Past Imperfect

Life in the first permanent Mars colony

by SI CLARKE

Part of the Devon Island Mars Colony series:

Isolated on Mars, anyone could start going stir crazy…

Katya should be on top of the world. She’s overcome a traumatic past and now she’s part of the first permanent settlement on Mars.

So why do things feel so wrong?

The colonists are confined to a small base on the surface of a hostile planet, so perhaps it’s only cabin fever. After all, she’s got great friends, an exciting career, and an ex-girlfriend who – she’s sure – would do anything to have her back…

But with cracks appearing in the relationships between the crew and nothing but empty Martian desert beyond the safety of their domes, it’s far too easy for the mind to drift. And when it does, it can be difficult to tell what’s real, and what’s pure imagination…

Past Imperfect is a short story set during Livid Skies, SI CLARKE’s second novel. It’s written for people who enjoy science fiction that challenges their preconceptions.

This is a work of neurodiverse, culturally diverse, gender-bendy, socio-politico-economic, drunken-arguments-in-the-pub science fiction – not bang-bang-pew-pew science fiction.

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Published: August 31, 2020
Editors:

Gail La Carbonara, Lucy Rose York

Genres:

Sci Fi, Sci Fi - Colonization, Sci Fi - Hard Sci Fi, Sci Fi - LGBTQ+, Sci Fi - Near Future

Tags:

author - british, author - canadian, format - free, format - short story <15K, identity - bisexual, identity - pansexual, potential trigger - traumatic past, when - period - near future, where - Mars

Word Count: 4000
Setting: Mars
Word Count: 4000
Setting: Mars

About the Author

SI CLARKE is a Canadian misanthrope who lives in Deptford, sarf ees London. She shares her home with her partner and an assortment of waifs and strays. When not writing convoluted, inefficient stories, she spends her time telling financial services firms to behave more efficiently. When not doing either of those things, she can be found in the pub or shouting at people online – occasionally practising efficiency by doing both at once.

As someone who’s neurodivergent, an immigrant, and the proud owner of an invisible disability, she strives to present a diverse array of characters in her stories.

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Summary: In the thousands of years since the fey fled their homeland beyond the veil, they had never looked back. That was a fatal mistake. Aisling was a Los Angeles detective and a damn good one. She was also a member of one of the most powerful elven families—something she wasn’t good at and worked hard to ignore. An attack on the fey of Los Angeles left hundreds dead, buildings missing, and more questions. The United Kingdom was the focus of the next attack. The veil between the worlds was breaking—creatures whom the fey had fled from were finding their way through with horrific consequences. Now the threat was bigger. The stories Aisling had been told of the other side were wrong and spread to cover up the horrors that had been done when the fey fled. But they were right about one thing—deadly things in the worlds beyond Earth. And the veil between the worlds was falling. The collapse would destroy not only Earth but all the worlds beyond the veil. The Broken Veil trilogy comes to an exciting conclusion!