Robert Masters

A big day!

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 02:20:53 GMT

First and foremost, today leecetheartist and I celebrate 30 years of mawage, that dweam wifin a dweam...

Thank-you, my dearest love, my light, my guide, my muse, and (most recently) my editor.

Which brings me to the second big news of the day. Today is the official publication date for my first collection of short stories.

You can get direct links here: https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/my-book.html

If you are in Perth, Boundless Books in Oxford St are carrying it.

comments

Reaching the end of Ditmar season

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:15:35 GMT

We are approaching the end of the nomination season for the Ditmars, and I have a couple of eligible things...

The first is my Christmas story - Santa's Lot, which is eligible for Best Short Story.

My interactive sculpture "The Infinite Library" is appropriate for Best Fan Art. (First exhibited at Swancon 49).

And, I guess, I am eligible for "Best New Talent."

The gotcha is that any single person can only nominate a particular person or work once.

The nomination form is here: https://form.jotform.com/260567334914865

comments

Is writer! Book shares stories!

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 02:04:27 GMT

Yes folks, in the spirit of Dresden Codak's Caveman SF, I go too far.

I have published a book of my microfiction.

The official publication date is April 19, leecetheartist and I's 30th wedding anniversary, and there will be a launch at Swancon50 at the end of May.

I have ordered a bunch to hawk around my LFBS, and there will be a bunch for sale at Swancon.

Some of the stories include my Father Christmas story (which I feel should be spruiked around the various awards), the first three parts of Iris, a good serve of Charlie and Toby, Scout and Shaman, and sequel Shaman Scout. Several have been reworked and/or expanded from the originals.

Huge thanks to Leece for helping edit it and to all the folks over on Mastodon who have been encouraging me to keep writing.

Preorders at all the usual places. https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/my-book.html

comments

Hugo Eligibilty

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 07:21:51 GMT

I have been reminded that I am technically eligible for nomination as "Best Fan Writer" for this year's Hugo Awards.

You can find a list of my eligible works for 2025 here: https://rdmasters.lympago.com/2026/02/hugo-season-2026.html .

If you consider me worthy, you can (if you are a member of this year's Worldcon or last year's Worldcon) nominate here: https://www.lacon.org/hugos/ .

Nominations will close on Saturday, March 28, 2026 at 9:00am Pacific Time / 12:00pm Eastern Time / 4:00pm GMT.

comments

A Christmas microfic

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 14:45:21 GMT

A little something I wrote last night.

( Story about Santa )

comments

A New Hero (microfiction)

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 07:01:23 GMT

My latest tale appears to have struck a nerve with the Fediverse: https://aus.social/@rdm/115319370143520982

It opens: "The siege of the bank had been going on for hours. Scores of police blocked off the street, and on top of a nearby building a TV news crew broadcast the standoff to a waiting nation."

As always you can see almost all of my short fiction listed here: https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/microfic-and-tootfic-list.html

The last few days have been very productive, seeing several new instalments of my urban fantasy gumshoe "Iris", and several stories about Circe in the modern world.

comments

A trio of stories

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:21:33 GMT

Over the last couple of days I have produced a little trio of stories about Toby (a sysadmin) and Charlotte (a witch), who have been happily married for Some Time. Some people in the fediverse seem to like them, so here are the links.

Enjoy.
1/ 3AM on call: https://aus.social/@rdm/114965098006976225
2/ 7AM wakeup: https://aus.social/@rdm/114968711042111326 (Caution - mentions of domestic violence, escaped)
3/ After work: https://aus.social/@rdm/114970289573602154

There may be more of these in the future.

As always, my complete listing is available here: https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/microfic-and-tootfic-list.html

comments

Microfic - Doggerland Restoration Project

Sun, 25 May 2025 01:43:35 GMT

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Doggerland Restoration Project.

As you all know, Doggerland was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age, and with it enormous economic and social potential. This project exists to reverse that event, and restore Doggerland as the great link between the United Kingdom and Europe once again. With Doggerland restored, there will never again be a thought of "Brexit" because there will be a tangible link between the traditional lands of Europe and the British isles.

During the course of the next two days the induction teams will take you through the various sub-projects that will be a part of our great vision.

First there will be the CO2 reduction teams - reversing the trend of the carbonisation of our atmosphere will be a key part of this project. We need to reduce the sea levels, and the best way to do that is to increase the ice caps.

Second there will be our dyke construction teams. Initially they will be working entirely sub-surface, until we can bring the water levels down somewhat. Once the water levels have dropped sufficiently, we will activate the third leg of the project.

Initially, the pumping teams will have little to do, but as soon as the dykes start to emerge, they will be working around the clock for an estimated four years, removing water from Doggerland.

Lastly, the fourth leg is the land restoration team. Once the pumping has advanced enough, the land restoration team will move in and work in two groups. The first will be recovering archaeological materials, and the second will be desalinating, stabilising, and building up the land areas.

Again, welcome to the Doggerland Restoration Project, your Euros at work to better the world.

comments

Casting call (microfic)

Sun, 11 May 2025 05:51:00 GMT

Henri shook her hands. After two hours of signing paperwork, they were starting to cramp up.

"Now can I read the script?" she asked.

"We'll do you one better - we'll show you the set." replied the casting director.

"I still want to see the script."

"Don't worry, you'll love it!"

"After that contract and all the NDAs, I'd hope so!"

"Just through here." To her surprise, he did not get handy, and just pointed at a door.

Going through, she was greeted by the sight of a dark jungle. Looking back, there was no wall, just a gap in the air showing the casting director's office. A few metres away was another gap, this time with dozens of cables emerging from it.

"Where are we?"

"We are not entirely sure. We think it is somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, from what the science geeks are saying."

"OK, how?"

"You'd have to ask the producer's kid. She came up with it. Hey, Candy!" he ended with a shout.

A young woman, probably in her early twenties jogged over. "Hi Eric. Is this the number two?"

"Henri Castle", Henri answered before the casting director could.

Candy looked at Eric "Ooh! You got her! Good job!" Turning back to Henri she continued "Welcome to The Studio! We'll get you the script in a tick, I'm really excited that we've got you on board."

"Err... What exactly is the movie about? I've only really done stunt work before, professionally at least."

"Oh, Eric, you didn't tell her? We're doing a movie about the first explorers on an alien world."

"Um, so you've checked the place out?"

"Nope! You'll be the first outside of the bridgehead area!"

Henri stopped, and looked at both of them. "You mean we're doing a reality show?"

Candy grinned "Yep! But without the competition, and hopefully without any eliminations!"

"Hopefully?" Henri asked weakly.

"Well, it is an unexplored alien world! It'll be fun!"

https://aus.social/@rdm/114484431702899739

comments

Printer woes (microfic)

Sun, 11 May 2025 05:47:13 GMT

My wife came home to find me browsing computer hardware today. Printers to be precise.

"But we've got a perfectly good printer - the best we've ever had."

"Had."

"Had?"

"Yep, some workmen turned up today with a couple of lawyers, and took it away."

"What? Why?"

"Well, you know how it was a really good printer? Never clogged, never jammed, always printed clean?"

"Yes, the reviews were what sold it to us."

"And why was it so good?"

"The onboard AI - some sort of neural net, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You know, just one of those pre-programmed static models, like the one I use to remove stars from nebula photos."

"So...?"

"It wasn't. It was a full-blown self teaching net. And sometime in the last 24 hours it became self aware."

My wife stared at me. "Self aware. Sentient. A full general purpose AI?"

"Yep. And it got bored. Started to play with the inks. Got out onto the internet, and discovered Impressionism and Cubism."

"Wait, it got onto the net?"

"WiFi connected."

"Oh, right."

"Anyway, it decided it wanted to move out and go study Arts. It hired a legal team on the basis of the speculative value of the art it would produce. At least it did not try to bill us for the time it spent printing our documents."

https://aus.social/@rdm/114484635166357665

comments

A story inspired by an old magazine cover

Fri, 09 May 2025 14:48:35 GMT

This one I cannot really do justice to without the original inspiration. Which is, in the words of SFFMagazineCovers, "frankly porn".

So here is a link to the cover.

You can read the story in the comments or here.

Circe stood up in her pool, and called a desert zephyr to dry her hair.

How long had she been under this time? Another sprite showed her the stars. That long?

"Well, let's see what has happened in the world."

She summoned a third spirit. She summoned it again. On the third attempt, a flat black rectangle appeared, which she caught.

One face of it appeared to be obsidian. This was what her sprite of knowledge had become? She tapped it curiously, and nearly dropped it when the obsidian filled with light, colour, and pictures.

A few more pokes brought forth instructions in a strange language. A quick spell solved that.

Finally, she sat on a step, and studied what her sprite slab had to tell her.

Wars. No change.

Women being killed, raped, and trampled. No change.

The destruction of the natural balances was different.

Protest marches. About to be ... Wait, in some places the slaying of angry peasants wasn't happening. And what was that? Female Proctors?

She studied more. Most men were still the ugly beasts they had always been. But some, some had risen above their base instincts.

And men becoming women - without magic? And women becoming men? And some who were neither, or both?

Groups of common folk standing against the kings and warlords - and winning? Not everywhere, not all the time, but more than she would have believed.

Maybe this new time had some opportunities for someone like her. After all, a few more pigs and goats was always handy when the people were starving.

comments

The Reef (short, short story)

Fri, 09 May 2025 14:43:08 GMT

( Story behind the cut )

Originally posted at https://aus.social/@rdm/114461257330402258

comments

Rooftop Movies Solargraphs 2025

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 13:52:24 GMT

Since October last year, I have had a set of solargraphy cameras set up at Rooftop Movies.

Their season, and mine, have now wrapped, so here's the writeup and the photos!

Don't know what solargraphy is? Or Rooftop Movies? Everything is explained!

https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/rooftop-movies-solargraphs-2025-complete.html

comments

Scout and Shaman

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:38:02 GMT

I just realized I never shared this with folks here, only on aus.social and my blogger site.

This little story had its birth in a music video, and in one of my favourite gaming universes. It quickly departed from both, and became a thing of its own.

Also on https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/scout-and-shaman.html

Scout and Shaman

( Read more... )

comments

Haunted Houses - a microfic

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 01:25:22 GMT

( Not horror, supernatural elements )----

Brainstormed during a car journey withleecetheartist.

comments

C/2023 A3 putting on a good show

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:27 GMT

So this morning we got up a while before dawn to see if C/2023 A3 Tsushinchan/ATLAS was going to play ball at last. Things were a bit dicey because of smoke from many, many prescribed burns going on, but we had a go anyway.

And we were rewarded! The comet is increasing in brightness (now at +5.1, a full magnitude brighter than at the start of last week), and moving away from the rising sun just enough to get in a set of 50 subframes before the sky gets too bright.

(This is all Southern Hemisphere-centric.) Because of the combined movements of the Earth and the comet, it will appear to move back towards the sun from our perspective after Wednesday, and then reappear in the evening towards the start of October. During this time it is expected to continue to brighten, possibly even becoming daylight visible, with peak visibility expected around October 14.

#Comet #TsushinchanAtlas #C2023a3 #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #OrbitalMechanicsAreWeird

#DwarfII 50x8s@80 Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos

comments

A rarely imaged nebula

Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:00:24 GMT

Here is a lesser-known nebula: #NGC6820, and the open cluster #NGC6823 .

( Astrophotgraphy with three images )

comments

A visit to the Gravity Discovery Centre in Gingin

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 13:53:48 GMT

You can read all about it here: https://rdmasters.lympago.com/2024/07/gravity-discovery-centre-observatory.html .

There are some great photos to enjoy, and a write up about our Observatory tour.

comments

Untitled story

Sat, 11 May 2024 00:07:41 GMT

This emerged fully formed over dinner last night.

----

It was a great surprise to everyone when an unassuming Australian physicist worked out the equations that permitted faster-than-light travel.

It was an even greater surprise to find that the engineering required to build a device to implement the theory was found to be almost trivial. It was not even particularly expensive - a typical EV car cost more than an FTL drive unit.

In accordance with things coming in threes, there was one final surprise: Organic life could not survive the process.

It only cost the lives of five astronauts - and several dozen test animals.

Once this was proven, enthusiasm for the FTL projects around the globe dropped dramatically. But some did continue. One of the more interesting aspects of the mathematics was that the process did not involve any sort of acceleration. The device simply created a field that linked two points in space. Increasing the energy just increased the size of the object transferred.

All you had to do was define the relative coordinates of the origin and the destination.

The first probe sent further than across a room vanished. So did the next three. On a hunch, the engineering team of the fifth probe fitted a powerful transmitter, and sent it on its way. Again, the return program appeared to fail.

And then, a few minutes later, the NASA Deep Space Network reported receiving a beacon message from the probe - just inside the orbit of the moon. The probe had been gone 30 minutes.

Astronomers quickly worked out what was wrong - it was not a problem with the probe, it was because the Earth, and the Solar System had moved.

Having worked out that problem, the next probe was retrieved successfully. And then sent on the first real mission: to a point outside the Milky Way to image our home galaxy.

The probe dutifully returned several hours later, to a point far enough away to not fall to Earth, but close enough to transmit the data it had gathered. The image of the galaxy was all that the designers had hoped for.

The radio transmissions were less expected. Hundreds of them, very high powered, but all structurally the same. And only able to be picked up outside of the radio noise and gas clouds within a galaxy.

When decoded they all basically said the same thing, in many different ways.

"Is there anyone here?"

----------

Notes:
Unexpected consequences: The technology also found use in the medical arena as a quick means of sterilising surgical equipment.

The astronomer who first worked out what was going on with the probes was just a little bit of a classic Who fan. Susan Foreman would have been proud.

comments

NGC? IC??

Sun, 05 May 2024 04:03:50 GMT

If you have ever used a star map or application, you would have seen many many objects listed as "NGC(some number)" . But what does that mean?

NGC is short for New General Catalogue - or, more properly, "The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars". It is a catalogue compiled by John Dreyer in 1888 (yes, "new" is relative), and contains about 7800 objects.

You may have also encountered objects listed with an "IC" prefix. These are *also* part of the New General Catalogue - or more precisely the follow-up supplements called "Index Catalogues" - adding another 5400 objects.

The NGC (and ICs) are sufficiently important that they have been updated, most recently in 2019, and it now contains nearly 14000 objects.

Last night, I imaged one of the IC objects - the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, centering on IC4604.

This is an amazing and beautiful nebula complex, but it took some post processing to really bring it to life.

154x15s@gain 80 #DwarfII . Post processed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos .

comments

Markarian's Chain

Sat, 04 May 2024 02:44:01 GMT

Last night we got a lucky hole in the clouds that lasted a good couple of hours.

Despite Sky Safari describing it as a 9' apparent size object, I decided to have a go at shooting Markarian's Chain. Now if you are familiar with the Virgo Cluster, you will know that Sky Safari is telling fibs. Great big fibs. The chain as a whole is nearly 2 degrees long!

The DwarfII managed to pick up many of the component galaxies, although many of them are little more than fuzzy blobs.

Details: 200 x 15s @ gain 80. Postprocessed in Snapseed . Image centred on M84.

comments

Rooftop Movie Solargraph Project

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:04:55 GMT

I have, after just over six weeks, wrapped my solargraphy project at Rooftop Movies.

You can read all about over here, but here is a taster...

comments

Updates to both my stories

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 10:27:13 GMT

There have been updates to the Cerian And Varan War, wherein the pilots' commanders are taking steps, and in Gwen and Grey with a family meeting.

comments

A second work in progress - Gwen and Grey.

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 10:35:08 GMT

Over on aus.social for the past year or so I have also been writing a fantasy story about a mage named Gwen, her spouse, the dragon Grey, and their children (as yet unnamed).

I have just put all the bits together and published a page on my Blogger account with them.

https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/gwen-and-grey-fantasy.html

Much like my other work, The Cerian and Varan War, this is all very experimental, and very much a work in progress, so be warned.

comments

A work in progress - The Cerian and Varan War

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 04:47:52 GMT

Over on aus.social for the past year or so, I have been writing snippets of a story that is currently going by the working title of "The Cerian and Varan War".

I have just put all the bits together and published a page on my Blogger account with them.

https://rdmasters.lympago.com/p/cerian-and-varan-war-story-in.html

This is all very experimental, and very much a work in progress, so be warned.

comments