Before the Goliath Sinks
Original novel Before the Goliath Sinks: the Keibir are star cartographers wandering the universe. A mapping ship said never to sink is taken toward the one place where it can. Three acts, complete.
At a glance
- Written by
- Jinming
- Protagonist
- A Keibir star cartographer who has inherited the mapping ship Goliath from her mother
- Point of view
- First person
- Genre
- Science fiction and Space
- Setting
- Deep space in the far future, aboard a mapping ship bound for the Silent Sea
- Themes
- Exile and home, What mothers pass to daughters, Recording and memory and Two strangers who meet far from home
- Length
- Three acts, about 14,000 Chinese characters
- Status
- Complete
- Languages
- Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
- Adaptations
- Three trailers, one per act; illustrated audiobook, full series (about 55 min)
The sixth original story of The Song of Inanna, written by Jinming. A story about the universe, exile, home, the stars, memory and the unknown.
The Keibir nebula was destroyed sixteen stellar epochs ago. Ever since, the Keibir have drifted between star systems aboard one mapping ship after another, recording everything they pass, trading their charts for whatever keeps them alive. They ally with no one, and they never enter the same system twice — what has already been recorded means nothing to them.
She inherits the Goliath from her mother, a ship that is said never to sink, unless it enters the Silent Sea. And the Decci colonel wants her to pilot him there.
The Silent Sea surfaces once every thousand stellar years and annihilates whatever it touches; no one who has seen it has come back to describe it. Also aboard is a linguist from New Earth who, like her, has never seen the place she comes from.
Three acts, about 14,000 Chinese characters, told in the first person.
Watch
Full audiobook film (about 55 min)
Act One: What My Mother Left Me Was a Starship That Would Never Sink (21:26)
Act Two: Strangers for Ever, She Opens to Her the Dream That Holds the Earth (17:37)
Act Three: She Brought the Future Back from Infinite Possibility (16:19)
Act One trailer (2:38)
Act Two trailer (2:09)
Act Three trailer (2:02)
All of these films are also on the YouTube channel.
Read
Told in the first person, in three acts:
- Act One: What My Mother Left Me Was a Starship That Would Never Sink
- Act Two: Strangers for Ever, She Opens to Her the Dream That Holds the Earth
- Act Three: She Brought the Future Back from Infinite Possibility
The Chinese original remains the definitive text, and the translation is AI-assisted and reviewed by the author.
Research
Historical notes gathered while writing, which also read on their own: