This is Adam. It’s Rosh Chodesh, the festival of the new moon, and they’ve just wandered into the town synagogue of Shibenoye, a little town near the Crimean Peninsula. They’ve got a balalaika on their back, a song on their tongue, kavanah in their heart.
Continue reading “Adam, a Klezmer from Dream Apart”An Akum from Far Away
The “akum” are the “huge birds, toothy of maw” that live far to the north of the center of the world, ridden by nomadic warrior tribes. This one is distinct, though: it has a beak like the toothless birds, but has fingers like the akum. She’s wild, and about the size of a modern horse. The akum-rider tribes might see these as unnameable, but I bet there are a people who considers them prize mounts.
Continue reading “An Akum from Far Away”Captain Azouli
It took a long time for Captain Azouli to confirm that this ship was here. Now she maybe wishes she wasn’t.
What might happen in The Fifth World if space travelers returned? Without launch facilities, they’d certainly be stuck. But those Beltas and Martians might find that they really love a world with that much water, oxygen, and coöperation.
Eshud-Numash, Bearer of the Last Tusk of Grandmother Thunder
Eshud-Numash is carrying the Last Tusk of Grandmother Thunder, the ancestor of his people’s herd of Lumu, (which we know as stegatetrabelodon). The tusk will be: Old (Grandmother Thunder lived to 180 years. There have been two generations of the Lumu herd since then); Mighty (It’s a tusk. It’s also wielded as a weapon); Known to All (It has been carried by the scion of Eshud for centuries, as their badge of office); and Generous (From the open end of the tusk issues water, if it would save a life).
Continue reading “Eshud-Numash, Bearer of the Last Tusk of Grandmother Thunder”The Refugee Angel
The Refugee Angel is a tramp freighter, slipping through the Andonar/Trusk hyperlane, dodging Imperial interests. Its crew is a family, for better or worse, who you’ll be able to play in µShock:2:Refugee Angel, coming to my xenophiliacs at Patreon!
µShock:1:Alternator:
Alternator is an RPG inspired by the parts of Altered Carbon that are about economic inequality and queerness (that is, the last three episodes of the Netflix series).
Oversimulated Toddler Says Its First Words, but Can’t Really Talk Yet
I’ve been working on building music synthesizers lately. The first, The Brigand, is now fully functional, and you’ll be able to hear it sometime in the third week of May on WRIR, in Richmond, VA!
The second, Oversimulated Toddler, is still throwing tantrums and being incoherent. I can’t even understand what it wants.
Continue reading “Oversimulated Toddler Says Its First Words, but Can’t Really Talk Yet”
The IDisc, the Shock in Alternator
The IDisc is a prosthetic vertebra that grows along with the body to which it’s attached. While it does that, it intercepts all of the experiences — internal and external — of its host, digitizing the entire experience as memories. Or perhaps as identity. Maybe your soul.
Brigand — the first Shrieky Little Machine
Science fiction works in any art form. You look at what exists, then compare it to what’s possible-and-explorable, and experiment with it! That’s why Shock: includes music in its mediography section.
So I’ve been messing with synthesizers a lot lately. I’ve been making some really interestingly shrieky sounds and wanted to share with you the Brigand, a granular synthesizer I built a few weeks ago.
I’m putting an EP together that will be available to my patrons, but I really want to show off the machine, itself and what it sounds like!
How to Make a Star Wars Guy
This post took a lot of writing and drawing! Help me make more good stuff by backing xenoglyph on Patreon!
I’m a big fan of science fiction. I’m also a big Star Wars fan. I think, though am not sure, that my first movie was Star Wars, which came out four days after my fourth birthday. I’d guess that 2001 was my second.
Even as a kid, I could tell that these were not the same thing. They each had their own aesthetic principles that, if I was to play with the ideas in them, I would have to derive and distill, but not mistake for one another.