Literature is what distinguishes us from every species that has gone before. It’s what makes it possible for seven billion of us to breathe the same air. Literature is the great sum and sea of human experience, out there heaving serenely in the moonlight, ready for individuals, when it’s their time, to paddle out on their voyage of discovery.
What is happening here is the creation of what we might call “his-story”. If the only books talked about, the only books that find their way into the historical record, are books by men, then anyone looking back over time will get the impression that the only important people involved in the field, perhaps the only people involved in the field, were men.
They are the last survivors of the settlers of the moon Sturnus, forty children rescued by the benevolent people of the planet Janus. Except Bear is starting to remember, and what he remembers is nothing like what he and the others have been told.
Renan Bernardo is a Nebula finalist author of science fiction and fantasy from Brazil. His fiction appeared in Reactor/Tor.com, Apex Magazine, Podcastle, Escape Pod, and other places. His collection Different Kinds of Defiance was published in 2024.
