A piece of flash fiction I’ve decided to publish under the Creative Commons license with attribution the only restriction.
What if the Earth could send us a message? What would it look like?
Eviction Notice answers that question. It’s a short story of about 1000 words and inspired by a writing prompt from the Loudoun County Writers Group. The prompt asked us to write a story which begins with a ransom note. Although the Earth’s message is more extortion than ransom, the story starts with this threat of global retaliation and proceeds to follow humanity’s flight from a planet that no longer wants it.
I tried to convey as much science as I could in the story, though I’ve aspired to be careful to place the science in a form which won’t put off the casual reader. Rather, I hope that this story will inspire the reader to look up the various scientific ideas presented, like how long ago was it when the world had 4% less U238 or just what is epigenetics.
My inspiration are the early vignettes from the Ray Bradbury Martian Chronicles series. As the story takes place over a 300+ year period, I try to paint it in broad strokes with each short paragraph explaining a new strategy for humanity and the difficulties it faced.
I hope you’ll enjoy!