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 the Science Fiction Studies journal. “This book unifies within it the principles of major Science-Fiction literature,” said This World. Kindle Edition & Smashwords Edition (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 nineteenths segment:

Suddenly, he saw the piece of earth he had almost forgotten about. A golden sunbeam was shining there, dancing on a heap of dust. He left Z.Z. behind and hurried up to the top. He was standing finally on a piece of land: brown-gray in color, and very soft, raising a small, thin cloud of dust from under his feet. He looked up and out into the distance. Ahead of him, in full view, stretched the entire valley, including the high mountain at its very end. Behind this mountain, he saw the sun rising, her early morning rays spreading golden light over the brownish, grayish valley plains, painting them crimson.
D.L. stood still, mesmerized by this sight. His breathing was halted momentarily, and his heart was pounding hard and fast. He had gone out before on trips, if not so many, and every time was amazed anew by the beauty of it all. This time, however, it had a different effect on him: much stronger than before. The reason for this was slow to come, as was the rising of the sun behind the mountain. Never before had he witnessed the sun rising like that, pouring light with such abundance. Never before had he seen a dawn such as this in full display, so glorious, with the air so fresh and so clean. Radiation clouds were nowhere to be seen. Nor were they detected on his special trip-suit watch. The color of the sky was bluer than he had ever remembered seeing it. He now saw that the sun was completely exposed on top of the mountain, round and golden; it was as if she were resting there for a moment, catching her breath – as D.L. was doing just then – before continuing her journey up in the blue sky. He sensed that the world was changing, returning to its old form.
He was jerked backward suddenly. In front of him he saw Z.Z. She was alive, and was running ahead of him, throwing her belongings away and rolling joyously on the ground, waving her hands here and there and jumping around with her bare feet. She was out of her mind, it seemed to him, as if the natural world outside, the sunlight and the pure air had hit her raw senses and young mind full force.
He took his helmet off. A current of cold air hit his face, penetrating his nostrils and mouth. He felt ill, about to fall on the ground and faint. It was possible, even, that he lost consciousness for a second or two before regaining it together with his balance, and then resuming a steady, controlled breathing. The air was clean, he realized, as he was experiencing no more problems breathing with his open mouth. Maybe the winter had taken away the last radioactive-clouds on earth.
He made his way slowly down the small hill that served as the entrance to the underground colony. He followed in Z.Z.’s footsteps, clearly marked on the dusty ground, collecting her belongings as he went along.