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#sf

96 posts50 participants1 post today
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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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#sf #sff #sciencefiction
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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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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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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
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