Well, here’s how. I’m hosting a small contest here on this page. The idea? Pretty simple. Give me the name of a made up planet in a far off, space opera kind of future, and then in a paragraph (Short! Short! Short is best!) give me a description of that planet. Creativity gets extra awesome bonus points. We’ll have a poll on the results, and the winner gets a free ARC of Open Your Eyes.
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The only really good thing about Tegatha V is the hurricanes. An annual planet-wide shitstorm of acid rain that makes a gooey mess of most everything, including those damn space sprites before they can hatch. Nasty things, space sprites. They’ll bore a bunch of one-inch holes through a ship hull, depressurize the whole thing before you even know you’re in a swarm. They love to swing about in orbit, hibernating in those damn shells of theirs, waiting on some signal to hit the surface again and shoot out a whole new generation faster than you can shove yourself out an airlock. A couple of federation-sanctioned miners have managed to dig in at the polar caps, but folk don’t last too long in them. Something in those razor winds drives a man mad, even hunkered behind three layers of buffered titanium and all the booze a man could want. But the ice–you don’t find ice like that anywhere else. Dig it up right, keep it cold, and it’ll sing like nothing else. So I’ve heard. Knew a guy who said it was like angels. Fuckin’ angels. Hung himself a few days later. Doesn’t seem particularly useful if you ask me, but what do I know? Whether it sounds like angels or is just some hyped up attempt to get something good out of that damned hellhole, I do know a man or two who’d kill for something larger than the fist-sized chunks they ship out to the federation labs. You interested in a cut?
(Oh god, there is so nothing even remotely resembling science in there…the horror, the horror!)
Uh, that was a “short” paragraph, right?
Schedrost was neither the first “waste planet” nor the largest, but it is remarkable for being the only one settled by humans. Eons ago, a starfaring race known from Old Earth records as the Tharaktoi took to planet-shaping. How successful they were is unknown, but they used wormholes to gate leftover building materials into what they thought was dead space… sometimes creating planets accidentally in the process.
Exomineralogists have long admired the vast, rugged peaks of the Georgian Mountains, formed by the impact of a thousand thousand asteroids when the great mass of gasses and liquids appeared from across the universe, suddenly attracting everything nearby to itself. The Sea of Omsk sprawls for thousands of miles to the south in a band around the equator, and cryonauts claim to have espied glistening, frigate-sized worms on the crossing from Romanograd to Kaisk, though they are a superstitious lot and not to be trusted.
The existence of non-human life on the surface of Schedrost has not been verified by teratologists, but our kind is yet thin on the ground here. An expedition to the Rift Zone of the New Tarim Desert is scheduled to depart next year, and who knows what wonders they may find in the deep places of this world.
Science is not necessary. The book you’re trying to win a surrealistic space opera after all
Excellent posts so far!
Ohhh, nice one, JT. Remind me not to go swimming there…
Thanks, Michelle, you too. I want a story about the singing ice!
Okay, I’ll play, I always have ideas from writing prompts.
“Axacellan, the discarded planet, the writhing sphere; a entomological monument to the folly of man. On the edge of a dying solar system, circling a decaying star; the only humans left are the poor, the ones without means to escape to the stars. Insect species purged from nine worlds thrive and ruin, conquer and decimate all that once made Axacellan unique, all that made her beautiful. Abandoned to the cold of space when her resources were exhausted, becoming a dumping ground for unsavory species, dangerous species that frightened, disgusted, and destroyed. Though Axacellan is a domain of danger and staggering death, it is also a testament to life: foreign species prosper and spread like plague, threatening all indigenous life and man. Forgotten world, life–exquisite and abominable, shall flourish in your ruins as planets slowly die. Ecologies crumble, symptomatic of what was taken away, and can now be found creeping through the dust of Axacellan.”
I am going to start a citronella cartel on Axacellan…
LOL Michelle, I guess they could use all the citronella they can get!
In honor of the prize, then:
When Tetrapous was freshly born from its synthetic sunwomb, the acidic seas were diligently supplied by the denizens with all the nutrients necessary to feed the planet and thus sustain both the atmosphere and the life-enabling it gases kept sealed within. As civilization ran its course, however, the Star Gods either moved on to new and distant systems or became simple Star Queens, and then, eventually and irrevocably, mundane royalty upon the planet their ancestors had bred. The myriad sentient races they had populated it with to fulfill a variety of functions began to change in ways their long-since devolved creators had not envisioned, and wars began to spread across the fleshy, porous continents even as new technology eclipsed the forgotten lore that created the planet. Now, even as an amphibious race of burgeoning astronauts take to the stars, an alliance between the royal family and the intelligent species they most resemble-—save for being bipedal and lacking fur—-strive to restore order by descending beneath the surface and locating the brain hidden at the planet’s core. With the proper surgery, the scientists claim, the planet itself could be easily controlled—-meaning balmy climes for the faithful, tidal waves and tempests for the rebellious. But the world has suffered much already, its mountain-bones mined to the marrow and its vein-canals choked with toxic refuse, and the bruising, sickened planet screams its hurt out to the stars in hopes its mothers may yet hear its cry and return to heal it…
Sorry it was so long, looking forward to OYE in any event. Thanks for the word-vomit invitation!
well, i guess i’m probably out of synch with everyone else and so just to prove it a little more than you don’t know what i’m talking about, here come a few blips from …
TERROR PLANET 666666.666666
an cliche evil forboding hums on anyones deepspace sonar (sonar? radar? what century are we in man, the five hundred and sixth century!) telling anyone so foolish as to approach that here is a blasted space, filled with the remnants from a thousand dead religions and their thousand forked tongue/multi-horned/leaking eyes devils and demons. billions of now out-of-work evil spirits, their former religions blown away by the all-reaching ever knowing gods of the new truth. devils, demons, satans methusalahs and all their kind slowly found themselves to be without terror, former priests and worshippers had abandoned their old faiths and old gods, and with them went their evils, all to terror planet 666. if you want to feel guilty, set a time-warper-drive to their radar sonar sector and pray the new truth doesn’t skin you alive.
cower with fear all you faithless!
Awesome stuff!
yknow i woke up and suddenly thought that i stole a name from quenten tarantinos bad movie planet terror, so maybe mine should be named some like planet descecration 666666.666666?
i dunno.
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The sky of Snake’s Heart is a green writhing tapestry of shimmery serpents. Everyone in that world has three faces, and the sons and daughters of the Great Houses are renowned across many worlds as seers and finders of secrets. It is said they can not only see into past, present and future simultaneously but also hold within their minds multiple perspectives at once, as easily as those with two hands hold multiple objects in their grasp. The most skilled in such matters easily pick their way through the curved streets of Serpentarius City and are granted seats in the Temple of Signs and Crossroads. There, they dreamburrow their way deep into the earth, seeking the tangled shape coiled at the center of Snake’s Heart, the shape that holds the world together and promises to answer any riddle. But the promises of Snake’s Heart, and the children of Snake’s Heart, are not to be trusted.
(So, okay, this might seem more fantasy-flavored than space-opera-flavored but any sufficiently advanced technology, right?)
Willow-
In my mind, there is no difference between space opera and fantasy. I know that will get me crucified, but there it is.
Planet Dygan-09. Whole thing smells like a peeled, boiled egg. In fact, the surface looks like it, too. Except the kind of egg where it’s been sitting in the water too long, and when you remove the shell, you get bits and pieces of the white, too. It’s a pockmarked planet. Covered in snow, ice, and that pervasive fart smell.
The natives are not natives at all, but human colonists. Mostly descended from smugglers, a group of whom were deposited unceremoniously some two-hundred years ago. There’s enough small game, mostly white mole-rats that tunnel underground and taste a little worse than boiled leather, as well as soft moss. Not surprisingly, the planet has very little in the way of culinary tradition.
Hee hee. These are great!
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To call Slidon a planet might be a stretch of the term. Sure it’s habitable, but who the hell would want to live there? It’s never warm, all the water is frozen, and the sunset is ugly. The only reason anyone even knows about it is because of the robot mining camp. Well, it was a mining camp before all the nukes went off in the imperial colony. All the broadcasting centers for the S.L.A.V.E. code were taken down by the Rebels at the same time. The Slidon robots could still be mining. Hell, for all we know they could be forming their own diabolical metallic cult. Or learning to hula-hoop. We may never even know which it is.