DayBreak Fiction: “The Gender Plague”, v2

The Gender Plague

K. D. Wentworth

From the many reprints I was sent for Shine, there were only two that I considered very seriously: one is in the final Table of Contents (and the competition about that will begin in a few weeks), and this was the other one.

The premise—a virus that causes a person to change sex overnight—might be a bit wonky (although, with all the crazy performance-enhancement drugs out there I’m not so sure), but this story is a great example that it’s not really the idea itself that matters, but what you do with it. KD takes this crazy (well, it’s becoming less and less crazy in this modern world) notion and runs with it. She runs with it so well that the end result feels completely natural.

Some people think that if well-established (or so one thought) boundaries between things begin to blur, civilisation as we know it comes to a grinding halt. Personally, I think this is just another form of future shock, and once we get used to the newer, richer, crazier and more interesting reality, then we might get a world not unlike “The Gender Plague”…

Lance woke up female again on Tuesday—for the third time in the last ten weeks. When the clock-radio blasted him awake with a particularly wrenching rendition of “Your Cheating Heart,” he rolled over, then stiffened as several unexpected mounds of flesh pressed into his chest—breasts, definitely. Damn!

Heart pounding, he peeked under the sheet—not a goddamned hair anywhere on his now very generously endowed chest, and just when he had an important presentation to make to that officious Japanese outfit gearing up to sell seaweed tacos in the good old U.S. of A. Freaking nano-hackers, screwing around with a man’s basic equipment just for the hell of it! The fact that infected women all over Dallas were bound to be waking up male at that very moment was no consolation to a fellow whose family jewels had gone south somewhere in the depths of the night.

Well, that was what came of refusing to wear those stupid plastic gloves every time he left the apartment, but even the most unobtrusive pair made him look like an absolute wimp, and the more extensive plastic-film suits that protected your exposed flesh had all the appeal of full body condoms. In the advertising game, where first impressions were everything, he could not afford to look foolish. Why the hell didn’t the National Institutes of Health develop a real cure instead of a half-assed purging treatment that changed you back, but didn’t prevent additional infections? He had a good mind to start cheating on his taxes like everyone else.

DayBreak fiction: “The Gender Plague”

The Gender Plague

K. D. Wentworth

From the many reprints I was sent for Shine, there were only two that I considered very seriously: one is in the final Table of Contents (and the competition about that will begin in a few weeks), and this was the other one.

The premise—a virus that causes a person to change sex overnight—might be a bit wonky (although, with all the crazy performance-enhancement drugs out there I’m not so sure), but this story is a great example that it’s not really the idea itself that matters, but what you do with it. KD takes this crazy (well, it’s becoming less and less crazy in this modern world) notion and runs with it. She runs with it so well that the end result feels completely natural.

Some people think that if well-established (or so one thought) boundaries between things begin to blur, civilisation as we know it comes to a grinding halt. Personally, I think this is just another form of future shock, and once we get used to the newer, richer, crazier and more interesting reality, then we might get a world not unlike “The Gender Plague”… 

Lance woke up female again on Tuesday—for the third time in the last ten weeks. When the clock-radio blasted him awake with a particularly wrenching rendition of “Your Cheating Heart,” he rolled over, then stiffened as several unexpected mounds of flesh pressed into his chest—breasts, definitely. Damn!

Heart pounding, he peeked under the sheet—not a goddamned hair anywhere on his now very generously endowed chest, and just when he had an important presentation to make to that officious Japanese outfit gearing up to sell seaweed tacos in the good old U.S. of A. Freaking nano-hackers, screwing around with a man’s basic equipment just for the hell of it! The fact that infected women all over Dallas were bound to be waking up male at that very moment was no consolation to a fellow whose family jewels had gone south somewhere in the depths of the night.

Well, that was what came of refusing to wear those stupid plastic gloves every time he left the apartment, but even the most unobtrusive pair made him look like an absolute wimp, and the more extensive plastic-film suits that protected your exposed flesh had all the appeal of full body condoms. In the advertising game, where first impressions were everything, he could not afford to look foolish. Why the hell didn’t the National Institutes of Health develop a real cure instead of a half-assed purging treatment that changed you back, but didn’t prevent additional infections? He had a good mind to start cheating on his taxes like everyone else.

March @outshine prose poems—humourous

March 7:

Rusty tracks mark the path of her tears. He wipes her cheeks with an oil-damp cloth. Penance for making her cry.

[Bio] Rhonda loves to write. She can be found at http://www.rhondaparrish.com .

March 14:

Demonstration

“—over there!”

             He said, “Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it the teleporter works. Look for me—”

[Bio]Greg Beatty (http://gregbeatty.net) lives in Washington with his wife Kathy, where the biggest challenge is staying dry.

March 21:

Kierkegaard reversed: consequence (1/3) An abstract trilogy, can be read independently

Living forwards with bigger memories—the past became too hard to understand, and so we opened out ourselves—in tomorrows of present purpose.

A suicide explodes, but this time the free world gave way to the open world.

Our future distributed the past among our presents openly, and enough for everyone, even for those longing to perfect the world.

[Bio] Meika lives in Tasmania and no longer writes for humans. twitter.com/meika .

March 28:

Chimay beer sales are on the rise
As drinkers get more eloquent and wise
Trappist monks feign surprise
With an enigmatic glint in their eyes

[Bio] Eva Chapman. UK. Aspiring Boho & rock chick, optimistic re future; writes about that and healing the past; check me out @evitchka http://is.gd/fLAx.

March @outshine prose poems—inspiring

March 4:

Thoughts like gladiators

in the arena of time,

Fight to create the new paradigm

Thumbs down it will suck,

Thumbs up it will SHINE.

[Bio] Inspring author, aspiring Bohemian, babyboomer, rock chick raver, laughing babushka www.evamariachapman.com .

March 11:

She dissipated the past. Footsteps walking reclaimed beaches. Grinned as seagulls abandoned all worship of trash to instead hunt fish.

[Bio] Jason Sanford writes SF/F. His fiction and essays can be found at http://www.jasonsanford.com .

March 18:

Weapon factories filled with silence/withdrawal of desert violence/defense funds poured into education/brought a golden age to our nation.

[Bio] R. Schuyler Devin: a writer who prefers to walk halls of his own imagining rather than the dark alleys of his past. Join him @rsdevin .

March 25:

He opened his onyx eyes, and I knew I would fight every xenophobe on Earth for the joy of holding my hybrid alien son.

[Bio] Amanda Davis sings along with the radio even when she doesn’t know the words. She blogs at http://is.gd/fync .

DayBreak Fiction: “horrorhouse”

horrorhouse

David D.Levine

You know, when people ask me why I got much more involved with editing SF rather than writing it (which I started to do after two decades of reading it), I answer with the usual excuses — Andy Cox asking me to join Interzone after I was mainly reviewing SF in the print incartation of The Fix, etcetera — but now it’s time to reveal the real reason. I blame it on David D. Levine.

Back in 2001, I entered the James White Award with a little story called “Rainmaker on the Run”, and was quite chuffed when it made the final shortlist of five stories. So, full of hope, I set out for Belfast to attend the award ceremony, only to find that a certain American from Portland, Oregon by the name of David D. Levine was the winner with a story called “Nucleon”, which subsequently appeared in Interzone.

I never really got over it, so I decided to become an editor so I could, well, reject him. Oh, the power!

Seriously, “Nucleon” was easily the superior story, and David went on to win several more, and more important, awards. And when he sent me this one for Shine, I was seriously struggling. This was one of those really tough decisions an editor sometimes has to make: more really good stories than can really fit in a 100K anthology. If you’re really curious, I might expand on it in the comments, if you ask me to.

I was even more surprised when David accepted my offer to publish in online instead: I figured he would rather try the top markets with it. However, like quite a lot of other writers, he was happy to be featured here, saying (like the others) that he’d written this one especially for Shine, and while, of course, being somewhat disappointed not to be making it in the print anthology, he supported the idea that SF needs more upbeat stories.

Actually, all the writers featured here on DayBreak Magazine said, more or less, the same: I’m really both surprised and honoured by all the support. And support is one of the pillars of a well-functioning community, as “horrorhouse” but all too aptly demonstrates…

UPDATE: check out this article called “How Reputation Could Save the Earth” from November 15 on New Scientist. To quote:

First, they allow those who contribute to reap benefits through reputation, helping to compensate them for the costs they incur. Secondly, when people display their commitment to conservation, it reinforces the norm of participation and increases the pressure on free riders.

Compare this to the EcoBadge introduced in the story, and we see that near-future SF can be ahead of reality, even if it’s a close call. Near-future SF: it’s not impossible, and doesn’t need to date immediately. And “great minds think alike”, eh…;-)

WE’VE GOT A problem, read the blip in Ethan Cole’s spex. something called horrorhouse can you help

The message was from Hannah Davis, a fellow member of Ethan’s neighborhood recycling patrol shift. Another retiree… or, as they had laughed together, another white fogey with too much time on her hands.

i’ll check, Ethan sent back, and slipped into the blipstream. Billions of blips every second flowed across his spex, forming a global consciousness, a global conscience.Summarization and filtering functions built into his blipper made it comprehensible; clever and committed people around the world made it work.

We would have killed for tech like this back in the day, he mused. But it was the people, of course, not the technology, that made the difference. Ordinary people reaching out to their neighbors, understanding each other’s goals, coming together to solve problems… that was how you saved the world.

He peered at the local streams and soon found the tag horrorhouse. Glance, blink, and it expanded, the flowing blipstream dividing into a thousand vibrating threads. Reach in, tease the threads apart, focus, summarize. violation of community standards, he read. offensive disturbing horrific, he read. too intense for children and immoral and exploitive and sick and profiteering.

Profiteering! This was serious.

DayBreak Fiction: “horrorhouse”, v2

horrorhouse

David D. Levine

You know, when people ask me why I got much more involved with editing SF rather than writing it (which I started to do after two decades of reading it), I answer with the usual excuses — Andy Cox asking me to join Interzone after I was mainly reviewing SF in the print incartation of The Fix, etcetera — but now it’s time to reveal the real reason. I blame it on David D. Levine.

Back in 2001, I entered the James White Award with a little story called “Rainmaker on the Run”, and was quite chuffed when it made the final shortlist of five stories. So, full of hope, I set out for Belfast to attend the award ceremony, only to find that a certain American from Portland, Oregon by the name of David D. Levine was the winner with a story called “Nucleon”, which subsequently appeared in Interzone.

I never really got over it, so I decided to become an editor so I could, well, reject him. Oh, the power!

Seriously, “Nucleon” was easily the superior story, and David went on to win several more, and more important, awards. And when he sent me this one for Shine, I was seriously struggling. This was one of those really tough decisions an editor sometimes has to make: more really good stories than can really fit in a 100K anthology. If you’re really curious, I might expand on it in the comments, if you ask me to.

I was even more surprised when David accepted my offer to publish in online instead: I figured he would rather try the top markets with it. However, like quite a lot of other writers, he was happy to be featured here, saying (like the others) that he’d written this one especially for Shine, and while, of course, being somewhat disappointed not to be making it in the print anthology, he supported the idea that SF needs more upbeat stories.

Actually, all the writers featured here on DayBreak Magazine said, more or less, the same: I’m really both surprised and honoured by all the support. And support is one of the pillars of a well-functioning community, as “horrorhouse” but all too aptly demonstrates…

UPDATE: check out this article called “How Reputation Could Save the Earth” from November 15 on New Scientist. To quote:

First, they allow those who contribute to reap benefits through reputation, helping to compensate them for the costs they incur. Secondly, when people display their commitment to conservation, it reinforces the norm of participation and increases the pressure on free riders.

Compare this to the EcoBadge introduced in the story, and we see that near-future SF can be ahead of reality, even if it’s a close call. Near-future SF: it’s not impossible, and doesn’t need to date immediately. And “great minds think alike”, eh…;-)

WE’VE GOT A problem, read the blip in Ethan Cole’s spex. something called horrorhouse can you help.

The message was from Hannah Davis, a fellow member of Ethan’s neighborhood recycling patrol shift. Another retiree… or, as they had laughed together, another white fogey with too much time on her hands.

i’ll check, Ethan sent back, and slipped into the blipstream. Billions of blips every second flowed across his spex, forming a global consciousness, a global conscience. Summarization and filtering functions built into his blipper made it comprehensible; clever and committed people around the world made it work.

We would have killed for tech like this back in the day, he mused. But it was the people, of course, not the technology, that made the difference. Ordinary people reaching out to their neighbors, understanding each other’s goals, coming together to solve problems… that was how you saved the world.

He peered at the local streams and soon found the tag horrorhouse. Glance, blink, and it expanded, the flowing blipstream dividing into a thousand vibrating threads. Reach in, tease the threads apart, focus, summarize. violation of community standards, he read. offensive disturbing horrific, he read. too intense for children and immoral and exploitive and sick and profiteering.

Profiteering! This was serious.

DayBreak Magazine Reading at WFC!

Hot off the press: Alan Beatts — Borderlands Books owner and this World Fantasy’s man in charge of the program — just confirmed that there is a slot available at the World Fantasy Convention for the DayBreak Magazine reading!

Friday night, October 31, in the Crystal Room, at 9 PM: DayBreak Magazine Reading!

Apart from your editor (who won’t be reading…;-), the following DayBreak authors will be there:

• Jeff Soesbe (“The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram”);
• David D. Levine (“horrorhouse”, which will be published at the very same evening);
• Amanda Clark (“The Branding of Shu Mei Fen”: planned for Friday November 27);
• Brenda Cooper (“Riding in Mexico”: planned for Friday February 5);
• Jennifer Lineae (“Arsonist”: planned for Friday April 16); 

 

In the meantime, I will check if the fickle gods of Schiphol tax free have something interesting on offer to bring along…

February @outshine prose poems—humourous

February 7:

The singularity is here!/ Birth and death, both at a tangent and an asymptote/ An emotional curve with insane geometry/ What’s next?!

[Bio] Colin Lamond swims, cycles and runs against the tide in Glasgow, and holds down a job in advanced idea mechanics; http://is.gd/hpwB.

February 14:

He kicks his shoes off the cliff: “Good riddance—not planning to land. Ever.” His new design wings gleam in the sun, as his stomach grumbles…

[Bio] Grant Stone lives in New Zealand. Which is handy, since that’s where all his stuff is. http://d1sc0r0b0t.blogspot.com/ .

February 21:

The shoes’ nanoturbines charge up all my gear as I walk.

Nice. How much?

Free, as in beer: you donate excess electricity back into the grid.

[Bio] Tony Noland is @TheFunGuy. He writes fiction and non-fiction in Philadelphia. Follow his writing blog at http://is.gd/eK5R.

February 28:

I’ve got you under my skin, said the blues singer. And the nanochip that watched over her replied: here’s looking at you, kid.

[Bio] Fabio Fernandes is a writer, reviewer, and editor. Keeps the blog Post-Weird Thoughts (http://is.gd/ijfY). Just sold his first story.

February @outshine prose poems—inspiring

February 4:

Ecclesia is social, networked. Borderless, we’ve currency. Weaponless, we’ve teeth. Metanation creed: union in the interstices. All welcome.

[Bio] Eric Gregory’s stories have appeared in Black Static, LCRW, and Sybil’s Garage. He blogs on SF matters at http://is.gd/eMCg.

February 11:

Anxiety: heart pounding, I scream. Mommy comes and gives picopill. Now, NanoGargoyle guards dreams: no more nightmares. Sound sleep. Peace.

[Bio] MD, writer, co-editor in French SF mag GALAXIES. Spends too much time dreaming and her house is always a mess. http://is.gd/gdmv .

February 18:

She blew into the lab like the warm breath of an approaching storm, holding the secret of physical immortality in a simple glass test tube.

[Bio] Gareth Lyn Powell has appeared three times in Interzone and his first collection is available from Elastic Press. http://is.gd/fLAx.

February 25:

The sun went black about two years back and we all figured it was over. Then the babies started getting born with sunlight in their eyes.

[Bio] Filamena Young, writer, mother, not on fire. www.filamena.com.

DayBreak Fiction: “The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram”, v2

The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram

Jeff Soesbe

In the Winter (Summer in that part of the world) of 2003, I was staying with my sister in Melbourne. A week before, she had been hit by a car while crossing the street and was very badly injured. I had just finished a job in Fremantle, so flew over to Melbourne where my Christmas Holiday was basically taking care of my sister until she could walk again. She was also out of a job: it was rather depressing time as Christmases go.

We rented a lot of movies, and there was one that I remember with great fondness: Lagaan. It lifted our spirits enormously, and while it may not be the best movie ever (or the best Bollywood movie ever), it stays in my mind as a bright spot in a dark period. When I read “The Very Difficult Diwali of Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram”, it was as if I was thrown back to that Christmas: it bursts with energy, joy, inventivity and sheer exuberance.

My sister and I had a hard Christmas time, but we overcame it. Now, Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram has a very difficult Diwali, indeed, as literally almost everybody seems to be up against him. Will he overcome the barrage of problems thrown in his way (and Jeff Soesbe isn’t holding back in that regard, far from it)? Will there be song and dance? Find out in this extravagant story about a Diwali like you’ve never seen…

CRAMMED INTO HIS unicopter, patrolling above Bengaluru, Sub-Inspector Gurushankar Rajaram nervously surveyed the scenes below. It was the fourth day of Diwali and the city was slowly, carefully, and exquisitely going mad.

On the unicopter’s monitors the city-wide SHIVA surveillance system presented a constant stream of dangerous situations, courtesy its Bayesian threat analysis algorithms, for Raja to evaluate.

HIGH-SPEED SKATE GANG OFF BVK IYENGAR ROAD turned out to be children reenacting the victory of Rama over Ravana. Raja assigned Patrol Officer Mitra to corral the kids and calm them down.

LARGE ROLLING MOB, SUNDAY BAZAAR ON SULTANPET. A dramatic reenactment of Satyabhama slaying the demon Nakasura. To shut down the battle and claim all weapons, Officer Pandey was assigned.

There were quarrels, pickpockets, misunderstandings, and a generous helping of celebrants intoxicated on beer, honey wine, or psychedelic chai. The monkeys were out in full force as well. Bonobos and ring tailed sahas scampered through the crowds, scaling buildings and apartments, stealing food and valuables. Definitely on the edge, tensions in the city were growing.

This was the flow of Raja’s days during Diwali and at nighttime it would be even more chaotic, as the streets of Bengaluru burned bright with the light of oil lamps and ran thick with the sound and smoke of millions of firecrackers. Firecrackers were too much like gunshots for SHIVA, every bang another HIGH PRIORITY WEAPONS FIRE to be checked.

The Bangalore City Police did what they would with foot officers, scooter patrols, and Sub-Inspectors like Raja directing efforts from the sky. But it was just too many people, too much craziness, for any number of BCP officers to control. Raja hoped the city would maintain itself over the last weekend of Diwali, and by Monday the people could return to the peaceful work of running the strongest economy on the planet.