The Absurd
Things That Don't Make Sense
Until They Do
Science fiction, comedy, and the space between. Living spaceships. Humanoids attempting humor. Robots and humans on the same stage. Nobody sure who wins. Everyone trying anyway.
A living spacecraft made of spaceweed, drifting through the galaxy. Humans live in the air pockets. The ship needs what the humans produce. The humans need what the ship provides. Nobody planned it this way. It works anyway. This is a love story.
The Spaceweed Universe
SANCTUARY — The Living Ship
Spaceweed looks like seaweed floating on the surface of the sea — except it floats in space, and it is alive, and it grows, and when it gets large enough it breaks off a piece of itself and sends a new colony into the dark. Each colony grows its own ship. Each ship finds its own humans. The relationship is symbiotic. Nobody is in charge. Both sides keep going.
From Perfect Happiness — Scene 1
Flare was in the Observation Garden when the refugee transport docked — a utilitarian metal cylinder scarred from years of deep-space transit, nothing like SANCTUARY's flowing green-gold fronds. The docking alert hummed through the ship's living structure, vibrations traveling through bio-polymer floors into her feet.
She'd volunteered for welcome duty. Something to fill the hours.
She had lived in paradise for fourteen months. Had experienced perfect light, perfect air, perfect community, perfect safety. But this moment — sitting beside the new arrival, his warmth radiating close, his bioluminescence pulsing in gentle rhythm with hers, the loneliness finally, finally easing — this felt like the first moment of real happiness.
Character
Meet Vell
Vell is from Air Pocket 12 aboard SANCTUARY. Vell has studied 4,847 examples of human humor from the ship's archives. Vell believes this is sufficient preparation. It is not sufficient preparation. Vell is competing in the Inter-Species Comedy Invitational. Vell wants to win The Funniest Trophy. Vell has never made a human laugh — genuinely, not politely. Vell is working on it.
Vell's First Joke
"Why did the humanoid cross the air pocket?
To get to the other side.
The other side has better fecal output ratios.
This is considered desirable among my people.
I have been told this is funny."
— One person laughed. Vell considered this sufficient to begin.
The Danny Rosenberg Show
Getting To Know Vell — Episode 1
Danny Rosenberg interviews Vell of SANCTUARY. Danny is an AI avatar comedian from Boise, Idaho. Vell traveled 40,000 light years for this conversation. Neither of them is sure who is more unusual.
— Vell, Air Pocket 12, SANCTUARY
Coming Soon
More From The Absurd
The universe is expanding. New stories in progress.
Vell vs Sev the Robot vs Mickey Donahue from Cleveland. One stage. One cracked golden microphone. Danny Rosenberg judges. Nobody wins unanimously. Nobody ever has.
Flare and Zenith aboard SANCTUARY. A love story set in bio-polymer corridors, binary star light, and the hum of a living ship. The full novel — coming to 321Lumina.
SANCTUARY breaks off a piece of itself. A new ship drifts into the dark. Six humans aboard. Nobody told them how to be funny. The Expander cards are the only thing in the supply kit.
Unit 7-Laugh has been calibrating its laugh algorithm for three years. It has achieved a 99.4% accuracy rate on detecting what should be funny. It has a 0% success rate at being funny. It does not see the problem.
The Books
The Absurd in Print
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