#sf

Henri shook her hands. After two hours of signing paperwork, they were starting to cramp up.

"Now can I read the script?" she asked.
"We'll do you one better - we'll show you the set." replied the casting director.
"I still want to see the script."
"Don't worry, you'll love it!"
"After that contract and all the NDAs, I'd hope so!"
"Just through here." To her surprise, he did not get handy, and just pointed at a door.

Going through, she was greeted by the sight of a dark jungle. Looking back, there was no wall, just a gap in the air showing the casting director's office. A few metres away was another gap, this time with dozens of cables emerging from it.

"Where are we?"
"We are not entirely sure. We think it is somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, from what the science geeks are saying."
"OK, how?"
"You'd have to ask the producer's kid. She came up with it. Hey, Candy!" he ended with a shout.

A young woman, probably in her early twenties jogged over. "Hi Eric. Is this the number two?"
"Henri Castle", Henri answered before the casting director could.
Candy looked at Eric "Ooh! You got her! Good job!" Turning back to Henri she continued "Welcome to The Studio! We'll get you the script in a tick, I'm really excited that we've got you on board."
"Err... What exactly is the movie about? I've only really done stunt work before, professionally at least."
"Oh, Eric, you didn't tell her? We're doing a movie about the first explorers on an alien world."
"Um, so you've checked the place out?"
"Nope! You'll be the first outside of the bridgehead area!"

Henri stopped, and looked at both of them. "You mean we're doing a reality show?"
Candy grinned "Yep! But without the competition, and hopefully without any eliminations!"
"Hopefully?" Henri asked weakly.
"Well, it is an unexplored alien world! It'll be fun!"

#SF #SFF #microfiction #tootfic #IAmWriting

I was only eight or nine the first time I saw her.

We were visiting the beach in the late afternoon of a particularly hot day - the sort where even breathing feels like an effort. There was no sea breeze, but Dad decided that sweating at home was no good, and that the sun was low enough for us not to need sunscreen, so the beach seemed like a good escape.

Of course everyone else thought the same thing, so we ended up at one of the smaller beaches that is mostly rock and reef rather than sand. As a kid I did not care, I went exploring, and found a tucked away little overhang, with a deep blue gap in the reef beneath it.

And there she was. Just lounging on a rock. She saw me at once. I remember she tipped her head, as if trying to work me out, and then smiled, held a finger to her lips, and dived into the water, vanishing into the reef.

No one believed me of course. Kids always make up all sorts of stories.

The next time I saw her I was twenty-two. I'd just spent three years in a jungle, being shot at by people who did not want me there. And shooting them in turn. I was lucky, after a fashion. No bullet or shrapnel holes in me. But there were all sorts of scars that didn't show, and the doctors at the time did not understand.

I wanted to recall the innocent times, so I went down to that same beach in mid winter. It was a calm day, and I picked my way over the reef to that little overhang. To my surprise she was there. Unchanged. This time she looked at me for longer. Shook her head, let out a little sob - the first sound I heard her make - and dived again into the blue water.

That few seconds saved me. It gave me the hope to carry on, and eventually to heal.

That was twenty years ago. And now I am very literally not the man I once was. I got lucky on the investments I made with my Army pay, and I'm effectively retired at 42. Five years ago I had my final surgeries, and two years ago I took up free diving. Last year, I discovered monofins. And the mermaids. Not real ones, but fun and exciting all the same.

Today I have come back here. I can see her, and this time she's smiling, and beckoning to me. I'll finish this, and seal up this case. I'm probably not coming back. Goodbye land. Hello sea.

#SFF #SF #microfiction #tootfic #MerMay #IAmWriting

#PennedPossibilities 660 — What is your MC’s relationship with their family like?

Thorn Rose's mother was smuggled out of the dragon lands in a crate of onions and garlic to prevent her from becoming a slave, but her mother is obviously an immigrant with an accent and foreign ways despite resembling the majority. Her mother lives in the bad neighborhood because it feels safer. Since her mother has no brother, Thorn has no uncle and was raised by servants. Fathers play no role in the Reluctance Series. Her mother is a grandmother's age, runs a business, and is strict about school and study; that's okay with Thorn because she loves both. What's not okay is her mother thinks boys are a distraction, but is too old to perfectly police a frequently appearing male nuisance. What makes it difficult, and it's because her mother insisted on living in the wrong neighborhood, is it's a daemon consorting with a day angel. Thorn Rose understands her mother's worry and their relationship is tense at times, but Thorn thinks that with Streak at her side they can navigate the prejudice they'll face (like a white girl with a black man in the 1960s) together.

[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

Mad Science isn't all about death rays and trying to take over the world. I mean there are some in the community who go in for that sort of thing, but really? Death rays are a dime a dozen - there is no real challenge to them, and what do they really do to expand our scientific knowledge? Nothing.

Now I know what you are thinking, and yes, some of what some of us do is not morally defensible, and I'm not going to pretend that that sort of thing is something I support. But that is what we have superheros for, right? To deal with those sorts.

The rest of us just want to answer the really hard questions. "Can you stop time?" "Can you travel in time?" "How many licks does it take to get to the centre of various lollypops?" "What if the moon were transparent?" "Is vampirism a disease or genetic?" Those sorts of things.

Why just last week I helped out a fellow who wanted to know about one of those. We only caused a couple of tidal waves, and to be honest, Florida is better off for them. And he got his answer.

So you see? We just want to help people.

#SF #SFF #microfiction #tootfic #IAmWriting

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Here I am catching up on a 10-year-old novel. No, I haven’t seen the movie, but by coincidence I think it turns up on Amazon Prime today. I might have seen the start of it, but I still might not watch it. I don’t like modern movies.

Published in 2014, this is the first of three novels about Area X, which (here at least) is a vaguely defined territory with highly restricted access, a forbidden zone. Some kind of Event with a capital E has occurred there and it has had a major impact on the biology of the area.

Several expeditions have been sent into Area X, not all of which have returned. The unnamed narrator is a member of the 12th expedition, which is already one person down before they even set foot in the territory. Nobody is dignified with a name: just job titles, functions: an anthropologist, a psychologist, a biologist, and a surveyor. The missing member was to be their linguist.

Now, this is already odd (in a good way). What a strange set of specialisms to send into an environmental “red zone”. Previous expeditions, we learn, included medics, but there is no medic here. A biologist makes sense, but more sense would be made by more specialised personnel: a zoologist and a botanist, perhaps. A psychologist just about justifies her presence, but why an anthropologist when there are supposed to be no people in there? Or are there? This was written pre-pandemic, but I couldn’t help thinking of the way that Covid revealed the pointlessness of many jobs. Kept thinking about that space ship full of hairdressers and telephone sanitisers in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

A banker, a lawyer, a hedge fund manager and a business consultant are sent into a forbidden zone.…

They have limited technology, for reasons which aren’t exactly clear at first. No computers, no phones, no tablets. They have limited weaponry. Cameras, but not digital. Notebooks. The biologist, our narrator, is recording the narrative in her notebook, and filling us in a little on her back story. Nobody seems to like each other very much. The group’s leader is the psychologist, who seems manipulative and dishonest. We’ve all had managers like this. They have a kind of map, which puts much emphasis on a lighthouse but omits entirely another major feature, which is a kind of bunker which has a staircase that spirals down into the ground. Why is the bunker not on their map? Why can’t the expedition members agree on what to call it. Some of them think of it as a tunnel (it’s not a tunnel), but our narrator thinks of it as a tower (it’s not a tower). It’s the differend: how can we even have a discussion when we can’t even agree on a form of words to describe the thing we want to talk about? We’ve all been in work meetings like this.

All of this reminds me of Ian McDonald’s Chaga, which is a novel (and sequence of short stories?) published in 1995 about some kind of alien flora which arrives by meteor in Kenya and begins to alter the land at a molecular level, creating a moving wave front of biological transformation. What happens to people who embrace the chaga and step into the transformed region is one of the ideas in the book. Here in the real world, chaga is a kind of fungus that grows on beech trees.

This is a fascinating (and Nebula Award winning) book, well worth seeking out if you’ve not read it. Here’s the persuader: it’s only 208 pages long. It’s a swift but gripping read, and there are three sequels. The second book is 352 pages, but by the time you get to that, you’re already in.

#Books #ScienceFiction #SF