Sex War One

Sex War One – my dystopian Sci-fi novel – is available for purchase in all eBooks & iBooks stores & devices. “Fast-moving plot and skillful characterization,” said Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World.

Kindle Edition: amazon.com/dp/B00OI8HGVQ Smashwords Edition: smashwords.com/books/view/484747 (for iTunes, B&N, Sony & more.) Further details: HillelBridge.com/books

To give you a taste of the book, I’ve been posting segments of my award-winning short story, “The Monster,” which serves also as the basis for the book. Here then is the eighth segment:

The elevator descended soundlessly. While its lone passenger was D.L., a few pairs of eyes were keeping him company. They were following his journey, he was sure of that, watching him on their private screens. Those inquiring eyes were quick, in this new reality, to investigate and scrutinize all his moves, turns and whereabouts. He could have easily switched the elevator camera off, but it was against the rules; it was forbidden to hide anything in the colony, as everything was required to be disclosed for all eyes to see and all ears to hear.
The elevator came to a stop deep in the backyard level. There were no sun nor open skies to see in this backyard, no vegetative growth of any kind, and no member of the animal kingdom – once the ruling class of the land above, as D.L. knew from his studies, and thereafter co-existing with man for awhile – was prowling around. But it was possible to stroll freely some distance in an open, un-walled space. It was possible, also, to jump into the small swimming pool and swim in its tepid waters, filled with a pink, disinfecting solution. And it was possible to play, as the children sometimes did (though not too often), in the nearby playground.
D.L. halted in the far corner of the yard, in front of a transparent plastic fence. Inside he saw the small, lone shack he had designed and built. He entered the secret combination on the electronic panel by the fence’s gate, known only to him, and it slid open for him. He stepped inside and was just about to turn the light on when he thought the better of it. She was asleep, he realized. And in any case, the light would work against him now. The darkness, he hoped, would work for him.
He sat down on the small but sturdy toy-box he had built for her. She was sleeping peacefully, his Z.Z., lying on the air mattress by the toy-box. She was wearing her thick, crude one-piece nylon dress, the one she almost never took off, other than on those rare occasions when she went to the swimming pool – under D.L.’s supervision only, and when the other colony kids were not around – to wash her body. Her breathing was quiet and rhythmic. Her black hair was spread like a fan around her head, as if meant to protect her from bad dreams.
He watched her quietly and remembered. He remembered how the Birth-Machine had spewed her out into the test tubes, together with the other embryos that had been ordered that year. He remembered how the unusual embryonic-compound had caught the attention of the lab inspectors, causing them to call on him. He remembered how he had inspected it further, and – in his position then as Head-Laboratory-Scientist – had reached the conclusion that an unwanted, usually rejected female egg had come somehow to an undetected, undesired union with a male sperm cell. For some strange, unexplained reason, the Birth-Machine’s computer had failed to recognize the deformity of this union, and therefore had not rejected it, and had gone through with the usual, preliminary steps of matching and preserving. Such cases were very common – the majority, in fact – a long time before D.L. had been born, before the dominant humankind, the superior colony-citizen of the present time, had been created, formulated, and fully realized.