Introducing Whakataukī Among the Stars: Volume I
Old Wisdom. New Worlds. Human Choices Under Pressure.
Nau mai, haere mai — welcome to those who have been reading my blogs for some time, to those just arriving for the first time, and to those who have yet to discover these pages or the wider world of science fiction.
I’m so glad you’re here, and I’d love for you to follow along.
Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the stories and characters from my books — not in full, but through synopses, reflections, and a little of what each one means to me, along with why I chose to tell it and why I want to share it.
The first story, My Love Has No Bounds, will be featured here in the next couple of days, along with a short video inspired by one of its scenes.
Volume I of Whakataukī Among the Stars
Some futures arrive with trumpets. Others come in under a sky the colour of old bruises, with ash in the wind, alarms in the walls, and a station computer insisting that everything is perfectly under control just before something expensive catches fire.
That is exactly the sort of future this volume inhabits.
Across these sixteen stories lie ruined worlds, failing stations, dangerous weather, hungry systems, hard choices, and stubborn people trying to remain human in the middle of it all. At the heart of each story is a Māori whakataukī, included with its translation and meaning — not as decoration, but as a challenge. A pressure point. A truth each story must reckon with.
Because when the future gets loud, old wisdom does not become quaint.
It becomes instructions.
That has always been the heartbeat of this series for me. Science fiction is wonderfully good at imagining new worlds, new tools, new disasters, and new ways for humanity to make a complete circus of itself. What it is sometimes less good at is pausing to ask how we arrive in those futures, and what our choices reveal about us along the way.
Whakataukī endure because they are not tidy answers. They challenge. They press. They ask us to consider intent, consequence, responsibility, restraint, courage, and care. They ask us to look honestly at the shape of our actions rather than the story we might prefer to tell about them.
That makes them a natural fit for science fiction.
Across this collection, readers will meet fathers and sons walking beneath a brutal sky towards the rumour of something green; a pilot setting sail towards a once-only comet that could save a station — or finish it; survivors in bunkers, salvage crews in trouble, fraying systems, alien hazards, impossible decisions, and the occasional argument with technology that is entirely too pleased with itself. In at least one case, that technology is a “smart” toaster, which is precisely as reassuring as it sounds.
These are stories about survival, yes — but also about kindness, pride, memory, and the old human habit of repeating a mistake simply because we have wrapped it in better machinery and decided that makes it progress.
What I love about this volume is that it begins not in glory or sleek perfection, but in uncertainty, strain, and need. The people in these stories are not polished heroes in immaculate boots walking slowly away from explosions because the contract says they must. They are ordinary people — tired people, frightened people, stubborn people — caught at the moment when character becomes action.
That is why the whakataukī matter. They become more than opening words on a page. They become the moral weather of the story: the question beneath the machinery, the challenge that asks not merely what can be done, but what should be done.
So if you enjoy science fiction that is sharp, heartfelt, a little wry, and deeply interested in consequence, this is where the journey begins.
Old wisdom. New worlds. High stakes. Human mess.
That seems only realistic.
— Rebecca
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