#cherryh

She posted this on her Facebook Saturday evening, April 25, 2026:

"Dear readers and friends. The unhappy fact is---the numerous bouts of anaesthetic I've had have made it pretty well impossible for me to write. I drop stitches. Not many. No problems with daily life or doing creative stuff or enjoying life in general. But the ability to control narrative is just not what it was, and it's just not going to be there. I've accepted that, painful as it is. I thank all of you who've stood by me patiently. The body of work is what it is, and I am lastingly grateful to my publisher, Betsy Wollheim, who has given me every extension of time and resource. And of course to Jane, who is all things."

[Jane Fancher has been her companion and co-author for many years, and more recently her wife as well.]

Her stories have occupied my mind for decades now, ever since a university classmate introduced me to The Faded Sun series. Large parts of my heart are owned by Pyanfar Chanur and her clan and associates as well as by the Hellburner Four and their long-suffering program officer Jurgen Graff.

Lyrics:

because i NEED people to know about my blorbos

humans have yeeted themselves into far distant space on a generation ship type thing. it lands in the wrong place, shit is super fucked up, they* have to make an emergency settlement on a nearby habitable planet which turns out to have sentient, intelligent, civilized life who are pretty cool actually. (the atevi. they are basically eight foot tall dark elves who are super hot. i decided about that last part but it's true.) after a little while of totally okay coexistence, there's suddenly an unexpected big fuckoff war, and after that war they realize it's due to surprise linguistic/biological/cultural differences. as a result, the humans all live separate from atevi on an island, and with the atevi they organize an interface, via one single human translator who learns the atevi language and lives with the atevi as an ambassador and facilitates any human-atevi political or economic affairs.

*some of them. not all of them. this becomes relevant later.

the story follows Bren Cameron, the sole human translator in the atevi world. there are fifteen books of it, and currently i am on book 5, and from what i can tell it's just one long string of "Bren Cameron's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day", in which So Many Extremely Stressful Political and Cultural and Personal and [Redacted] Events Occur and it's Paidhi Bren (Translator Bren)'s job to deal with it all.

he has two loyal atevi bodyguards called Banichi and Jago whomst i love and whomst love him. actually pretty much all atevi love him or at least think he is INCREDIBLY darling, including some of the ones that for political reasons may also want him dead, which he absolutely does not comprehend and refuses to acknowledge. most notable of this latter category are ilisidi (GRANDMA!) and her bodyguard cenedi.

“Compassion”

Joshua Halbraight Talley, Union fleet Armscomper, and Damon Konstantin, Pell Station legal affairs, from C.J. Cherryh's novel, Downbelow Station.

The work also on instagram. More down below behind the cut:

First Trip by Callego