you to do so now!
Throughout mythologies there are countless variations of the story of the changeling wife. Selkies, huldras and crane wives play on the theme of captive spirits lured into the world of men by force or trickery.
In Fox Magic, Kij Johnson allows us a glimpse of the inverse through the eyes of a kitsune, or fox maiden. The unnamed narrator grows infatuated with the master of the property on which she and her family resides. The man is married with a wife and son. She is a fox, she does not care. And in this way the story delves into the quiet horror of seeing a person trapped in a waking dream, in what another thinks is love.
The nature of magic is that it's often cruel, giving power to one and not another - easy enough to parallel in the real world. So we have to not just look but see, and realize when it's past time to let things go.
Read it yourself here at Kij Johnson's website.
Hungry for more? Check out The Forgotten Beasts Of Eld by Patricia McKillip. Though she writes with a lighter touch than Kij, Forgotten Beasts... is very much in line with the themes in this short story - how strongly magic tempts when it promises to give you your heart's desire, how affection needs to be a two-way street.
Nobody can choose the circumstances of their own birth, and some people come into being in more unusual ways than others. Most of us create an identity for ourselves through the passing of time and gathered experience. For Terry, it's nowhere near that simple.
The moment Terry comes into existence her parents are waiting to claim her, parents she doesn't remember. The doctor informs her that the drug Zen is responsible for stripping away her knowledge of who she was. Whoever inhabited her body before the overdose, she's gone now and left Terry there in her place. And already she's started to form memories of her own, disparate from the expectations of the people calling her their daughter and wanting her back again.
Second Person... is centered around the themes of self-actualization despite the expectations of those around you. Whoever you were is unimportant, what matters is who you are in the now and in the end, it's up to you to make your identity.
Read it yourself here at Clarkesword Magazine.
Hungry for more? Check out The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker. Chava, the titular golem, comes to life during a voyage to a promised future in New York. But the one who's commissioned her dies in an unexpected manner, she's left unmoored to find her own way in a strange new city.
Strange New Worlds Season 3 is out. So far 2 episodes have been released. I have seen the first episode.
I have some thoughts about the underlying themes of Strange New Worlds. This will not have spoilers because most of what I'm talking about appeared in previous seasons and in the trailer for season 3.
The main theme that I see in the show is that the people in the crew are actualized adults. They have empathy and compassion. If they do something heroic, it is in the spirit of self sacrifice for their friends and colleagues and the human race in general. They have some flaws, but when they find out about the flaws they try to work on self-improvement.
This is most completely embodied in Captain Pike. He expends much of his energy getting feedback from his crew. He gets opinions from experts in various fields, and then makes a decision without doubt. He is open to criticism and fights for what he believes in. He is the opposite of an authoritarian leader.
I would contrast this somewhat to the behavior of Captain Kirk from the original series. Kirk would go to his advisors (mostly Spock and McCoy), but usually as a secondary source. Pike makes a much larger effort to check with the crew first, and relies on more different opinions.
It can also be contrasted with the behavior of Captain Picard. Picard is much more authoritarian and has a very rigid moral code which seems largely based on tradition and values like honor and service.
I enjoy Strange New Worlds very much. I am aware that it is extremely "woke", and that I am being given an example how how we should treat each other and solve problems. I don't mind this at all, and it seems completely in line with the morality which has always driven the best Star Trek.
There is one other thing I noticed in S3e1: Captain Pike takes a moment to pray. I don't remember seeing this in Star Trek before (but it probably has happened). I haven't decided yet why the writers included this. It could be to show a little background about Pike's upbringing (he mentions his dad before doing it). It could be a concession to conservatives who watch the show. It could be that Pike will try all possible avenues in case they may help.