Planet Klimhá, within the confines of Schloss Steppenwolfsee in Brighton Tent, 1939.

Engrossed in her writing, Ana Gramma elegantly guided her fountain pen across the pristine page. The raspy sound of the nib gliding over the smooth surface filled the void with words capable of shattering the silence within the Steppenwolf mansion.

Ana had been imbued with a fervent enthusiasm for her new literary endeavor for months, dating back to the moment it was conceived during a chance encounter with a young protege. They had engaged in passionate intimacy, with his intentions utilitarian and hers driven by the pragmatic desire to extract even a modicum of youthful energy from him. It wasn't that Ana was old; quite the contrary, she was approaching her forties. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, she felt the urge to seize life with both hands, to immerse herself in all things exhilarating as if each day were her last.

Perhaps it was her enchanting sensuality that had earned her the nickname "Lamia" from the young neighbors, a nod to the mythical vampiress that lent her name to one of Klimhá's moons. From her childhood, Ana had possessed a knack for connecting with those older than her. She relished their company, often pretending to be engrossed in her games while secretly eavesdropping on the conversations of grandparents and her parents' friends. They saw this behavior as natural, understandable for an only child.

As the years passed, the young Ana began to resent the questions and ridicule of her peers. She made an effort to fit in and befriend them, attending parties, social gatherings, and even entertaining the advances of boys and girls who were undoubtedly attracted to her. Yet, despite her efforts, Ana found it difficult to truly connect with her own generation. Instead, she felt drawn to those much younger and those much older than herself.

In the vitality of the younger ones, she saw a reflection of herself that she hadn't recognized due to her preference for the adult world. And in the wisdom gained through experience of the older ones, she found the traces of knowledge she deeply desired, a wisdom that could only be acquired with time—a wisdom she craved to possess as she raced against the inexorable march of time.

Whenever she contemplated her personal circumstances, Ana felt as though she were trapped in a swirling, all-consuming abyss. This feeling served as the catalyst for the scene she had just penned, depicting characters devoured by a space-time anomaly. This scene was the seed, the prelude, and the foreshadowing of what she envisioned as the first book in a yet-unnamed saga. Though the title of the first volume, "The Tale of a Man Without Motives," hinted at her intimate and deeply personal quest to discover the reasons behind her own existence, it also served as a tool to critically engage with the established order.

Don't the learned ones say that writing is a way to exorcise one's own demons?

* * *

In that same place, a year earlier...

After several days of trial and error, Ana believed she had put the finishing touches on the draft of only the first chapter of her yet-unnamed saga. She gazed upon her work with satisfaction, but she was acutely aware that this was just the initial step on a long and treacherous path, fraught with traps and obstacles, some of which could lead her astray into indifference, self-complacency, or weariness. Quitting always seemed like the easiest route, but it was one she couldn't, and didn't want to, take.

Of course, there were still the reactions of her editor to consider, and later, if there were any, the reactions of her readers. She wondered if it was the right moment, the right subject, and the right approach to pen this novel and the saga it would encompass.

Fear was one of the monsters she had to confront, and vanity, a chasm that, if navigated skillfully, justified the effort. One thing was certain: the usual indifference of those close to her, compared to the indifference of strangers, could be more insidious than the venomous critique of a cynic.

If there was one thing she could never quite get used to, it was the distant view her friends and family had of her work and their tendency to belittle it compared to more financially rewarding endeavors. They never applauded, but they also never tore her work apart or acknowledged what she held as her finest talent. In fact, apart from her mother, she couldn't claim that anyone had even read her work, and when she inquired, they responded with evasion or changed the subject.

That void wounded her ego, perhaps more than anything else. That's why she wrote with covert rebellion, using uncommon words and constructing lengthy sentences. She harbored the hope, albeit possibly misguided, of causing self-inflicted suffocation in those who dared to read her statements. That was her secret weapon, or so she believed. Ana didn't express herself like the common folk, who barely employed a handful of words with their various pronunciations. She possessed a broad array of terms that allowed her to precisely convey the meaning of her words.

However, people resented this ability as an affront to their mediocre lives. In the eyes of her detractors, Ana was a disgraceful and torturous executioner, subjecting the insipid to gaze upon their own dim image in the mirror of the haughty. For her, the dull-witted were of little value, hiding behind justifications like "less is more," "if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter," "short sentences come from long experience," "brevity is the soul of wit," or the most seductive of all: "only brevity conquers." There was never a shortage of nitpickers criticizing her style of using subordinate clauses one after another. It's not that Ana couldn't write short sentences; she knew how to be concise and could abbreviate, but her feminine passion was decisive. To put it succinctly, brevity was not her style.

For Ana, writing was akin to making love with language. Achieving climax through words required time. A long paragraph was equivalent to a meticulous exploration of the erogenous zones of the mind, navigating the labyrinth of sensations, touching the precise chords to elicit from silence the melodic moan of pleasurable satisfaction. Thus, while brevity was an art of the impatient, profusion was the hallmark of the resigned. That's why she, as a submissive philosopher, empathized with the docile males of her society. She believed that her literary project could break the shackles of anxiety imposed by the matriarchy.

At times, Ana genuinely believed that her way with words was a matter of magic, not an uncommon notion in her world. It could, in a way, justify her and earn her respect in the eyes of society, portraying her as a sorceress with great enchanting talents. Enchantments she had indeed practiced discreetly at the outset of her controversial literary career, which was then more focused on matters of the heart, as a means of survival.

It perturbed her when others labeled her as lazy when, like in this very moment, she wasn't inclined to write on paper but was lost in thought, gazing distractedly at the motes of dust floating brilliantly in a beam of light. Or when they accused her style of being convoluted, incomprehensible, abstruse, or pompous. What fault did she have for striving to broaden her knowledge? It was her style! Why should she express herself in the way others expected? Why should she conform to the limitations of those who, in contrast, made no effort to better themselves?

Ana suffered from that peculiar form of autism known as Hansper Syndrome. It allowed her to move between levels of thought and communication, but it also compelled her to focus intensely on what others deemed useless. What was her fault in being born this way?

This became even more burdensome when considering that on Klimhá, as in many other worlds and with any art form, writing was not considered a productive activity in a monetary sense. And yet, this truth represented a contradiction that slapped society itself in the face. While it promoted personal, professional, intellectual, emotional growth on one hand, the social ascent based on merits concurrently denigrated those who, having naturally achieved excellence, were compelled to embrace the mediocrity of meritocracy to avoid presenting themselves as a walking offense, a blunt reminder of widespread anomie.

Who dictates what each person deserves? What is the objective measure, when ambition causes frustrating failures in one's intimate vocation, contrasting with the vain and empty popular and pompous glorification? Do legal norms, moral expectations, personal dreams and self-concepts, clerical dogma, government power, money, or the military force suffice to define what is deserving and who is meritorious?

In Klimhá, attaining excellence and proudly displaying it was considered an act of arrogance. Conversely, reaching it and abnegating it, with dignified submission to the interests of petty flatterers and exploiters, was seen as a mark of virtuous and exemplary humility.

"Long live the mediocre pettifoggers who govern us! Down with the grotesque beings sheltered by the opulence of their innate talents! The former must be elevated. The latter, buried in discredit, abandonment, and ignominy. Burn them! Starve them! Or condemn them to the vilest of executions. Failure to do so could trigger a transformation of the status quo and undermine the balance foreseen by the powerful controllers," Ana mentally mused with pronounced sarcasm. If she were a heroine in a novel, she would drown the villains in words poured into pools filled with muck made of submerged punctuation marks. If she were a villain, she would seduce her victims by clouding their understanding with whispers slithering from their ears to their brains, like serpents in the midst of meaningful shadows.

Amidst all these reactionary thoughts, Ana was convinced that every writer, regardless of gender or even species (she came up with the third concept as something amusing, politically correct but grammatically absurd, to include non-human species with special abilities), even if not putting ideas on a specific surface like paper, never stopped crafting in their mind.

Writing is a strenuous, solitary labor that appears idle, demanding, and generally misunderstood by other trades and professions more concerned with achieving a comfortable position than spiritual elevation—the kind that the common inhabitants of Klimhá associated more with the priesthood. To a large extent, this was why most of those who embraced words as their livelihood ended up starving and buried in the cemetery of the needy. But Ana, always resilient, justified her vocation and endeavor without fear of insidious criticism that argued with the commonplace notion that since language is inherited, shared, and everyday, anyone could become a literary authority with minimal effort.

Yes, at that moment in her life, Ana was dedicated to her writing project, in part as a protest against these meritocratic and chauvinistic attitudes that had denigrated female talent for centuries. The matriarchs had pigeonholed women into activities deemed more appropriate for their gender, such as breeding, blacksmithing and mechanics, hunting, warfare, masonry, and other tasks vital for home maintenance and construction, conquest, colonization of enemy or uncharted territories—occupations that primarily required the physical strength of females. Meanwhile, the males of Klimhá, with their more delicate constitution, were assigned arduous but more comfortable tasks like midwifery, child-rearing, education, agriculture, administration, governance, artistry, and providing for the offspring.

Those times described by her millennia-old protector, Alfred Steppenwolf, in whose painter's studio she had set up her writer's study, were long gone. It was Alfred who had gifted her that book that changed her way of thinking about the role of females. That essay, authored by him under the pseudonym Virginia Wolf years ago, emphasized the importance for any artist, especially female, to have her own room, both physically and metaphorically, as a symbol of creative independence and autonomy. This idea profoundly influenced Ana's motivations. Her mother had expressed concern about it one day shortly before her passing, not long ago: "Oh, daughter, you'll end up so alone." A tear, just one, welled up in one of Ana's eyes, moved by the memory. However, a single blink, only one, returned her to her place, moistening her pupil and drying the nostalgia. It's not that she was strong, but in the mourning of her orphanhood, Ana understood the strength that comes from acknowledging vulnerability. She had cried so much. Her soul was withered. Thus, each withheld tear was equivalent to a drip irrigation in the garden of hope.

Privately, Ana wished to suppose that, in other worlds, if they existed, writers, especially females, there not only had their own time and space but also didn't have to contend with the difficulty of validating their art as a dignified means of livelihood. Moreover, they didn't have to deal with that odious, disguised form of censorship through which the cretins of Klimhá judged the value of words that contradicted the equilibrium of things. This censorship served as a pretext to belittle art as a destabilizing factor of the established order. Censorship that, by the way, she would have to confront when this work, which was in preparation, saw the light of day.

Indeed, her novel was contradictory to the prevailing order in her world in the year 1939, when only a handful of females had received government authorization to engage in the plastic arts and literature. For centuries, these domains had been forbidden territories for femininity, except as harmless forms of aesthetic enjoyment and expectation. Furthermore, daring to inaugurate a new literary genre, one that only a few males had ventured into, publishing timid and failed isolated experiments in the form of short stories, was the height of challenges. She knew it well. Nevertheless, Ana needed and was willing to defy the taboo and break the totem. These concepts had been coined by her friend Segismunda Freud, the Marquess of Saide and Duchess DeNguri. How she would have loved to consult with her, but she was imprisoned by conscience in the dungeons of Lakenguri, in the region of Mozumbic, accused of heretical sedition, unrepentant reactionary, and of attempting to revolutionize established thought with her controversial critical theories about the prevailing culture in Klimhá, the relationships between males and females, parents and children, society and the state, and her suggestion that Klimhá was the center around which all the stars revolved.

The situation of her friend heightened Ana's fears and compelled her to be cautious with her daring literary proposal for a new genre for which she had already coined the name: science fiction. She conceptualized it as a genre suitable for masking social critique, projecting the revolutionary ideas of science, and addressing ethical concerns about the future. It would be a proactive genre, with an innocuous appearance, yet capable of immersing the reader in alternative, utopian worlds, serving as mirrors in which to confront their own perversities. And she distinguished it from what she called "scientific fiction," a form of storytelling that included elements of technology and science but lacked the purpose she envisioned.

So, another day joined Ana's writing routine. The night was cool, and after letting out a yawn, she stopped writing. She got up from her desk to stretch her legs, wandering through the magnificent mansion where she had lived since childhood. The house was located in the magical County of Ceithir Taighean and was part of the ancient and legendary Schloss Steppenwolfsee, an inheritance from her parents. However, Ana lacked the authority to make decisions about the property without Alfred's prior authorization.

Her parents, upon bequeathing the house to her, had made an agreement when she was a child. However, after years of separation, they had gone their separate ways, which forced Ana to litigate her case. This situation primarily involved money, which she did not have, and Alfred could not provide. The legal situation of the property and her meager income tied her hands when it came to managing the regularization of the related documents with Alfred. The worst-case scenario would be ending up on the street if the government decided to enforce the demands for seizure and dispossession due to the significant debts for rights and services. Fortunately, at least for the moment, the inheritance law protected her, just as the high wall of the garden protected what lay beyond.

Ana would continue to muse on her existential reasons for a long while, until, distracted and having evaluated the congruence of her thoughts, she would return to the task of stringing words together, of inventing worlds and environments entirely different from her own, from that mansion. Her inventiveness would transport her once again to that imaginary Earth, those planets, systems, and galaxies, dystopian, scattered in her ineffable mental space, where she strove to shape them with credibility, capable of making her audacity, oh dreamer, tolerable enough, subtle and acerbic enough to erode human decay and transform Klimhá for the better. Imagining planets different from those in her solar system, to which her planet Klimhá belonged, was no easy task, as it has never been to break a mold.

* * *

Same place, back in 1939, a moment later.

Although her effort had not been significant, the subtle emotional strain of selecting the right words to describe and narrate the opening lines caused Ana a peculiar weariness. Sudden drowsiness decided her to take a nap. Others might think this was a crude way of procrastinating, of avoiding self-assigned responsibility, but they would be far from the truth with such a prejudice. A moment of apparent distraction did not mean escaping for her, but rather another way to confront her fears and even orient her ideas and create.

With the nap came a daydream: she found herself in the middle of a fantastical island. She had the sensation of being separated from her body. She walked along the beach, and behind some rocks, she was surprised by the presence of a handsome, muscular male with green eyes and light chestnut hair, almost reddish with dark tones, wavy, slightly long and loose. He turned, held her gaze with a slight smile, and without further ado, extended his hand, inviting her to sit with him. She admired the sculptural figure of the young man with undeniable lust. Neither could take their eyes off each other. The mutual impulse to kiss was irresistible, yet he limited himself to saying, with a somewhat deep and well-modulated voice, at a medium volume, "Find me on the other side," and then disappeared, suddenly causing desperation in Ana, who woke up full of anxiety due to the vividness of the experience.

In this state, Ana returned to her work desk. She looked out the window. It was twilight, and the first stars appeared among the colorful clouds tinted with the marvelous light blend of Klimhá's two red and blue suns. She imagined the boundless space beyond those yellow, orange, vermilion, crimson, lilac, purple, dark blue shades—so many and so dark! She thought, as she would say in her way of speaking, like Homer, her imaginary alter ego created as the protagonist of her saga. So she imagined that tiny spaceship and the distress of its occupants. Fantasy should yield to reality, the materialists always argued. But Ana, more of an idealist, had always thought that reality eventually fed on fantasy, so she compelled herself to continue her work.

"The third phase of a journey calculated for nine ended at the base of Sedna Station, thirteen billion kilometers from the sun. The first phases of the journey happened almost in the blink of an eye. The first culminated at Mars Station, where ships usually restocked on supplies and underwent routine maintenance checks. The second took place at Titan Station, where travelers, in addition to resupplying, planned inertial routes to head out of the Earth's solar system and set a course for one of the galaxy's quadrants," Ana would write, pressing her fountain pen.