The future is a midsummer night’s dream: J.L. Peridot

PLEASE WELCOME LYNDI’S ADVENTUROUS FRIEND J.L. PERIDOT!!!

I didn’t mean to write this book. A couple years ago, I said yes to a writing challenge I didn’t think was serious. But it was serious — serious enough to show up in my inbox hours later and honour-bind me to comply. Did you really mean it when you said you’d write a book? Well, I’m not about to make myself a bloody liar, am I?

Desperate for a story, I reached into the recesses of my mind and pulled out the first thing my clammy fingers grasped — a Shakespearean sci-fi. Somehow, the idea was just there, waiting for me. It had waited for years.

When I was twelve, my family embarked on a life-changing adventure. We sold our home, bundled our lives into a shipping container, said goodbye to family and friends, and migrated to a remote mining colony built on a sandbar. Most people know it as Perth (Boorloo), Western Australia.

Adjusting to a new life, new climate, and new high school wasn’t easy. I never understood why my skin would dry out so easily (we have hard water here) or just what was so funny about the jokes my cliquey friends would make (nerdy new kid meets culture shock). My new home felt like home, but I was always half a step off-beat, a little alien, a stranger in a strange land.

Then along comes William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a hot mess of a play I’d never heard of until my Year 9 English teacher dropped a copy on everyone’s desk. We discussed the foibles of love, the class stratification, analysed the themes, even went to see a local production under the stars on a midsummer night … and I still didn’t get it. The words made sense, but my adolescent immigrant mind couldn’t grasp the meaning. I faked my essays well enough to pass the assignments, but now, decades later, my teenage lies haunt me still.

So what do you do when you’ve committed the next however-many months of your life to a project you barely understand? You hold your nose, dive in with both feet, and do everything you can not to sink. And maybe everything will be okay.

Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a love letter to my past as well as to the future of our lonely planet. It encompasses my feelings about desire and heartbreak and forgiveness and friendship, and also my fears around what happens if we don’t learn to love ourselves and the world we live in. I dream of better outcomes for humanity, the sweetest dreams of our better natures holding fast against selfishness and violence.

I just hope those dreams persist when I wake up.

Yet We Sleep, We Dream by JL Peridot

Love triangles get bent out of shape when restless gods come out to play.

Relationships are complicated enough when only humans are involved — something the crew of the starship Athenia know plenty about. These children of a changing climate are no strangers to conflicts of the heart. And it seems there’s a lot of conflict going on, even out in space.

When an alien dust finds its way on board, the veil between realms begins to fray. Old gods of a long dead planet resume their own romantic bickering while ancient magic wreaks havoc across the ship. Grudges resurface, friends turn to enemies, unrequited love turns to passion — or does it? It’s kinda hard to tell with everyone at each other’s throats.

Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show; but wonder on, till truth make all things plain. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is a romantic space-fantasy inspired by Shakespeare’s endearing hot mess, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”
— Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Genre(s): Science fiction romance, science fantasy romance, space fantasy, new adult, Australian romance, futuristic romance
Heat level: 3 (#RomanceClass standards)

Content advisory: Strong language. Drug use. On-page sexual encounters. References to harassment and infertility. Depictions of perilous situations. Depictions of marital disharmony. Awkward social situations. Technical language.

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Excerpt

Dust is a danger to starships. Pounding against the hull, particles merely microns thin can wear away shielding, eating protective layers down to nothing. Inside a ship, it creeps into everything, clogging mechanisms, messing with instruments, grinding the soft joints of spacesuits—the last line of defence between organic skin and cold, eternal nothingness.

But worst of all, it’s just plain annoying.

The heiress Mia Tan wipes her clammy hands on her coverall pants. An attractive face moves on a screen in her periphery, but she ignores it, turning instead to the video feed of the Atrium. Of the twenty-four other screens embedded in the bug-eyed wall, this is the only one she cares to see at this time of day. But there’s no one there, just plants and maintenance drones.

The movement again catches her eye—the loading bay screen. Damian Chandrasekhar leans towards the camera, checking his reflection in a nearby surface. He rakes a hand through his thick, styled hair and gives it a zhuzh to the left. What a peacock.

He brings his wristlet to his pouty lips and raises a manicured eyebrow at the lens. “Tick, tick, tick, Tan. The drones are on their way.”

“I said I’m coming, Chandy.” Mia buns her hair with a purple scrunchie and spits her stale gum in the bin. She wipes her hands again and fans her face. The subpar sanitation would bother her less if it wasn’t always so warm in the Bug Room. And if she wasn’t in a rush.

“Like, anytime soon?”

“Like if Nick’s arse-faced robot would stop touching my stuff, I’d be there already.”

He smirks. “Want me to head over? Maybe if I touch your stuff, it’d help you come a bit quicker.”

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About JL Peridot

JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. She’s a qualified computer scientist, former website maker, amateur horticulturist, and sometimes illustrator. But most of the time, she an author of romantic science fiction. She lives with her partner and fur-family in Boorloo/Perth, Australia, on Whadjuk Noongar country. Visit her website at jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work.