Title: Waiting on a Bright MoonAuthor: Neon Yang
First Published: July 12, 2017
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 41
Genre: Dystopia, LGBTQ, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Space Opera
Format: Web
Source: Tor.com
Rating:
Synopsis:
Xin is an ansible, using her song magic to connect the originworld of the Imperial Authority and its far-flung colonies— a role that is forced upon magically-gifted women “of a certain closeness”. When a dead body comes through her portal at a time of growing rebellion, Xin is drawn deep into a station-wide conspiracy along with Ouyang Suqing, one of the station’s mysterious, high-ranking starmages.
This story is available to read for free here on Tor.com.
Buy the Book: Amazon, Free OnlineReview
It is always amazing to me the amount of world-building that can occur in such a short story, and I was captivated by the world within Waiting on a Bright Moon in which humanity has been spread across space living in colonies. Humanity remains connected through the mysterious powers of the ansibles, a small enclave of special women whose “closeness” allows them to open portals through space through the power of song. Despite their incredible powers, they are looked down on as expendable parts and are cast out due to their proclivity toward other women. The starmages are equally incredible, and I was in awe of the magic systems crafted in this little novella.
I admit that I was overwhelmed when I first started reading and found the story and language difficult to follow. After a few paragraphs, I was utterly absorbed in the beautiful writing and my imagination ran wild from scene to scene. The world that the ansibles and the starmages live in is terrifyingly authoritative, and my heart bled for the stories of these women who are never really free to live and love as they desire. Waiting on a Bright Moon is such a gorgeous dystopian space opera, I fell in love with the characters and dreamt about the starmages all night after I finished the story.
Quote
“I just thought, I don’t want to live with this kind of fear and doubt all my life. Where even expressions of love have to be taken with suspicion.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Neon Yang
Neon Yang (J.Y. Yang) is the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tor.Com Publishing. Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Lambda Literary, and Locus awards, while the Tensorate novellas were a Tiptree honoree in 2018. They have over two dozen works of short fiction published in venues including Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons.
Neon attended the 2013 class of Clarion West and received their MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2016. In previous incarnations, they have been a molecular biologist, a writer for animation, comics, and games, a science communicator, and a journalist for one of Singapore’s national papers.
Neon is currently based out of Singapore. They are queer and non-binary.
Discover more from Radical Dreamer
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
