World building — lunar humans
My book, Melody Harper’s Moon, features a whole generation of kids who’ve only known the Moon to be their home. What would be the effect of growing up in low gravity?
As I said before, my fictional lunar colony has about a thousand occupants but travel to the Moon is expensive, so many people who go there stay there. There are a whole generation of kids the eldest of whom is under twenty, who grew up on the Moon.
Over time it’s likely the human race will evolve if living out on new planets. But these kids are just the first generation, so shouldn’t be hugely different. That said, I wanted to make them feel alien, and took a few guesses and a dash of artistic license. The Moon has much weaker gravity, and also as I talked about before, the colonists live on a vegan diet as well.
In low gravity the body burns less calories — astronauts have to spend a lot of time exercising just to balance how little energy their bodies need.
Good science fiction is about clash and contrast. I made the lunar kids therefore really tall figuring their bodies would just grow and grow upwards. But their calorie controlled diet would make them naturally relatively thin. Melody describes it as feeling like she’s on “the planet of the supermodels”. The boys and girls are quite androgenous — the girls are relatively flat-chested, the boys quite feminine.
Melody is a contrast to this, short, a little overweight, and feels like she has the rest of her class staring a little too uncomfortably at her chest (both the boys and the girls).
The lunar kids make her feel self-conscious. But it turns out the lunar kids are envious of her — they’re considerably weaker than Melody who is used to a planet with much more gravity (the Earth), but also her prior diet means she has much stronger bones than their calcium reduced bodies. It was a theme of body issues I really felt was important to explore — how we all have a battle to accept ourselves and our bodies.
Something I hadn’t originally intended but which I went with anyway … the lunar kids are quite androgenous, and there aren’t many of them. So I ended up making most of them pansexual — being okay being attracted any spectrum of human being from male or female. It’s funny how as much as you try, you can’t help putting some of yourself into your characters and your book! Some people thought this was part of my secret LGBTQIA drive behind the book, but it just made sense.
Melody herself is lesbian — another choice I didn’t originally make. Melody was originally straight, and going to have a plantonic relationship with the boy next door. But I noticed how much of a spark there was between Melody and a certain girl in my story, and I knew they belonged together. I’m really glad I did as it just felt right for the Melody character, and I moved her from being 16 to 17 as the activities of Melody went from being more platonic to sexual. The moment I made that change, it just felt right. And their relationship became the heart of what I wanted to say.
This again was another awkward choice — most young adult stories have quite platonic love stories. However having been a teen myself, and know the antics of my son, my neices and nephews, I know this doesn’t really reflect much of teen reality. My book was about teens on the Moon, but I wanted it to reflect how real relationships worked. The intense emotion, the fights, the intimacy but also the sex.
That said, I didn’t really want to write erotica either. Melody talks about having sex, but avoids the details as “one day my grandchildren might read this, and I don’t want them going ‘what the heck Grandma?’”. I like to consider it’s like in most soap operas people will have sex and affairs, it’s referenced, but it’s not explicit.
I think a key thing though is that whatever I’d originally planned to cover, the story evolved and became something else in the telling. And that’s natural, and a good writer embraces it. Despite my science fiction setting, the world building, the loneliness of space and the danger around, my book became more than I’d ever expected about people.
You can buy Melody Harper’s Moon through Amazon,
In the UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
In the US: https://www.amazon.com/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
In Australia: https://www.amazon.com.au/Melody-Harpers-Moon-Meike-Torkelson-ebook/dp/B07GTYY3NL
