When I heard about Writers on the Moon, I immediately flashed back to one of my earliest childhood memories. Sometime during the week of December 7 and December 19, 1972, I stood outside and looked up at the Moon. I was barely three years old, but I quite clearly remember being amazed that there were people up there right that second! 

A few years later, I remember getting a little grade-school-kid magazine that promised we’d be taking trips to the Moon ourselves in no time at all. There were illustrations of the tiny spaceships we’d travel in and everything. 

Needless to say, I’m still waiting here in 2021.

So while I won’t be part of the payload myself any time in the foreseeable future, the idea of my stories going to the Moon is quite heady and intoxicating. In a way, these tales are additional lives I get to live. A way to play out anything and everything I can imagine. 

Letting them have their own life on our satellite and nearest neighbor is perfect!

The challenge then became which stories to include, and which one to feature. Thankfully I have enough fictional children in circulation that I had to think it over.

The science fiction tales were obvious, especially since I have them loosely grouped together under the altogether appropriate name Dispatches from the Galaxy. Who knows what all of our stories together will serve as dispatches to? That alone could serve as a nice, juicy story seed.

Within Dispatches from the Galaxy, you’ll find a variety of story lengths, and all of them fit into Space Opera. They’re off-Earth, and out at least a good ways into our solar system. My short story The Garbage Belt does indeed deal with garbage, which humans have decided to launch into distant orbit so we won’t have to worry about it any more. Of course that doesn’t last as long as planned.

Novellas are a natural storytelling length for me, especially with science fiction. Restricted Species visits a human colony system, and a planet used only to produce food for a mining outpost nearby. The pesky issue of pollinators is solved by using tiny mechanical ones that perform flawlessly. Until they don’t. 

The Becalmed tackles the challenge of communicating over the vast distances we’ll encounter before we even begin to leave the Milky Way. In that branch of my storytelling multiverse, one planet holds the solution. Unintended consequences threaten the supply, along with the stability of humans and their far-flung settlements.

Perhaps going back to the origins of such colonies, The Changes Cascade visits a generational ship on the incredibly long voyage from Earth to the stars. All goes well, until the all-too-familiar current day problem of a glitchy operating system upgrade. And the realization that the upgrade may have been more threatening than inconvenient. 

My first science fiction novel, and also the first in a series, Plurapod Pathogen starts out on another food growing station. This one is a vast ship itself, part of a ring of such facilities orbiting between Jupiter and Saturn. The re-emergence of a devastating pathogen that affects humanity’s rather alien partners in the venture sends the story—and the characters—into the far reaches of the galaxy.

Even with all of that science fiction suiting the Writers on the Moon project so well, I didn’t choose any of those as my highlighted book. For that, I stepped sideways into post-apocalyptic fiction. That’s usually considered part of science fiction, but in this case, mine veers a good bit into fantasy. 

The Storms of Future Past Series spans from the early 1970s, when I peered skyward looking for the actual humans on the moon, several decades forward into the middle of the twenty-first century. It also includes one of my favorite settings for fiction: my native Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. One young girl’s dreams seem to predict a grim future for humanity, and create an equally grim reality for her mental health. In keeping with one of the frequent themes in my writing, she survives and thrives by finding true love and partnership. That union also provides the way forward through the difficult times and toward hope.

That inclusion of fantasy serves as a wonderful bridge into the remainder of my stories for this project. They run the gamut from romance, to more fantasy of all kinds, to dark fantasy and horror. My husband Jason A. Adams (manifest 68) and I even have two collections together: Near Future Forward for science fiction, and Partners in Romance for, well, yeah, romance. 

From short stories to novellas to novels to series of many genres and moods, set in different places and times. 

A lot like the countless meanings, myths, and traditions humans have created throughout history and attached to our one and only Moon.

And last but certainly not least, I’d be remiss (and likely get in trouble) if I didn’t mention my very own alternate identity, given to me by my oldest nephew and quickly adopted by everyone in the family. I’m delighted to be Auntie Moon, and they’ll be required to call me that at least until they turn thirty. Hopefully a lot longer!

So, welcome to this adventure, which I’m proud and excited to share with so many amazing writers, and thankful to Susan Kaye Quinn for bringing us along.

I hope whoever reads this comes from one of our many optimistic versions of the future. 

Which lets me end on another of my most frequent themes in fiction and in life.

Hope.

Kari Kilgore

February 15, 2021

www.karikilgore.com

www.spiralpublishing.net