Zivan - Childless Cat Guy<p>I've finished: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera</p><p> Rakesfall is a work of art, it requires experience in order to appreciate it. This is not a novel I will gift to friends that are not deep into Sci-Fi. </p><p>I was able to grasp that I was looking at something beautiful, but I needed the final chapter to understand much of what Vajra Chandrasekera was aiming at. </p><p>Rakesfall proposes a cosmology that integrates mythology and technology. It involves possession, gods, demons, time travel and a multiverse, and it takes us all the way from colonial history to the heat death of the universe. </p><p>Yet, it is very much a novel of our time, of the powerful, the greedy and corrupt who wish to attain godhood and those who will oppose them. </p><p><a href="https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/eca894b2-fc35-4eb8-af56-107b1cad4c47" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">app.thestorygraph.com/books/ec</span><span class="invisible">a894b2-fc35-4eb8-af56-107b1cad4c47</span></a></p><p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/bookstodon" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>bookstodon</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/audiobooks" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>audiobooks</span></a></span> <br><a href="https://tweesecake.social/tags/SFF" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SFF</span></a> <a href="https://tweesecake.social/tags/ScienceFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ScienceFiction</span></a> <a href="https://tweesecake.social/tags/bookstodon" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>bookstodon</span></a> <a href="https://tweesecake.social/tags/AudioBookds" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AudioBookds</span></a></p>
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#JustFinished River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
What happens when you need to choose between love and duty? in a world where grammar is magic, maybe the answer lies in riddles. This gorgeous, lyric fairy-tale gives us the answer in song. The audiobook is just under 3 hours long and so worth listening to.
I've finished: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
This Holms and Watson duo really captured me. The fact that the setting isn't London, but a province near the seawall that protects a biotech empire from seasonal attack by giant leviathans makes it much more appealing.
The biotech isn't mimicking current or future technology, it mainly enhances natural abilities. The augmentations have repercussions and unwanted side effects.
The story is toled in first person by Dinios Kol, an engraver, augmented to have perfect recall. He is very competent but suffers from imposter syndrome as he tries to hide his dyslexia from his superiors.
Kol is assigned to assist the eccentric genius investigator Ana Dolabra, an over sensitive woman that has to blindfold herself in order to manage the amount of information assaulting her brain. Kol assits her by going out into the world and recalling what he's seen and heard.
As the plot thickens, we learn more about the empire and its ills.
As mysteries go, our attention is pointed towards many clues, the satisfaction is more in watching competent people do a good job in the face of adversity.
The Tainted Cup is a real page-turner and I found it hard to put down.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a97ae9ff-1aa2-4ea9-a547-f290ac647b61
@bookstodon @audiobooks
#SFF #mystery #AudioBooks #bookstodon
app.thestorygraph.comThe Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson BennettAn eccentric detective and her long-suffering assistant untangle a web of magic, deceit, and murd...
BlueSky is doing a #TransRightsReadathon from Mar. 21-31 
Is it happening on the Fedi, too?
Anyway, looking for #BookRecs 
Cozy trans +/ nonbinary and gender expansive novels, short fiction, webnovels, etc. 
#Romance would do in a pinch, and I love me some delectable #SFF , but #LitFic is also welcome! 
Also, anybody else also planning to participate?
I'm still in two minds whether I'm down with the norovirus or a regular stomach bug, and I don't have enough to go see a doctor who'd inevitably call for a number of expensive tests. Whatever it is, I have no appetite for horror right now.
#PennedPossibilities 613 — How do you feel about the world or universe you’ve created within your WIP? Are you satisfied with it thus far?
Remember. You asked...
How do I feel about the world itself? Like I stepped in a cesspool up to my knees!
Most nations are theocracies, with oligarchs ascendant fighting one another. It's a full extrapolation of post Jan 20th 2025, stabilized with the needle at religio-fascist, by those who preferred stable to bat-shit crazy, and taken 50 to 150 years into the future. (I haven't decided the timeline, yet.) The initials E.M. in EM Mars Colonizations Corp stand for what you think it does, complete with very cute silvery Heinlein spaceships misnomered as Starships. The main character is shanghaied to Mars as a colonist (one added to a population of 10,000) on the last ship making the passage as EM goes bankrupt. All her life, May Ri struggled not to be completely nothing, destined by her gender to barely have agency, valued mostly because she could bare sons. Now she must master living on Mars, with its corporate frontier rules.
There's a reason Mars Needed Women (the title), but the story I'm telling has "Need" in the past tense. Men die disproportionately more often than the women in Mars Space, and when the corporate power structure begins to crumble, May Ri has to fight harder for survival. She, however, isn't interested in keeping the status quo. Neither is all her sister colonists, nor all the first generation (nisei) Martians who have all been raised by only their mothers.
I'm really satisfied with how the story I'm writing works within this universe. It's feminist to the core. It questions gender roles. It tars patriarchy as ruining the lives of women AND men.
It's coming together, gonzo pantser style. Just wrote the 14th installment of 31. I've 8 of the remaining 17 planned. The reader should be starting to see that May Ri is as ruthless as those in power (the men, of course), but with a female twist. She hates being used, but she likes men (finds them fun) and wishes they'd quit with the power-dominance-shit. She hates seeing other women being hurt, and she's the type of person, given the chance, ceases opportunities and makes solutions. When she has four daughters to protect against the Earthers, it becomes very real.
I'm posting all installments on Mastodon thru the month of March on a single thread. To keep up with the story, follow this hashtag: #RSMarsNeededWomen.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 613 — How do you feel about the world or universe you’ve created within your WIP? Are you satisfied with it thus far?
I am, actually. I love creating different universes, and this one is no different. When it comes to anything cyberpunk, dystopian, and grungy, whether it's a book, game, film, television series, or a wonderfully-molded #TTRPG, heck yes—it's going to be something that I'll fall head over feels for. The entire SFF universe within this series of mine is a thing that I'm falling deeper and deeper in love with the more that I write it. It's been a long time coming. This book series (and the world within it) started back in about '08 or '09. The result of all that hard work is more than worth it. In short, yes, I'm so incredibly satisfied.
So I know that more important stuff is going on, but nominations for the Aurora Awards are now open and my short story "Anomaly" is on the eligibility list. If you enjoyed this story and you're a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and would be willing to donate $10 to the cause of speculative fiction, please head over to the CSFFA website and nominate me! (And others. We're all in this together - Elbows Up!) https://www.csffa.ca/awards-information/eligibility-lists/
#Canadian #ScienceFiction #SFF #CSFFA #AuroraAwards
#ScribesAndMakers Mar 13: Shameless self-promotion day.
My debut novel, a space-western called Gas Giant Gambit: A Tall Tale From Beyond the Cygnus Rift is coming out in September, and we just revealed the amazing cover!
#ScribesAndMakers 2503.13 — Shameless Self-Promotion Day. Let's boost away.
Here's the newly minted cover art† for Mars Need Women. Check it out!
It's a web-novel, described in the blurb below. I have been posting it in a single free-to-read Mastodon thread. Here is the story link: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114088945266387178
“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.”
So far I've posted 12 chapters of 31, which I will do more or less daily through the end of this month. The first installment is an inside jacket blurb. The main story starts with a clang in the second installment. Chapter 11 may leave you in tears. #RSMarsNeededWomen
More in the #altText
=-=-=-=
† I designed and created the cover, wrote the blurbs, and did the titles. The images are courtesy of ESA and NASA. The spine is a strip of a Mariner 7 image. This is becoming a hobby of mine, and I am open to requests.
[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author #coverArt #art #artwork
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 612 — Has your SC ever snooped in a friend or partner’s house?
Junk snoops around in everybody's home or place of work, not even a gang warehouse or shop. He's subtle about it. He can't help himself. But hey, that's just how he is and we love him for it. He's silly that way. Plus, honestly, as ridiculous as it sounds, he loves learning about his friends or partners.
Dante, however, respects everyone's privacy and never peeks around in any homes or workspaces. Why bother?
Review: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
Jordan Carroll uncomfortably probes the connections between the field and the right wing of America
@Princejvstin has our review at the NOAF blog
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/03/review-speculative-whiteness-science.html
www.nerds-feather.comReview: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-RightJordan Carroll uncomfortably probes the connections between the field and the right wing of America Jordan Carroll’s academic book Speculat...
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 611 — Have you ever been able to relate to your antagonist / villain? If the answer is yes, then how so?
Honestly, I can't. Not even in a single way. Dr. Death is a bastard who enjoys murdering entire civilizations on planets and using "the leftovers," AKA those who somehow survived, for experiments. There's nothing to relate to there. He isn't just an antagonist. He's a true villain.
Continued thread
I've been playtesting these rules for a bit, and one of the things I love about them is that they're FAST
You make 1 roll, let's say for an attack. That roll of Xd6s (it's a dice pool system) tells you if you succeeded or not, & also what damage you did, & also resolves against armor (passive defense) & active defense (parries, dodges). With the right weapon, the defender can riposte (counter attack) & it all happens in seconds.
Really fun!
Having a bit of fun working up some diagrams & graphics for my #ttrpg rulebook for the Common Accord universe. Fair warning: As I've been writing this, it has turned into a universal system that can be played with any game world from #fantasy to #scifi space opera
I can't wait to get this out to players
I never have as much fun writing as I do when I'm crashing genres into one another and then sprinkling some history on the result.
https://esraye.com/2025/03/11/my-favorite-thing-to-write-genre-mashups-with-a-historical-bent/
E.S. Raye · My Favorite Thing to Write: Genre Mashups with a Historical BentWow. Yeah. That’s a mouthful. But as I look over the original projects I’ve got coming out over the next few months, as well as the projects I’m currently working on, this is unde…
Continued thread
#PennedPossibilities 610 — What are the most significant sounds we hear in your WIP? For example, it could be the sounds of nature or the noises of a bustling town.
• The sounds of market vendors chatting with customers. Marketplaces are popular.
• The typical sounds of a warehouse.
• Alternatively, I also think of the gang's busy smoke shop or the downbeat of music in the nightclub as well.
• We hear chatter in many, many different languages around the Midnight City. One just gets used to it.
• Fun fact: Alexios grumbles, grunts, and groans a lot. He's grumpy, okay? Miserable choom that he is. (it kind of reminds me of Geralt of Rivia a bit, but only in that respect. LOL.)
SWORDS OF MARS (1979)
Acrylic - 20" x 25"
This was one of my favorite books in the series, but probably the least successful of the covers. My selection of yellow as a dominant color may be part of the reason for my dissatisfaction with the painting, as it's my least favorite color. 1/3
