The Kickstarter for my latest book; ‘Queen Mabs Palace’,launches TOMORROW, on the 1st of October at about now-ish UK time. So, over October I will be trying to blog and post asmuch as possible. All of my posts will have the ‘Queen Mab- suffix during that periodand all should have an image with a link to the Kickstarter.

They will also be original content!

I will try to focus my posts around Mabbish subjects, ontwo main poles; Autumn, for the Fey and Fantasy aspects of Queen MabsPalace, and Echoing Stars, for the Science Fiction aspects.

None of these are ‘additions’ or content for the book,but could be parallel texts; essays and creations on similar and not-not-canonsubjects.

Echoing Stars is a concept for a dark Science Fictionreality influenced by the background suggested by the Alien films, theiradjacent tie-in fictions, partner stories like Predator, The Ice, byStephen Pyne, the work of Peter Watts, and several other things. It wouldprobably fit in reasonably well with my old setting Cryogenic Rats.

This is not ‘the background to the Alien Universe’ aslarge parts of that are either contradictory, or not very good, but a reality suggestedby those stories. It’s a dark reality, and a gothic one, but a purely secularcreation, without demons, ultra-powerful evil aliens or any grand conflict togive meaning to existence. In fact, though it has elements of survival,exploration and discovery, its really about finding or forcing meaning uponreality.*

(Though it will have super-scary monster aliens, theyjust don’t have any actual plan or aim, but are more like abandoned gunsdiscovered by savage children.)*

Echoing Stars About two hundred years from today, explorations in theSolar System confirm that life on earth is the product of an ancient weaponstest.

At around the same time the truth is formally recognised,and becomes common knowledge; that mathematics is not real, and provides onlyan approximate description of reality. The art is fit for engineering, butlittle else.

Eldritch Serenity by JespereshExploration of our Local Sphere through cryo-sleep andcrude Gravity Drives discovers worlds strewn like poisoned gems. Cryo itselfputs unavoidable stress onto the human form, taking off days, weeks, months oryears of life, inculcating uncurable neurological problems and vaguepsychological distress, depending on the quality of equipment, expertise,length and repetition.

While mankind gains the power to move to other worlds,life does not spread, and worlds do not sustain. No human colony breeds abovereplacement level. Earth writhes and rots. Humanity may spread amongst thestars, but only as water spills across a table, petering out and evaporating,drying to a stain.

The Tomb Worlds seem to prove this is a universal rule.It has happened before, to strange species separated by millions or millennia.They rise, spread briefly, and slowly die away. In all the Galaxy, the onlyLife is the product of ancient weapons, cultic observances or acts of worshipto an unknowable other. The only living worlds are research sites, emptypalaces, regressive, dying colonies, or those things feeding upon them. Theonly aliens are incoherent degenerates who do not understand their own technology,votive species sculpted by long dead sophonts as acts of unknowable ritual,literal weapons, or the effluvia of dark experiments in forgotten wars.

As are we.

Bedlam by JespereshLife won't spread. Technology fails or ascends beyondcomprehension. Mathematics isn't real. Science and the capacity of the humanmind to understand, hit a hard limit; this is known. What persists in man isthe curiosity of a fly as it mindlessly slams itself against a barrier itcannot perceive; alchemy and engineering, though such names are rarely used;divining through complex rules of thumb, but without full conceptualunderstanding, combining and 'experimenting' with recovered tomb-tech, withoutreally understanding what will happen. Sometimes the same exact experiment orcombination produces different results.

There is no Great Enemy, no grand opposing force. Nodrive but shallow greed and fear of personal death. While many things aredangerous, and there are spheres from which none return, they have no interestin us, and seem not to understand the harm their mere attention might do us.

Few hope any more for transcendent meaning, god-machines,post-humanity, alien congress, or escape from this galaxy. Mankind walks thestars, not in hope but seeking trinkets - knowledge, or fragments of portablewealth, curiosities for the Wunderkammer, to return to the solar spheres andperhaps buy a life of comfort on one of the bright, rare pinnacles of natureleft upon a teeming overwritten earth.

Cold worlds and curious flies, rats among echoing stars.