Max's Writing Workshop
Hi! I am Max, a writer-worldbuilder from Russia.I am writing a series of novels set in my constructed world, Stardust, on which I and my friends worked for around 2 years now. It is hard sci-fi, but does not dwell too much on the minutiae of technology. My biggest inspirations are Mass Effect, Star Control 2, and lots of SF novels I read since I was young.It offers a future with a genuinely good quality of life for humanity; a breath of fresh air in an age of pessimism and media-wide doomerist thought. In my writing, I also reconstruct and modernize the space-opera premise, throwing out many of its overly cliched or conservative tropes. But humans are not special or the sole focus, there are genuinely over a dozen species that each have their own history and complex culture not reduced to a few "hats". All set against a backdrop of hard science with a few concessions to theme and convenience like fast genemodding and FTL. However there is no "space magic", obsession with powerscaling, or similar, making the world much more grounded than most sci-fi.The Stardust series is an anthology; while characters from previous books may reappear or cameo in future books, the plots are mostly self-contained and feature an all-new cast. The world does change and develop as the timeline moves forwards.There are some gory or unsettling scenes in these books but overall they're not particularly edgy.Even though I am a beginner writer, I have got a good reception from those I showed to, but I lack the budget to make a proper advertisement. I'm looking for more potential readers.You can talk to me on Discord (@maxythefoxy) or Mastodon (@[email protected]), or meet my community and friends on my Discord server.
| Title | Genre | Premise | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Origins | Travel/mystery | A fairly normal human and a bunch of aliens, alongside a cyborg, go on a trip to see Earth. Along the way they run into a conspiracy. The book introduces the Terran Federation and many setting elements. | It is rough around the edges, and as it was written before I fully adopted transhumanist ideology, the worldbuilding is notably more conservative than in later books. I plan to edit it in a major way. |
| Marathon | Action/space opera | A workplace dramedy about a scout ship refitted into an extremely fast courier with a specialized ultra-fast FTL drive is sent to deliver a message that is critical to the Alliance's conflict with the Hegemony. | This is where the series hit its stride. Particularly, around 1/3 of the way through this book. Many current elements of the setting, retconning parts of Origins, were further introduced here. |
| Labyrinth | Action/horror | A team of archeologists discovers a precursor installation on a glass planet, what follows is essentially a dungeon-crawl in space. | This is the shortest published work, and has a very condensed story. Still, I am very proud of the writing here. It is perhaps my most technically competent work. |
| Unenforceable | slice of life/legal drama | TBA! | This is finished but I want to fix up some parts before releasing it fullt. |
| Blueweb | espionage | The book follows three counterterrorist agents posing as a contingent of foreign researchers aboard the alien starship Yyyvav, which is suspected to have a cult onboard. The ship has many species working together as part of a cooperation program which unfortunately allowed an easy way in for the cult. Can they stop them before they do something awful to the Blue Web? | Available on Discord and Spacebattles. Work-in-progress, updated approximately weekly. |