A repository of writing by Lachlan Marnoch - short stories, fantasy, science fiction, science fact, and adjacent opinions.
This is my last week in the village of Leafshrine, a tiny community of Austia (Teensies explorator) deep in the Erefal Woods. Although I have worked with Austia before, I have never spent so prolonged a period living among them. The Austia, as a civilized species, have endured discrimination from as far back as history goes - owing chiefly, I believe, to their insectoid nature.
Read MoreWhen I first heard of Anther Strein, and of the famous Theory for which she is chiefly responsible, I was sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Manifold. I was about to fall asleep. I was wrenched rudely back to full consciousness by the sheer audacity of the assertions being made before me. Only once I had assured myself that the words emanating from the professor at the front of the room were not, in fact, generated by my own semi-conscious hallucination, but were uttered in complete sincerity, did I begin to realise the full impact of what I was hearing. The elegance of Anther’s ideas and the fundamental truth behind them struck me deeply; they cast new insight on everything I knew of the living world. I wished immediately that I had learnt of them much earlier.
Read MoreAnther Strein is a travelling naturalist in the science fantasy world of Pendant. In her studies of the astounding animals and plants of her surroundings, a question has often nagged her - how did such diversity come to exist, and how does it adapt to the ever-shifting conditions of the natural world? A dangerous idea is forming at the back of her mind: one in which gradual change, rather than instantaneous creation, is the main driving force of the natural world.
Join Anther on her journey across the continent of Proesus, as she records her observations of bizarre animals and plants and unravels the mysterious relationships between life, magic and natural selection in an enchanted world.
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