My short story, The Ethnographer, appears in Issue #79 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. The Ethnographer is my humble attempt to wrangle my feelings about inequality and powerlessness. It’s far from perfect, but I’m proud of it.
It introduces my second space voyager: the solitary, empathetic ethnographer, Egal Tyro, who journeys from their birth-planet, Mars, out of a desire to explore and commune with other life forms.
[My first space voyager was the bounty hunter, Orin, from my first ever published story, The Dunes of Ranza. Orin and Egal are both cybernetically-enhanced, non-binary, flawed, strong, deeply human. I love them both. I want to write them more.]
I also throw in an intelligent non-human species, visual and tactile languages, an alien planet with vast rocky basins that change colour as the sun shifts, giant rustling indigo plants, seedpod-milk, and at least three moons. Oh, also, ion-powered blimps. Preeeetty.
Thank you to fellow Aussie SFF writer Austin Sheehan and to my brother, Peter [ah, to be cursed with a sister who shoves stories under your nose every few months and demands critique], for beta reading the unwieldy draft and helping to whip it into shape.
I’m grateful to Andromeda Spaceways for accepting the story, and to editor Joel Schanke for a deft and thoughtful editing process. The issue has gorgeous artwork, including an illustration for my story (!). The stories are tied together by the theme of love.
It was also a very cool surprise to be in the company of writers AJ Fitzwater and Maria Z Medina. Maria’s lyrical, myth-infused story, Voice of God, took my breath away. AJ’s Tāne Mahuta was similarly an immersive, out-of-body, magical ode to nature.
You can purchase Issue #79 here or subscribe as a member on the Andromeda Spaceways website.
Grace Chan 