Remember the scene early in the first Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker walks into a pub filled with a bustling crowd of exotic aliens of all descriptions? Cool, wasn’t it? Now imagine you’re an intelligent young alien (actually still a child) working in a pub filled with a melee of diverse races, on a space station that is a staging point for intergalactic travel through a wormhole, (but sorry, no jazz band.)

Sound interesting?

Sadly, a past of abuse and malnourishment has made Jregli scrawny (only 6 units tall) and mildly deformed, but she knows she is smart enough to turn any situation to her advantage, as any Yerban strives to do.  Just getting off her homeworld has been a huge achievement and improvement in her life, despite the resentfulness of her present owner, officially known as her "uncle" as there are not supposed to be any slaves on the station.

This will be a treat for anyone who appreciates richly imagined alien cultures in a far future setting. The Yerban physiology, homeworld, and culture (which Jregli comes from) has been elaborately and creatively thought out. Most of the other aliens’ characteristics are brief sketches and tantilising glimpses so far.  An example are the Vuns, whose speech is so effusive and dramatic they can’t say anything in under half an hour.

There are two main threads to the story – Jregli’s life in the pub, and the station commander’s trials and tribulations dealing with the politics of running the station. The stories start to intersect when the station receives some unusual visitors with alarming news.

This is first rate science fiction, original, engaging and written in a professional style. As a serial, it is being regularly and consistently updated twice a week.

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So I decided to do a little light reading before getting around to some writing work.

Six hours later, I am still reading.

I consider this a sign of brilliant fiction off the bat, and the very definition of a page-turner.  Each [more . . .]

As of this writing, there are currently 17 installments of Space & Time, most of which are relatively small (which is perfectly fine, since the updates are so frequent).  It follows life on a space station, specifically the life if Jregli, an alien slave girl who has conned her way onto the space station to make a better life for [more . . .]

Space & Time is complex story with a well laid plot and interesting characters.

Space & Time is the story of Jregli, a Yerban girl and a slave. She is smart, and adept at matters of her own culture, but frequently perplexed when she runs up against the very divergent views [more . . .]