Welcome to Whakataukī Among the Stars, Volume III

Let me introduce you to the next book in the series Whakataukī Among the Stars, Volume III.

Old truths, hard futures, and the stubborn business of staying human

There is something I keep coming back to when I write this series: no matter how far into the future we go, people are still people.

We still grieve. We still hope. We still make tea when things are falling apart. We still argue, endure, love badly and well, cling to each other, and try to make sense of a world that rarely feels tidy for long. That is the heart of Whakataukī Among the Stars, Volume III.

This volume grew out of that feeling. Out past “the last signposts of tomorrow,” these stories are still being steered by what came before — by whakataukī, by memory, by old moral truths that refuse to go out of date just because the machinery got shinier or the sky got stranger. The book’s own opening invitation says exactly that: every voyage is still steered by yesterday, held in murmured whakataukī and old trials that stubbornly refuse to fade.

I love science fiction, but I have never been especially interested in cold futures built only out of gadgets, systems, and cleverness. Cleverness is useful, certainly. It can keep the lights on. But it is not enough by itself. What interests me more is what people carry with them when the world changes. What survives pressure. What remains when comfort has been stripped away. What kind of values still mean something when you are under a strange sky, inside a failing structure, on a battered coastline, or standing in front of a choice that asks more of you than you wanted to give.

That is where this volume lives.

These stories are full of strange futures, yes, but they are also full of recognisable people. People trying to do right. People failing. People being funny at inconvenient times because that is what human beings do when life gets sharp. People discovering that accountability is not glamorous, mercy is not weakness, and survival is not only a technical problem. The opening pages describe the collection as science fiction that is tender, hopeful, and “a bit too timely for comfort,” where humanity fends off extinction with grit, determination, humour, and “the unglamorous labour of accountability.” I could not have asked for a better summary of what I hoped this book would be.

Volume III has a little more weather in its bones than some of my earlier work.

Not just literal weather, though there is certainly plenty of that. I mean it has more wear in it. More consequence. More interest in what happens after the grand speeches, after the systems fail, after someone has to sweep up, mend the breach, hold the family together, say the difficult thing, or refuse the easy lie. A title like “The House That Refused Applause” tells you a lot about where my head was while writing these stories, and so does one like “Treasure Has Tiny Feet.” One turns toward humility. The other toward care. Both, in different ways, are interested in the same question: what actually matters when pressure arrives?

And that matters to me because I do not think old wisdom becomes less useful in the future. I think it often becomes more useful.

A whakataukī is not there to decorate the page. At least, not in these stories. I wanted each one to do real work. To sit in the story like a hand on the shoulder, or a bell in fog, or a stone in the pocket reminding you of its weight. Sometimes the proverb sharpens the story. Sometimes it unsettles it. Sometimes it quietly tells you what kind of moral weather you are really standing in. But always, I hope, it belongs there.

That was important to me from the beginning.

I also wanted this volume to keep its sense of humour. Because good grief, some futures are so determined to be solemn that they forget people are ridiculous. And people are ridiculous. Blessedly so. Even at the edge of things. Even in crisis. Sometimes especially in crisis. Humour, for me, is not an extra. It is part of how people endure. It stops darkness from becoming pompous. It gives the characters air to breathe. It lets tenderness in through the side door. You can feel that right from the opening story, with its colony airlock, its child with a blue scarf, and its emergency procedures somehow still smudged with peanut butter.

This volume ranges widely. There are children and storms, orbital grief, floating arguments, family lines, strange planets, stubborn shelters, practical absurdities, and futures trying very hard not to lose their souls. The contents page makes that plain enough, moving from “Treasure Has Tiny Feet” through “Vaulting Ambition,” “Close Orbit, Long Opinions,” “The House That Refused Applause,” “Weather for the Living, Land for the Dead,” and “A Practical Guide to Politeness After the Apocalypse.” I’m rather fond of the fact that a book can contain both apocalypse and politeness. That feels human to me.

If I had to say what Volume III is about in the plainest terms, I would say this:

It is about staying human under pressure.

It is about the values that do not stop mattering just because the setting has changed.

It is about the old truths that still speak when the future gets noisy.

And, perhaps more quietly than that, it is about the fact that survival without decency is not much of a victory.

I think that is why I keep writing these stories. I am interested in futures, yes. But I am even more interested in conscience. In culture. In memory. In the unflashy virtues. In people who keep going. In the ones who hold, mend, plant, feed, carry, wait, witness, and sometimes say the one honest thing in a room full of convenient lies.

So this is my invitation to you.

Make a proper cup of tea. Sit somewhere comfortable — by a fire, under a tree, in a chair that knows your shape. Come close. Volume III is waiting, and it has weather, wit, teeth, tenderness, and a good deal to say about the world we are making and the old wisdom we will need if we want to survive it with any grace intact. That invitation echoes the book’s own opening, and I rather like that.

I hope you find a story in here that stays with you.

Better yet, I hope you find a truth in here that does.

 

— Rebecca