Exactly as it says on the tin!
Coinciding with Pride Month, we're tackling LGBTQ+ SF, which focuses on themes of alienation, equality, love, the concept of masculinity and femininity, and so much more!
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Last month, in May's Utopian SF issue of Tevun-Krus, we ran a challenge asking writers to create a comment-sized story showcasing their own—or a character's—brand of Utopia. Because not everyone shares the same vision, after all.
We had a few entries, but one was the clear favourite!
Captain Patricia Ramaker settled back in a chair on the ramp of her ship, her now-temporary domicile, and let a happy sigh escape. After a morning working on the hydroponics tower, she deserved five minutes to drink a glass of water and watch the several hundred other humans engaged in the same task. It was clear what part of the MultiVerse each hailed from judging by whatever materials they'd brought with them to build.
But it was theirs. A home for humanity.
Hope buoyed her spirits. Centuries they'd been denied the right to settle anywhere, instead forced to live in their ships and get work wherever possible. Now they had terra firma under their feet. Even if it was a backwater hunk of barren rock.
Thankfully the topographical maps were extremely detailed so it didn't take long for the 564 remaining humans to decide where to situate the centre of their first city. The hydroponic towers would be the heart.
One thing about being forced to stay in space and never settle planet-side was a reverence for living plants. A vote wasn't even needed about how the focus of their new civilisation would be around their dependence on the land and plants.
Once the rest of the people who'd answered the call to settle on New Earth arrived, they'd set up a Council and start learning how to work together as a - team? unit? What did you call it when the dregs of your race gathered to establish a colony?
She giggled. Who cared? This was the best chance they'd have to start to eek their way back from extinction.
She only wished her sister Constance were here to share it. It had been radio silence for far too long and she feared the worst.
I woke up in bed with the sun in my eyes, my girl beside me and my cat at my feet. Today, like all days after Agenda 420 came to pass, was a good day. Jobs as we once knew it were a thing of the past.
"Work"--the concept--had been abolished. Menial tasks were performed by machines. We did what moved us, and if we didn't know what moved us, the state would do their damnedest to figure out what did.
It was a world of artistry again. A new renaissance.
