LINKDING

<blockquote>Six months ago, the Very Large Array picked up a signal. Well, we didn’t pick it up so much as received a targeted message asking for a meeting. The senders—part of an alien civilization hurtling toward Earth in an inconceivably advanced spacecraft—had been studying our broadcasts, and that was how they learned about us, just like in the movies. The rest of it wasn’t going much like the movies. The Mapmakers—we didn’t know why they called themselves that—would land, but they would only talk to one person, and not anyone in power. No taking them to our leader. This request caused an uproar, quickly quashed because we still didn’t know what they could do or what they wanted. Apparently, one-to-one negotiation was their tradition—put two people in a room and see what they talked about. They said vast networks had been built on such beginnings. Start with the personal, work up from there. They were adamant; this was the method they always used. All we had were faulty expectations. Nobody wanted to let just one person have that much power or take that much glory. Or take the fall, was how I looked at it. Just one person couldn’t possibly represent all of us. But what choice did we have?</blockquote>

<blockquote>The blob finished rotating into place in a way that wasn’t quite compatible with geometry as Shen Qingqiu understood it, and cleared a throat it didn’t seem to have. “Greetings,” it said, somehow clearly addressing him in particular more than the room as a whole despite its total lack of features other than blueness and translucency. “I’m here on behalf of the Hyper-Celestial Peace and Order Enforcement Bureau. Crime scene secure, proceeding to interviews. Beginning with Subject One: You are Shen Qingqiu, formerly Shen Yuan, also known as Peerless Cucumber?”</blockquote> ➤ the one where a space cop comes to a peak lord meeting to explain that the people behind the system are being punished, and thus unintentionally revealing a whole pile of sqq & sqh's secrets ➤ series consists of: and judgment is just like a cup that we share and the wind takes a bird where it blows well past the weeds

<blockquote>Two men from alien races with a long and violent history try to bring an abandoned colony world back to life.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The anchorage appeared on my radar screen as a blip, a blotch, one bit of detritus among many. The accompanying message was gentle but persistent, an invitation repeated on loop for anyone who might pick it up: visit if you like. The politest distress call in the universe. Visit if you like, and please bring food, printer fuel, next gen wires, conversation… I forwarded the signal to Captain Rousseau. This action revealed impatience on my part, excitement, an inability to wait until after breakfast. But I couldn’t help it. Novelty. Newness. I craved it like a subterranean lizardman craved phosphor. I craved it like Captain Rousseau craved silence. Over the past year, my crew (yes, my crew, my crew, the word still sounded the way I imagine liquor tastes, warming and biting and frightening and loud)—my crew made medical deliveries to a dozen colonies. We saw titanium waterfalls and genetically enhanced caribou. We walked through bone-lined catacombs. We rode air trams through toxic jungles. We stopped a necrotic worm outbreak and vaccinated three thousand children against belly rot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>This started off as a one-time shitpost I began writing while I waited for someone to get out of the bathroom. Before I realized what was happening, it had spiraled into an ongoing and deeply self-indulgent comedy gay romance novella. I'm having fun here. The space emperor is the tyrannical dictator of the observable universe, complacent on his palatial pleasure-planet. Little did he know that the power of gay love and an excess of pulpy sci-fi tropes would change the course of his life....... forever........</blockquote> ➤ this starts off silly and then very quickly becomes very serious about its silliness in a really delightful way. It's still a wip but ch14 convinced me I need to bookmark it now already -- that chapter is an incredible stand-alone story just on its own tbh and I had feelings ➤ (read through ch15 as of last checking)

<blockquote>It is thus with great surprise that I read the recent article by Sleazebaggano [9] that argues that Falleen are "reptomammalians" descended from reptiles that acquired mammalian reproductive strategies—including gestation and bearing of live young and production of a nutritious substance from pectoral mammary glands to feed those offspring—via hybridogenesis, i.e., ancestral mating and subsequent hybridization with a mammalian species. (An academic fight about whether Falleen are reptiles or mammals, because I wanted to write fic in the style of a snarky reply letter.)</blockquote>

<blockquote>They called her a queen, though she was not one: but the circlet of light on her head and the ceremonial robes she wore gave her the semblance of one to the Terrans in the city of Zsa, the Terrans who had been carried away from Old Earth when it was conquered by the Psyn. She was not a queen, but the Terran Liaison to the Empress of the Psyn; and now she was no longer that.</blockquote> ➤ OH WOW

<blockquote>Ludmila’s vision of “the place” seemed to have been etched deep into her consciousness as it continued to exert a supreme influence on her life. It was a place that appeared at once utterly real and completely imaginary, and she devoted her life to painting it. Each painting formed a discrete fragment of its landscape; yet taken as a whole, her oeuvre constructed an impossibly detailed and vivid sense of the spellbinding place that so clearly inhabited her mind. Journalists never stopped asking her, “What do you call this place, Ludmila?” But her response, as well as the flustered and somewhat apologetic look on her face, were always the same: “There is a name for it, in my head, but it’s as if I can’t say it out loud.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>Alix Campbell is not particularly pleased to be on the list of staff for Earth's very first appearance at the Galactic Council.</blockquote> ➤ space bureaucracy! also, one of those stories where you can tell the author is familiar with the career in question, always a delight

<blockquote>What happens when a disembodied AI and her amorphous slime best friend get a synthesized body to experiment with? To start with....mammal bodies are weird. But also: they're kind of fun. </blockquote>

<blockquote>The thin gray webs stretching across Aunt Melissa’s hand hadn’t been there the night before. Her condition wasn’t supposed to be contagious, but I went to the kitchen for some latex gloves anyway. If these webs were a new stage, all the procedures might change. There was still so much we didn’t know about the alien microbes now living in her body.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Dis (tance that shatters to splinters of near) In (coming moments divided by fear) Ter (ribble burning of ablative shields) Gra (y as the stormclouds of flickering fields) Tion (ting the power we need to survive)</blockquote> ➤ Author's note: <blockquote>This is a crude translation of an alien form of poetry/song that I made up. The idea is that the first syllable would be sung suspended under the rest of the line by one voice, while another sings the rest. Each stanza consists of one word made up of the first syllables in each line -- I've gone with the spelling of the main word, which is a little odd when it means "shimmering" starts with "ti" but there you go. This poem describes crashlanding a ship made for space on a planet with an atmosphere.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Two women who have been friends since they were children—one a recovering alcoholic brought up by parents who believe they’re alien abductees, the other an orphan with an eating disorder—contend with a secret that might doom their friendship.</blockquote>

<blockquote>So his new partner was surprisingly not completely un-attractive, for a human. Gavin Hayes had impressive aptitude scores, and a friendly smile, and eyes sharp as winter currents, taking in the station and remembering names and details with an ease that belied his causal charm. All things that transcended species boundaries and general integumentary inadequacies. It didn’t mean Sezin found him sexy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>I’m no Penelope, and Ralph’s certainly no Odysseus. He is a cheating little rat, however. I could give you a list, but that’s sort of beside the point of this story. Point is, I’ve learned not to believe a word he says, so when he goes camping for the weekend with a buddy, I’m thinking, right, and when buddy comes back without him saying Ralph “just vanished,” I’m thinking right again, and then when he surfaces a whole week later with totally new clothes saying he’s been abducted by aliens, I say, “What’s the bitch’s name, Ralph?”</blockquote>

➤ The one with the invading alien species on earth that has an odd reproductive strategy where the females act as simulacra - inside them is created an environment that teaches the juveniles what to expect from the environment they'll be born into. Compellingly written and interestingly alien.

<blockquote>I relayed the information I’d so masterfully committed to memory in my youth, re: the prophet Elijah being taken up to heaven while still alive and in full possession of his faculties. I’d won a prize for Scripture-knowledge and so had details of this sort at my fingertips. “Although,” I said, as we neared what I took to be the stratosphere, or some kind of sphere at any rate, “just now my resemblance to the prophet Elijah escapes me.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The Mars Light began as a ten-minute short that Bryan Sebold made without a crew after wrapping his Google fantasy series Anvil of the Sun. Now it’s a five-part documentary, which NASA Films released today online and in select theaters. Mr. Sebold spoke with me via Skype about shooting remotely on Mars; about working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which runs the Mars Rover project for NASA; and about what the Mars Light is, which the documentary reveals for the first time. </blockquote>

<blockquote>Stranded on the planet Sigma Nox while searching for a missing away team, Spock and Kirk find themselves pitted against a disturbing native life form. With the captain out of commission on a regular basis and Spock struggling to preserve his stoicism, staying alive is difficult enough – but when a slim chance for escape surfaces, their resolve is truly put to the test. Together they must fight for survival in the heart of an alien jungle, and in the process, uncover the mystery of the planet’s past. Slow build K/S. Written for the 2011 Star Trek Big Bang on LJ - look for links to the mix and art there! Warnings: Minor character death. Mind control themes and sort-of-zombies. Dark at times due to twisted xenobiological shenanigans. Mild themes of stress-related weight loss. Heaps of TOS references and/or spoilers. Eventual smut. Freakishly long chapters.</blockquote> ➤ A very good fic! I loved the inclusion and importance of Longclaw, and how different she was while still able to work together with them. ➤ I was also very interested by the ecology/history/alien-anthropology of the planet, and although I am sad the fic didn't end by giving us conclusions about exactly what all is going on with this place, it leaves the characters also invested and wanting/intending to know more, which was good and worked for the fic.

<blockquote>“Her Scales Shine Like Music” by Rajnar Vajra is a moving science fiction novelette about an encounter and budding relationship between two aliens, one human, who are the only living creatures occupying a planet in deep space. The human is assigned to guard a valuable find, while his colleagues leave, to file a report with the company that hired them.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Graduate student Krrra, a member of a spacefaring tentacled race of methane breathers, attends an academic debate on the authorship of the famous play, Rmrreo and Jlljeet, which surely could not have been written by the human refugee Benvolio. Things get a little out of tentacle. Any resemblances to actual anti-Stratfordians, living or dead, may or may not be coincidental, because I'm lazy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Mark is pretty sure there's something up here with him, hunting him.</blockquote> ➤ tagged with "psychological horror" and holy crap, this is really good and intense/effective. I am deeply hoping that the demon-alien was just a figment of Mark's mind because otherwise there's MORE of them there on Mars for future missions to have to deal with and just NO. (also the relationship stuff was good))

<blockquote>Is there life on Mars? Yes. Yes, there is. Or, five things about Martians.</blockquote> ➤ i'm so glad this exists

<blockquote>Presenting a new original science fiction story, “A Clean Sweep With All the Trimmings,” by author James Alan Gardner, a Damon Runyon-esque tale of courteous guys, bulletproof dolls, and the fedora-clad spacemen that bring them together.</blockquote> ➤ This is a fun story but I feel rather bad for Kitty. I want to know more of her story. And I want her to have a future where she manages to live for herself. :(

<blockquote>"IF YOU ARE TIRED OF OF BOLDLY GOING WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, BOLDLY COME WITH US!"</blockquote> ➤ or, Kirk and friends decide to create a wiki of the sexual practices of known species

<blockquote>“Dr. Philoghast, by contrast, believes that tumors are born from entire chromosomes—monstrous chromosomes, to be sure, severely deformed by asbestos, benzene, radon, cigarette smoke, hepatitis B virus, and other carcinogens—but still chromosomes. In other words, Inez, your glioblastoma is a species unto itself, an autonomous creature living inside your head, dependent on your brain for nourishment but otherwise free to do as it wishes.”</blockquote> ➤ an odd story, and the ending is a bit confusing, but I enjoyed it nonetheless

<blockquote>At first it was a small voice, a tiny tingly voice that came by night. Ellie was almost asleep—no, she was asleep—when it arrived. It woke her. “Hello,” chirped the small voice. “Greetings, arrive Dutch, good-bye, and happy birthday. Is this the way you speak?”</blockquote>

➤ the one where aliens are appalled to discover an intelligent species made out of meat. They're all like, "MEAT, SERIOUSLY???" and agree to pretend it never happened and mark the entire sector of the galaxy unoccupied.