‘Deep They Delved, Once’ is a Fermi Resolution story, but it hasn’t jelled yet. Maybe this week.
Tag: patreon microfiction
Patreon Microfiction: Keep Your Distance.
Alas for the hero of ‘Keep Your Distance,’ humanity can understand aliens that hate them. Humanity can understand aliens that love them. What it has difficulty grasping is the idea that there may be aliens who simply couldn’t care less.
Patreon Microfiction: Rationalization.
Yeah, ‘Rationalization’ works as a title on several levels. You gotta feel at least a little bad for that entity, though. The situation is obviously not optimal, only nobody involved and making dumb decisions particularly wants it fixed. They just want somebody to blame. We’ve all been there.
Patreon Microfiction: A Stellar Aesthetic.
One of the things about makes me sad about not being physically immortal is that I’m going to miss out on what happens to interstellar spaceships once they get cheap enough for the hobbyists to play around with them. The universe of “A Stellar Aesthetic” is full of them. It’s always these incredibly old dudes with a blowtorch, a cigar, and no protective gear, too. You encounter a guy like that working on your ship, you’d be bizarrely comforted by the sight…
Patreon Microfiction: Death Is Cheap.
…Look, it’s not like he’s sacrificing people, right? Death is a part of life, so it’s a part of magic, and there’s gonna be market forces at play encouraging the cost of resurrections to go down. You don’t make your pile raising one person for a thousand gold: you make it by raising fifty people for a hundred each. There’s simply more of them who can afford that fee, as long as you make sure that Death is Cheap…
Patreon Microfiction: Rest Cure.
Seriously, ‘Rest Cure’ points out what I think is an under-examined wrinkle in the entire ‘personal apotheosis’ thing: why are we assuming higher-dimensional beings are just going to be blandly welcoming? We’d be popping in out of nowhere, with no relevant life skills from their point of view. I mean, sure, well done and everything with transcending your lower-dimensional prison. …What did you expect to do now?
Patreon Microfiction: Scorpio Five.
I dunno if ‘Scorpio Five’ is best suited for a novel, or a TTRPG setting. The reason I wonder about the latter is that if you run a game in it the players are immediately gonna want to leave, simply because they’ve been told it’s impossible and that’s just catnip to gamers. Search your heart; you know this to be true.
Patreon Microfiction: It’s the Apocalypse When We Say It Is.
Patreon Microfiction: Crazy Money.
“Crazy Money” is about as close as you’re ever going to see me come up with an indictment of capitalism. Which is to say, not very close at all. It’s not that it’s perfect, but all the other systems are worse.
Patreon Microfiction: Songs of The Orcish Steppes.
‘Songs of The Orcish Steppes’ would make for a decent Western. I could see orcs as cowboys. More importantly, I figure that so could they. …I obviously don’t mean Tolkien orcs, here. I mean their more civilized literary descendants.