Christmas on Iago Prime (A Year on Iago Prime, Book 2) by Cora Buhlert

Release date: December 9, 2017
 Subgenre: Holidays short story, Space colonisation

About Christmas on Iago Prime: 

 

Eight-year-old Libby has come with her parents to spend a year at the newly established colony on the planet Iago Prime. Libby's parents believe that this is a great opportunity for all of them, but Libby is unhappy on Iago Prime. There are no other children on Iago Prime and Libby can't go anywhere, because she doesn't even have a space suit. Worst of all, they will spend Christmas on Iago Prime, where there aren't even any Christmas trees.

However, Libby's parents, with a little help from Santa Claus himself, conspire to give Libby an unforgettable Christmas on Iago Prime.

This is a science fictional Christmas story of 6700 words or approx. 22 print pages.

Excerpt:

 

Outer space was boring.

Libby would’ve never thought that she’d ever say those words, especially since all the vid dramas always made a trip to outer space look so very exciting.

But vid dramas, so Mom and Dad always said, weren’t the truth. And the truth was that outer space was boring, so very, very boring.

Libby’s parents were scientists, stationed for a “tour of duty”, as they called it, on the newly settled world of Iago Prime to “evaluate the viability of the colony established there”, whatever the hell that meant.

Whenever Libby’s parents went somewhere, it inevitably meant that Libby had to go there as well. And absolutely no one ever asked her how she felt about that or whether she wanted to go at all.

Up to now, Mom and Dad’s assignments had only taken a few weeks or months at most. They jetted off somewhere — a deep sea colony, an Antarctic research base, Luna City or even the Mars colony — did their evaluations, wrote their reports and that was it. They never stayed for very long anywhere, never long enough that it was a problem, at any rate.

But Iago Prime was different. It was much further away than anywhere else, for starters, and therefore, Libby’s parents were supposed to stay for eleven months — almost a whole year — on Iago Prime.

Worse, they’d left in October, which meant that they’d spent Christmas here on Iago Prime. And wherever the jobs of Libby’s parents had taken them, they’d always made sure to spend Christmas at home in Boston on Earth. It was — like — the law, an absolute rule that could never be violated.

Until this year. Until Iago Prime.

Libby’s parents always made a big ado about how great it was for her to experience all those different worlds and cultures while growing up. Cause research had shown that getting to experience a whole lot of different worlds and cultures as a kid was beneficial for future development. It made individuals more open-minded and was an effective antidote against the sort of narrow-minded patriotism and nationalism that had almost destroyed the world in the previous centuries.

However, no one had ever asked Libby how she felt about being uprooted and dragged to a different place, even a different planet all the time. Okay, so she figured being raised to be open-minded was a good thing — it sounded like a good thing, at any rate. As for that whole “antidote against narrow-minded patriotism and nationalism” thing, Libby wasn’t quite sure what all that meant. But there had been a lot of wars in the previous centuries — Libby had seen pictures and vids — and there weren’t any now, so she supposed that was a good thing, too.

But she still didn’t understand why those undeniably good things required moving somewhere else all the time. Why couldn’t she become more open-minded and get the antidote against whatever, while staying put in one place?

Because to be honest, this constant moving around was annoying. Cause whenever Libby had made friends somewhere, she had to leave and move somewhere else, cause Mom and Dad’s job was finished. And back home in Boston, she didn’t have any friends either, because who’d want to be friends with someone who was never there?

Mom and Dad didn’t seem to mind — in fact, Libby wasn’t even sure, if they had friends at all. But Libby minded. Because she wanted to have friends, good friends like the kids in all those vid series who went swimming or played sports together and had adventures.

“But you’re having adventures, dear,” Mom had once said, when Libby complained about that, “You’re visiting places that most people never get to see, let alone most kids.”

Libby didn’t care. She’d rather have friends.

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Apple iTunes | Smashwords |  DriveThru | Playster | 24 symbols

 

About Cora Buhlert:

Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD. 

Cora has been writing, since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. She is the author of the Silencer series of pulp style thrillers, the Shattered Empire space opera series, the In Love and War science fiction romance series, the Helen Shepherd Mysteries and plenty of standalone stories in multiple genres. When Cora is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher.

 

Website | Mailing list | Twitter | Google+ | Instagram | Pinterest | YouTube | Mastodon

 

Valentine's Day on Iago Prime (A Year on Iago Prime, Book1) by Cora Buhlert

Release date: February 12, 2016

Subgenre: Science fiction romance, short story

About Valentine's Day on Iago Prime: 

Kai and Maisie are about the celebrate their first Valentine's Day on the planet Iago Prime. However, the holiday traditions they established back on Earth such as celebrating Valentine's Day with a picnic on the beach are impossible to maintain in the hostile environment of their new home. But in spite of the many limitations imposed by living on Iago Prime, Kai pulls out all the stops to give Maisie an unforgettable Valentine's Day.

This is a science fictional Valentine's Day story of 2200 words or approx. 10 print pages.

Excerpt:

It would be Maisie and Kai’s first Valentine’s Day on the newly settled Earth colony of Iago Prime.
Of course, on Iago Prime a year was only two hundred and sixty two days long. But for religious and traditional holidays, the colonists still adhered to the old Earth calendar, even if it meant that Valentine’s Day fell into the middle of summer — or at least what passed for summer here on Iago Prime.
Back on Earth, Maisie and Kai Jones — together for more than six years now and married for one and a half, mostly to fulfill the outdated requirements of the colony settlement board — had always celebrated Valentine’s Day by having a picnic on the beach.
Of course, February wasn’t the ideal time for a romantic picnic on the beach at all, not when the beach was in Wales rather than California. But it was the tradition that Maisie and Kai had established for themselves and they were determined to stick to it, even if it meant shivering together on a blanket in Aberystwyth, eating sandwiches and drinking champagne from plastic cups and hot tea from a thermos.
Kai and Maisie had met, when they were both students at the University of Cardiff, she of communication science and he in the engineering department. They shared a beer at the student union and bonded over their shared dream to go out into space one day, to become pioneers, the first humans to set foot onto a brand new world.
However, in those days, space had seemed very far away indeed, even if the university campus was plastered with recruitment posters for the colony settlement board, all of them showing intrepid pioneers posing in front of awe-inspiring alien landscapes, calling out to all those students who felt that Wales was so suffocating that they’d even board an interstellar spacecraft to escape.
And so for their first date — during the height of summer in the Northern hemisphere — Kai and Maisie drove to the seaside town of Aberystwyth instead. They took the vintage funicular railway up Constitution Hill, enjoyed the view and visited the equally vintage camera obscura, stunned that both the railway and the camera obscura were both lovingly maintained and still functional after almost three hundred years. They duly admired the vintage machinery and marvelled at the artistry of people who hadn’t even developed moving pictures yet, let alone lasers and holograms and flight and space travel. Afterwards, they had a picnic on the beach — with sandwiches and salad and a cheap bottle of wine. And finally, they’d enjoyed a night of hot and sweaty sex in one of the historical bed and breakfasts along the promenade.
It had been a truly magical day, so magical that Kai had decided to recreate it for their first Valentines Day together. Of course, neither the funicular railway nor the camera obscura were open in February — three hundred year old antiques apparently did not like winter, even if they were meticulously restored. So Kai and Maisie had simply settled for a picnic on the beach and a night spent at a bed and breakfast. And thus a tradition was born.
When Kai and Maisie got married shortly before disembarking for Iago Prime, they celebrated on Constitution Hill and had a big combined wedding and good-bye party for all their friends and family. They also had their photo taken in front of the funicular railway, Kai in a stiff black suit and Maisie in the traditional white gown with the traditional veil fluttering in the wind. The photo now sat in a silver frame on the nightstand of the rather utilitarian quarters they shared, a cheerful reminder of the world and the life they had left behind.
Iago Prime was one of the few places in the known universe that managed to be even more unpleasant than Aberystwyth in February. It was rocky all over without a single trace of vegetation. The oceans here were blubbering hellholes of liquid ammonia. The atmosphere was poisonous and even at the height of summer, the temperatures rarely cleared minus forty degrees Celsius, which made it officially colder than Wales in midwinter. In short, Iago Prime was not just the sort of world where only the really enthusiastic and/or desperate pioneers would go, it was also about the only spot in the known universe that was less suited to a Valentine’s Day picnic than Aberystwyth.

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Apple | Scribd | 24symbols | Smashwords | ARe/OmniLit | DriveThru | XinXii

 

About Cora Buhlert:

Cora Buhlert was born and bred in North Germany, where she still lives today – after time spent in London, Singapore, Rotterdam and Mississippi. Cora holds an MA degree in English from the University of Bremen and is currently working towards her PhD. Cora has been writing since she was a teenager, and has published stories, articles and poetry in various international magazines. When she is not writing, she works as a translator and teacher.

Website | Mailing list | Twitter | Google+ | tsu