From the Moon’s Own Tales
In the harsh lunar dawn of Year +17, Conrad Station was little more than a stubborn cluster of metal cylinders clinging to the gray regolith. Built from a handful of adapted ISS-style habitat modules, the station formed an early, incomplete “bloated H” configuration laid on its side. A short central spine of connected cylinders served as the backbone, with just two or three radial modules attached around the middle. It has enough space to give it stability and extra living volume, but far from the expanded complex it would later become.
The modules showed their age and hasty assembly: scarred white exteriors with fresh Lunadyne patches, exposed conduits, temporary anchoring legs dug into the dust, and only a partial solar array deployed like an afterthought. Fine lunar regolith already coated the lower surfaces. Warm light leaked from only a few small windows, hinting at the handful of personnel trying to hold the outpost together.
This was Conrad Station in its most vulnerable phase — a rough frontier beachhead where the strike’s scars were still fresh, law was thin, and every new arrival (like a certain deputy) stepped into uncertainty. It was the place where Nils Carmike might have parked his crawler years earlier, and where Genevieve Miller would later count thugs under far more dangerous conditions.
Early concept drawings of Conrad Station prior to Y+17 that envision the station upon its opening. These drawings served as the basis for the more ad hoc nature of Conrad’s construction.
Mask of the Joyful Moon
In the shadowed underbelly of Conrad Station, where Earthlight filters through a lunar bar like a distant memory and surface tension bends every sip into something alien, Deputy Genevieve Miller steps onto an old Moon wearing a fresh face. Fresh from Earth’s tangled corporate feuds and the mysterious collapse of her uncle into advanced dementia, Gen arrives as the reluctant law in a place where mercenaries once seized control, prospectors spin half-truths for drinks, and the Mason family’s bitter war threatens to crack the fragile peace. Yet beneath the regolith and recycled air lies a deeper mask—one that hides plaques in the brain, hidden identities among the habitats, and a joyful secret the Moon itself seems determined to reveal. From the reader’s vantage in this hard-won corner of the solar system, where every trail and every transmission carries the weight of Yellowstone’s long shadow, Gen must untangle lies, allies, and threats before the next strike erases everything she came to protect. Available for pre-order at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G16F7MQW
Thunder Moon Tussle
The story that started it all. Nils Carmike and Milton Johnson nurse low‑g drinks in Alex’s bar while the lunar frontier begins to unravel. Prospectors, hidden agendas, and the long crawler trails that bind the Moon together — all under that signature blue Earthlight beam across the dance floor. Now available at Amazon books: Thunder Moon Tussle
Lunadyne Incident
The Lunadyne Incident and Other Stories The raw, standalone dispatches from the Fabulae Lunae collection. These are the tales that fill the gaps between the big runs — the quiet moments and sudden flashes of danger that every prospector and deputy knows too well. Now available at: Amazon Books — The Lunadyne Incident.
The Timeline of Fabulae Lunae
The continuing related vignettes & background logs leading from the Yellowstone Eruption to The Mask of the Joyful Moon. Follow Gen’s arrival, the station politics, and the trails that connect back to Nils and the original crew.
The Fabulae Lunae
Fabulae Lunae—the tales of the Moon—unfolds as a hard-science-fiction chronicle of humanity’s precarious foothold on the lunar frontier. From the gritty prospector crawlers kicking up regolith in Thunder Moon Tussle to the corporate shadows and hidden identities haunting Conrad Station in Mask of the Joyful Moon, these stories trace a near-future scarred by Yellowstone’s eruption, where low-gravity desperation collides with ambition, betrayal, and quiet acts of survival. Readers ride shotgun with characters like Nils Carmike and Genevieve Miller, feeling every awkward sip through a surface-tension cup and every uncertain transmission from Earth, as the Moon itself becomes both refuge and riddle in a saga that rewards those who look beneath the mask.
Other Stories
Besides the Fabulae Lunae, there are other stories set outside of that collective setting. Some of them are weird, while others are outside of that history. The stories imagine other areas that explore science fiction. Some estimated effects of making an assumption about the laws of nature and trying a story with those estimates. Others preserve the rigidity of current scientific knowledge but move it out of the setting of Fabulae Lunae. These stories are spawning new series. The projects section will explore them further.
Future Projects
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Stories
The stories of Torn MacAlester are science fiction, where the science is well-grounded. I intentionally made any deviations for speculative purposes. To maintain maximum realism, I restrict the scope of these deviations.
Articles
I write articles of science fact and science fiction. The articles here span the knowledge of modern science and the speculations of fiction. I try to caveat everything that is an assumption. You will find articles about spaceflight, the possibilities of alien contact, and descriptions of technology used in my stories.
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Outpost
Blog, Reviews, Schedule, Comment Thread, & Reader’s Group.
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