#cozyscifi

[bookvibesandtarotcards]

Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne

A moss-covered alien starship. A pilot trying to outrun her past. An organic computer with abandonment issues. Moss'd in Space is cosy science fiction that proves saving the galaxy isn't nearly as interesting as learning to trust the people beside you.

📚 Pre-Reading Thoughts

When someone describes a book as having Firefly vibes, it's immediately going onto my reading list.

Cosy science fiction is still a surprisingly small corner of the genre, and I'm always interested in stories that focus less on galaxy-ending threats and more on the people trying to build lives among the stars.

📖 Post-Reading

As I thought...

This is a wonderfully character-driven story. There isn't a constant stream of life-or-death action, but that's entirely the point. The real journey is watching damaged people gradually help each other heal.

Torian makes an engaging protagonist. She's competent without having everything figured out, and her relationships—particularly with Amelia and Moss—drive the emotional heart of the novel.

The humour lands beautifully. Moss, in particular, is a delight: snarky, lonely, occasionally dramatic, and surprisingly easy to sympathise with despite technically being a spaceship.

It surprised me by...

How thoughtful the science fiction ideas are. The worldbuilding is full of little concepts that feel fresh while remaining grounded enough to be believable. One particular medical detail especially reminded me of Earth 2, exploring the long-term consequences of living in carefully controlled artificial environments.

Just how much warmth there is beneath the comedy. Every major character is carrying some kind of hurt, and rather than "fixing" each other overnight, they slowly learn how to become the support each of them has been missing.

The epilogue. Without spoiling anything: if you like your books neatly wrapped up, you may wish to stop one page early. If, however, you enjoy immediately needing the sequel... well, consider yourself warned.

I know exactly which camp I fall into, because I'll definitely be picking up the next book.

🎧 Music Pairing

🎵 Featured Song: Learn to Fly

🎶 Vibe Album: The Race for Space

🎧 Artist Recommendation: ELO — optimistic, spacey, and just quirky enough to suit a sentient moss-covered spaceship.

🌈 Vibe Check

Colour Palette: moss green, nebula blue, brushed copper, warm amber

Soundtrack: gentle engine hums, distant stars, cheerful bickering over the comms

Season: perpetual spring somewhere among the stars

Mood: hopeful, funny, quietly healing

Scent: warm circuitry, damp moss, machine oil, fresh tea

🃏 Tarot Pull

Three of Pentacles

At its heart, this is a story about people with very different strengths learning to work together. Nobody succeeds alone, and every member of the crew—including one particularly opinionated organic computer—has something valuable to contribute. The Three of Pentacles celebrates collaboration, trust, and building something stronger together.

👀 For fans of

Firefly

Farscape

cosy science fiction where the found family matters just as much as the spaceship

[talesfromadistantstar]

To say that Ved was stressed was putting it lightly. They were molting during *finals week* of all times, and it looked like the person underneath was the worse for it. Their feathers were a dull brown instead of their usual shiny orange yellow, and they could swear their eyesight was worse, but that was probably due more to late nights staring at hyperspace theory and sentience networking than anything else. The worst bit was a new feeling with this molt. Growing up, molting was exciting, as you look and see yourself a little taller, a little more colorful, and in Ved's case, more androgynous like they willed. The new feeling was a feeling of dread *how long was this going to stick?*

[talesfromadistantstar]

Just as Senzer was getting around to working on his essay, the cluster's AI rerouted the main power to shields. The cloud they were flying through had been forecasted earlier this week, but with his essay due, Senzer had entirely forgotten about it. In the meantime, the only thing to do was grab some jerky to munch from the pantry, slither underneath the warmed rock that most warm blooded people thought was a table, and doze while listening to the soft patter of small asteroids hitting his hab shield like rain on a window.

[talesfromadistantstar]

Gel Zrr never thought psionic training would be this hard.

It made sense of course. Everyone always said it's just like any other skill, and Gel was *excellent* at picking up new skills. They had learned mag boarding in the pipes of Cenva Station in a matter of weeks. They were conversational in the dec or so languages, pidgins, creoles that echoed from for to aft since they learned how to talk. Gel had once won a months worth of creds in a casino, the bulk of which was from a dare that they would lose an Ostriyoli strategy game that they learned the rules of *on the fly*

Things came easy to Gel, and the fact that Psionics wasn't coming easy made them anxious in ways they didn't even know were possible.

And so, Gel kept staring at the spork. Willing it to move beyond all reasonable measure