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, Kobo, B&N & more.) For further details please check my Books page.

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 ninth segment:

His natural instinct, and scientific curiosity, had overcome all other notions and calculations at the time, and he had decided to let this unique embryo stay in the petri dish, and then in the test tube, to see whether it would develop properly and be capable of sustaining life. Surprisingly, it did quite well. Not only that: it matured earlier and needed only ten colony-months, not the regular twelve, before it was ready to be taken out of the Birth-Machine’s incubation tank and breathe on its own.

At the time, it had not caused strong objections from the other laboratory workers and scientists, and not even from the colony-citizens at large, when D.L. had decided to let the unusual newborn live. Some citizens had voiced the opinion that it was forbidden, and in violation of certain, obscure colony-rules. D.L., however, had taken full responsibility for his actions and had explained it as a scientific experiment with potential benefits for all the colony-citizens and for the advancement of their race, a superior race that needed, on a regular and regulated basis, only ten newly born babies per period: five of each sex. The rest, those not progressing exceedingly well, or not maturing fast or strongly enough, were eliminated while still in the test tubes, and sometimes even later in their early embryonic development stages.

D.L. assigned her the identification name of Z.Z., because no female colony-citizen was ever before assigned that combination of letters. After a while, other laboratory workers nicknamed her the “Monster.” In their view – maybe because of the strange, dark color of her hair and skin – she was ugly and repulsive, and therefore reminiscent of ancient creatures they had never seen, had only learned about from old digital books, films and videos. She was so different from the other, golden-white children. Mainly though, as was discovered soon after, it was her behavior and functionality that were much flawed. She couldn’t catch up to the developmental speed, and learning skills of the other children in her tier and fell far behind.

One colony-day D.L. had found her injured and dripping blood. It was a rare occurrence in the colony, unheard of until then, as a matter of fact. He soon learned that the other children, her age and older, had beaten her up and excluded her from their company. And worse still: it was done with the full knowledge and approval of the citizens in charge of the children’s activities and education. From that time onward, Z.Z. never spoke again. She was, as far as the colony and its inhabitants were concerned, mute and dumb.