Hello everybody! It's been a little while since I posted on Wattpad, mainly because my focus now goes on my trad pubbed books, but I always love a cheeky side project and I have been hankering to write sci-fi again after my ONC novella, Chimera.
This novella is a sci-fi adaptation of my favourite book, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. My main genre is queer historical naval fiction, an interest that was sparked in me heavily after reading Moby-Dick. I believe that sci-fi is a short hop from naval fiction, especially the kind I like: ships navigating deep space and dealing with all the isolation and awe-struck fright that brings. Moby-Dick is also the original queer naval fiction, arguably told from a queer man's perspective and with many themes of feeling like an outsider in a strange world. You will find a lot of reference back to naval history and terminology in this novella (but not anywhere near the amount I use in my naval fiction, don't worry haha)
No knowledge of Moby-Dick is required to understand this novella. All the characters (bar a couple) are from the book and it follows the same themes and overarching plot, but with lots and lots of adaptation. It is not, however, from Ishmael's perspective, as Moby-Dick is. This for me was a no-brainer decision because as soon as I got into Moby-Dick many many years ago and wrote fanfiction for it, I always wrote from first mate Starbuck's perspective. Since then, every one of my original characters has a note of Starbuck in them (him, or Ahab!). But don't worry, the queerness is kept!
I will provide fandom and history notes at the end of each chapter where relevant, but this is mainly for me to nerd out rather than giving any essential information haha
I'm aiming to start posting this story on Friday 20th September, with each update dropping on a Friday for about fourteen weeks afterwards. This is the first time I've used the Wattpad chapter scheduler so I'm hoping it works! Overall, this novella comes to around 29k words, perfect length for a fun side project.
Hope you enjoy!
YOU ARE READING
The Heartless Void
Science FictionIn the distant future, Earth's resources have been plundered and deep-space oil haulers have become the backbone of the solar system's many stations. Henry Starbuck is the first mate onboard such a vessel, the Pequod. He only wants to finish the sea...
