A poem about astronomy, and a reprint of a story about the death of stars.
A poem about astronomy, and a reprint of a story about the death of stars.
Today’s listening is UNDER THE DOME - THE AEON’S DAY
Hello.
Today’s post is a fun one. You get to read one of my oldest science poems, and find out about a reprint of a story from Who Built The Humans?
Do you remember WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?
It’s my idea of a ‘best-of’ collection for a dead writer who isn’t dead yet, a big collection of stories which, upon publication, were all exclusive to the book.
It wasn’t the way most writers would do it. Many would publish some short stories first, but I had this vision of travelling back through time, doing everything inside out, because it might be cool. It might be interesting. It was worth doing it this way because the results could be strange and funny. By turning the usual publishing schedule on its head, I hoped to burst onto the literary scene with a book that would leave a lasting legacy. Sure, I didn’t have the budget to make it an overnight success, but I had the writing to make it stick in people’s minds. Some of you have read it two, sometimes three times, and you discover something new with each flight through the multiverse.
That’s a book that has stuck with people, so I think it was a huge success.
And I am now, four years later, reprinting the short stories that would have otherwise come out first.
Here’s one, a short standalone about alien archaeologists.
In the final days of the universe, two reptilian archaeologists hunt for an ancient alien technology that can reignite the stars. With all but one planet searched in their sector, their attentions turn to a jungle world scanned and scanned again. All reports say the place is feral, never touched by the Ancient Ones. But T'Kxa and Aelak refuse to give up hope for their dying cosmos. Here, in the fertile soil of a doomed fledgling world, they might not find pyramids or starships or star-savers, but they will find something stranger, something which rewrites the story of the Ancient Ones.
- Originally published in Who Built The Humans?, this short story about the end of the universe is a glimpse into Carter's existential adventures.
This eBook is $1 and has been made available so the story can find a new audience. If you’ve not got WBTH and fancy starting somewhere smaller, this is a good place to be.
You can also use that very same button to buy my other books, find my social media, and discover other projects I am working on.
The poem about astronomy
A warping dream (2015/2016) lenses built for cooler worlds gaze now into the haze of hasty policymaking as worsened seasons, rising winds make looking hard, push the science back like a nerd at a house party (heart pierced on the spiked hair of a love rival) and we’ve been playing industrial all night long and children, staring up mystified and misty eyed at mysterious stars now squint at scintillation skin tingling as some celebriscientist celebrates the launch of a new craft and it’s easy to imagine heatwave-cracked glass falling like ice or the metaphorical melting of some metal component, broken ground under unbroken red sky, sandstorms, the bones of ground-down brow beaten scientists and other dream-imagery and metaphor but we’re not there yet still scraping toward oblivion and in their heads there’s still a future but down here, all is not well I’ve Atacama self down it’s just not Chile enough any more and nowhere else will do