All Tomorrow's Starparties

Gritty Near-Future Science Fiction with Strong Astronomy & Astrophotography Themes

Setting & themes: Post-contact comedown ◹ Astronomy nerds stand up ◹ One-horse apocalypse ◹ Rogue nebula hackers ◹ Low-saturation cyberpunk (there's very little neon) ◹ Hope comes at a cost

The future is bright, or maybe it's just over-exposed... We haven't been communicating directly with an ancient galactic civilization. We found their stash of information between the stars, woven into vast clouds of hydrogen. And we were supposed to find it, map it, examine it. Share it. The sky was never meant to belong to anyone.

Reactionary cults call it blasphemy. Corporations that own half the world's tech economy call it theft. Between them, they've carved our planet into closed markets and dogma.

Astrophotographers are hunted now?tracked by drones, flagged by algorithms, silenced before their images can be uploaded and studied. They say it's about security, about order, about protecting what's sacred. But it's always about control. And they will do whatever it takes to make sure we're too frightened to look up.

"Roma and Emmaline leading double lives, Roma hacks drones and Emmaline drives, classes at UNH-Man by daylight, imaging deep skies every clear night."