(no subject)

[allisnow]

First 12in2008 benchmark post!

JANUARY

508 / 5000 words. 10% done!

So far, the story that I'm working on is about 2,000 words long, and I just finished the first chapter. Or I guess you could consider it the prologue, since it's all backstory. Whatever. Here's a snippet:

Llewelyn was the first world settled outside of Sol, and extensive information on this prodigious undertaking is available anywhere on the ether as well as most digital and pulp resources compiled after 2586, the year of the settlement’s completion. But for those readers disinclined to pause here for research, let it be known at least that Llewelyn is a terrestrial planet roughly three-fourths the mass of Earth but with a far denser composition and comparable gravity. It was the first world outside Sol discovered to naturally possess liquid water and still holds the dubious distinction of being the most Earth-like planet – pre-ecosynthesis – ever settled.

Gwenith was not settled until 2631, as after the successful settling and synthesis of Llewelyn scientists from Earth had moved on to the colonization of closer and more convenient worlds. Gwenith is smaller, denser and colder, and underwent three decades of intensive atmospheric engineering before technicians from Llewelyn could safely be brought to oversee surface ecosynthesis.

Of course, this was long ago, and the two worlds are now entirely self-sustaining. There is little commerce between Llewelyn and Gwenith and even less travel, although there does exist a strange kind of envious antagonism between the two peoples. Those from Llewelyn boast of their world’s superiority in size and population and secretly wonder if perhaps their ancestors should have elected to be a part of the planetary expedition there three hundred years ago. Those from Gwenith mock Llewelyn’s relative warmth and easy gravity and only in their most secret hearts dare wonder if, three centuries ago, their ancestors might have made a mistake. Satellites in orbit around each world keep the populations of both in uneasy contact.