New Release Spotlight: Whakataukī Beyond the Black

Across the Black, Old Wisdom Still Burns

There is a particular sort of madness in writing one book.

Writing five is either ambition, stubbornness, or an overdeveloped relationship with cups of tea. In my case, probably all three.

I am delighted to share the release of the full five-book series, Whakataukī Beyond the Black — a collection of short science fiction stories guided by Māori proverbs and sent drifting, arguing, glowing, and occasionally muttering through the stars.

This series began with one question that would not leave me alone:

What happens when old wisdom travels into the future?

Not as decoration. Not as something politely placed at the front of a story and forgotten. But as a living thing. A warning. A lamp. A challenge. A hand on the shoulder. A sharp little voice in the dark asking whether humanity has actually learned anything yet.

Across the five books, Māori proverbs are carried into strange futures filled with colony worlds, red moons, buried machines, living forests, dangerous archives, restless ancestors, failing systems, frozen darkness, hungry stars, stubborn workers, strange creatures, and official paperwork that really should have been dealt with three generations ago.

Because apparently, even in deep space, somebody still forgets to read the footnotes.

The first book, Whakataukī Beyond the Black: The Stars Were Here First, opens the door to futures where humanity discovers that the stars are not empty. Across distant worlds, ancient warnings, crystal forests, fragile colonies, and moons that remember old wounds, people learn that survival is not only about technology, courage, and curiosity. It is also about listening properly. Care matters. Memory matters. The land, the people, and the stars are never as separate as we like to pretend.

The second volume, Under Strange Suns, carries that journey further. Here are moonborn teenagers dreaming of Earth, harvesters fighting for medicine beneath deadly sunlight, oceans full of memory, and settlers discovering that the universe is not simply empty space waiting to be conquered. It is alive with consequence. These are stories about family, survival, courage, memory, and the stubborn human need to keep reaching for home, even when home has changed shape.

Then comes Customs, Protocols and Other Disasters, which may be the point where the universe looked at humanity and said, “You brought what with you?” This volume explores the traditions, grudges, rules, kindnesses, awkward habits, festive chaos, and administrative disasters people carry into the stars. Wisdom travels. So does trouble. Across distant stations, strange colonies, dangerous archives, customs officers, peculiar creatures, and settlements doing their best with limited sense and too many forms, these stories remind us that survival is not built by systems alone. It is built by goodwill, memory, courage, and someone sensible enough to check the paperwork before the festival begins.

The fourth book, Somebody Moved the Ancestors, steps into deeper and sharper territory. Humanity may reach the stars, but it does not outrun its oldest responsibilities. Across ships, museums, memorial systems, lunar vaults, archives, colonies, and distant worlds, ordinary people discover that the dead cannot be treated as cargo, property, data, or decoration. This is science fiction about ancestry, displacement, return, truth, whakapapa, grief, anger, tenderness, and the difficult work of saying: enough. A faster ship does not make people wiser. A polished plaque does not make theft respectful. A storage vault does not become honour simply because someone filed the right form.

The final volume, Darkness, With Footnotes, closes the series by stepping into the dark — but not the empty kind. In these stories, darkness is shelter, witness, memory, grief, rest, and sometimes the place where truth waits because the bright rooms are too busy congratulating themselves. Across frozen moons, buried cities, glow-woods, failing machines, fragile colonies, exhausted caretakers, cooks, pilots, children, elders, and workers who were absolutely not paid enough for this, the stories ask one unsettling question:

Did anyone read the footnote?

Together, the five books form a strange little constellation of stories about survival, humility, memory, consequence, humour, grief, repair, return, and the small lights worth protecting.

They are science fiction, yes — but not the kind that believes the future belongs only to the loudest engine, the biggest machine, or the most confident person in the room. I have always been suspicious of that kind of future. Too shiny. Too fond of itself.

These stories are interested in the quiet ones too.

The worker crawling through the pipes.

The child crossing frozen darkness.

The customs officer who notices the impossible clause.

The ancestor whose name has not been properly spoken.

The small warning in the margin.

The person who remembers what everyone else chose to forget.

Each story begins with a whakataukī and carries its meaning into speculative worlds where old wisdom still has sharp teeth and a steady hand. Sometimes it comforts. Sometimes it warns. Sometimes it laughs at humanity’s expense, which seems fair. We do give it plenty of material.

I’m a retired grandmother living in Aotearoa New Zealand, writing science fiction with my feet planted firmly on the ground and my imagination happily drifting among the stars. I was born and raised in England, and about thirty years ago I made the leap to New Zealand — one of those life decisions that quietly rewires you in the best way. Over time I’ve lived on both the North and South Islands, and each has left its fingerprints on me: the different light, the different weather moods, the way the landscape can feel like it’s speaking even when nobody is saying a word.

Perhaps that is why these stories matter to me.

They are about listening.

To old wisdom.

To strange worlds.

To the dead.

To the land beneath our feet.

To the stars above our heads.

And, every now and then, to the footnotes.

Whakataukī Beyond the Black is now complete as a five-book series:

The Stars Were Here First
Under Strange Suns
Customs, Protocols and Other Disasters
Somebody Moved the Ancestors
Darkness, With Footnotes

For readers who enjoy thoughtful science fiction with heart, cultural reflection, mystery, humour, consequence, wonder, strange worlds, old wisdom, and just enough darkness to show what still shines — this series is for you.

Because the future may be written among the stars.

But the footnotes were waiting all along.

-Rebecca     Find My Books on Amazon