Work in Progress – Celestes

On By Matt FraserIn Short Fiction, Work in ProgressLeave a comment

Do you enjoy a good serial, a story that comes out chapter-by-chapter, or even scene-by-scene? Do you enjoy reading works in progress, before they are finished? Here you go! The opening scene of a new story idea I’m working out. And yes, I’m making this up as I go, though I do have a vague notion of where it’s heading. Want to influence the direction of the story? Have an idea for improvement of what’s already here? Found a mistake? Please comment and let me know! You can do so here on the blog post, or on the story itself by following the link.

This is a “hard” science fiction story, set in deep space. Beyond that, I’ll let the narrative speak for itself.

Celestes

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Writing for the Holidays

On By Matt FraserIn MusingsLeave a comment

Merry Christmas, everyone! Although you may not have heard much from me lately, rest assured that I have indeed been busy, plotting character arcs and so forth, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to share some material with you. Indeed, here it is Christmas morning, and I #amwriting (as we say on Twitter!). And in between all that writing, I’ve been getting in a little cross-country skiing.

How are you spending your holidays?

–image credit: nasa.gov

Purple Prose and the Capricious Narrator

On By Matt FraserIn ContestsLeave a comment

A little over a week ago, an author I follow launched a small contest on his blog, the Post-Apocalyptic Purple Prose Contest (1st annual). You know what purple prose is, right? To quote Gerhard Gehrke, the Capricious Narrator himself:

Elevated language where none is needed. Overly flowery descriptions of the mundane that distract. Haughty verbiage where spare description would suffice. Maximum verbosity. I’d like to honor language on stilts that draws excessive attention to itself as it pertains to the decline and fall of civilization.

In other words, a little fun at literary expense. Naturally, I couldn’t resist, so I whipped up a brief entry and posted it, thinking it would be fun to see what others come up with.

And… I won! To be fair, there was only one other entry, so I’m not sure this classifies as a grand prize of literature — well, especially not, given the nature of the writing involved — but still, I am now the proud possessor of a copy of Gerhard’s newest book, Nineveh’s Child, autographed by the author, and a t-shirt featuring the book cover. See above for a shot of yours truly in said t-shirt, trying to look all post-apocalyptic and such. Ok, I was having some fun with filters.

Oh, and the winning entry? Here it is, in full, for your enjoyment (try not to laugh too hard, now, will you?):

Diana glared, a gleam in her stymied eye, across the purpling sage-filled prairie, golden grains turning red as blood in the decaying light of a dying sun. She wearily lifted a slender, weather-beaten hand to her beetling brow, shielding her fractious gaze from that awful hue, searching determinedly for the slightest sign, the merest indicator, that the egregious enemy so heinously hid in any practical proximity to her present position. Well she comprehended the dire, desperate danger of being capriciously caught in the noxious night, food for the fearful fiends she distinctly despised.

Lots of purple there.

Thanks again to Gerhard for a fun contest! I’m looking forward to settling down for a good read with Nineveh’s Child.

stars nebula space

Engines of Creation

On By Matt FraserIn PoetryLeave a comment

Clear skies of a winter’s night,
Stars ablaze, a thousand suns,
Unimpeded before my sight,
The long journey their light has run.

Mighty Sirius, beacon in the void,
Greater even than Jupiter’s arc;
Tau Ceti with her many worlds,
Shining promise across the dark.

Farther off Arcturus burns,
Capella to the Hyades sings,
Ringed with dust Vega turns,
And Fomalhaut in Castor’s wings.

Centuries off Antares shines,
And Canopus in the southern sky,
Rigel anchors Orion’s belt,
Betelgeuse glows red to our eye.

Deneb, distant, ever so bright,
Her light began in ancient days,
Would dominate the northern sky,
Yet is two thousand years away.

What stories they must have,
These lights of our foundation,
What tales they could tell,
These burning engines of creation.

pleiades stars space
image credit: WikiImages via pexels.com / pixabay.com

Beam Reaching the Void

On By Matt FraserIn PoetryLeave a comment

Brilliant as laser light the sail unfurls
Kilometers across,
Reaching away with increasing delta-v;
Circuits encoded, a distributed control,
Carbon-nano resilient
In the face of strikes of dust.

Decades we have voyaged, our home far behind,
Nothing more than a bright point of light,
A memory of the launching beam;
Now ahead we see, brighter by the day,
Our destination, our Centauri dream,
And fabled Proxima b.

Too fast! Too fast! We must slow down,
Deploy the braking sail,
Vector toward our new Sun;
Angular momentum, control lines pulled,
The sheets and halyards of our ship,
Elliptically sling us around the star.

A dozen trips, two dozen, shedding delta-v
With each successive orbit, easing us slowly toward
Our final home, Lagrange One, stable space between
Star and planet, a million miles yet close enough to touch,
Scopes deployed, sensors arrayed, beaming home the news,
Four years to tell you that we’ve arrived.

Image credit:
Kevin Gill, via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 Generic