The moon is rusting, very, very slowly, but rusting none the less. This has nothing to do with the moon occasionally looking a bit orange. That’s just light refracting through the atmosphere making it seem to be a mild orange colour a little like the colour of rust, which is why the picture below is disingenuous considering the title of this post. But it is pretty…
The moon has actually been acquiring a thin layer of oxidised iron at each of its poles over the course of millions of years. The Luner atmosphere, which is thinner than a celebrity on Ozempic contains just enough traces of hydrogen form the solar winds and and oxygen ions cast out by the earths magnetic field to produce enough of a reaction at the moons poles to ‘rust’ the iron rich rocks on the surface…
Scientists discovered these ‘rusty rocks’ in 2020 and the above is the best explanation they have come up with in the six years since as to why this is happening. It has not occurred to any of them that the moon is an artificial satellite created by the lizard gods aliens to stabilise the earths orbit in order to create the conditions for life. Lizard gods who will come back one day soon.
May I just state clearly and concisely for the record, I for one welcome our lizard god overlords, after all they will probably be an improvement of the lizards we have in charge at the moment…
In any regard around the 1st of September when we were throwing around ideas for the title of the next Harvey Duckman anthology, which was to be a second Post Apocalypse anthology due to the popularity of Death +70, we started throwing around ideas in general, the first of which was ‘REM Were Right’ which had I not had to explain the joke to anyone under the age of forty would have been a great title for a book set after the end of the world…
I was fine about that but I got vetoed by those who consider my musical puns to be irritating, honestly they are all philistines…
The next bit of ideating after the REM joke was this lot from me
Yes I tried to steal a title from Author C Clark, what of it… In any regard there followed an exchange of ideas, I suggested Rustfall but that turned out to be a PC game so that was out, as was Atomfall obviously then Kate Baucherel suggested ‘Rust Moon Rising’. At which point Gillie went and looked up the words ‘moon’ and ‘rust’ and we found out the moon was rusting.
I explained the beat of ‘Rust Moon Rising’ was wrong and it needed to be ‘A Rust Moon Rises’ and Gillie, Kate and Louise S Kerr who had been lurking and probably laughing at us, agreed, which got us to the title for the book…
This only took a couple of hours, and we were all sober (I assume as it was on chat at 10 in the morning, but who can be sure…)
Later there followed a much longer discussion about the cover, but I am not going into that…
That was September, This is not, The Rust Moon has arisen…
Harvey Duckman is back with a tantalising glimpse into the post-apocalyptic abyss. Disaster… catastrophe… cataclysm… darkly funny, evocative, thought-provoking and quirky. Welcome to the end of the world.
Looking for original, wonderfully imaginative stories from a bunch of fantastic writers? Sit back and enjoy a glimpse into our weird and wonderful worlds.
Featuring stories from H.C. Ricci, Mike Adamson, Mary F. Carr, Davia Sacks, John Holmes, Ben Sawyer, Reino Tarihmen, Angela Smith, Mark J. Hayes, L.S. Kerr, Zachary Taylor Branch, Nimue Brown, Adam Stone, Keith Errington and Kate Baucherel
This is the 11th of the new Harvey Duckman anthologies I have been involved in, after the 15 original Harvey anthologies I was also involved in. The second Post Apocalypse book, and the title of my story in this collection is not in any way pretentious just because the title is Latin for seed potato…
If you follow these blogs even vaguely you are probably aware the Harvey Duckman books are one of my passions. We have given an outlet for so many new writers and inspired many to write. The stories are always a fabulous collection curated by the ever wonderful C.G.Hatton (Gillie), with a little help form me and john and Andy, as well as the wider family.
If your a reader, or a writer you can find out more at the link below
https://harvey-duckman-is-alive.ghost.io/
