Dark Futures - #ScienceFiction #Dystopia #EroticFreedom

Image by Carroll MacDonald from Pixabay

By Lisabet Sarai

Most people who know me, both in my author persona and in meat-space, will agree that I’m an optimist.

Except, it seems, when I’m writing science fiction.

As a reader, I’ve been a scifi fan more or less forever. (Witness my recent post on the ERWA blog.) More drawn to “soft” than “hard” scifi, I’m awed by the ability of the best scifi authors to fashion totally convincing alternate realities and to explore their social implications. Unfortunately, my love of and admiration for the genre has made me hesitant to write speculative fiction myself. I’m consumed with self-doubt about my own ability to create truly original scifi scenarios. Thus, I have only a few speculative fiction titles in my catalogue.

Every single one unfolds in some sort of dystopia.

Furthermore, as you might predict, almost all my dark futures involve some distortion of positive sexuality.

Quarantine, my most ambitious scifi effort to date, takes place in a near-future US where the population, the social fabric and the nation’s infrastructure have been devastated by a virulent plague. Echoing the AIDS epidemic, the disease supposedly arose in and was spread by the gay community. In the wake of wide-spread rioting and horrific violence, a shadowy cabal known as the Guardians of American Greatness has taken over the government. All men whose genome includes the “H-gene”, which supposedly predisposes them to homosexuality, have been imprisoned - “quarantined” - in remote internment camps. The novel follows Dylan, a brilliant and desperate young man who’s been quarantined since he was teen, as he seduces one of the few human guards in order to engineer his escape from desolate Camp Malheur.

It’s not much of a stretch, I guess, to imagine a rabidly homophobic America that glorifies Eisenhower-era “traditional” families and treats same-sex attraction as a literal crime. In writing the book, I hoped I could make this dystopia vivid enough that readers would forgive the lack of originality, not to mention the more or less obvious political stance of the author. Quarantine is a romance; Dylan and Rafe, the ex-gang-member-turned-guard, have to overcome not only the real-world obstacles facing them as fugitives but also some serious trust issues. Eventually they realize they love one another. Still, the book does not have an unequivocal happy ending. Rafe and Dylan are together for the moment, but still threatened by the authorities, as well as physically and emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, a revolution is brewing which could easily tear them apart.

Dystopias tend to persist even after the story ends.

Another example can be found in my short story The Antidote. Indeed, this dystopia shares many features with the world in Quarantine, though I wrote this story first. It’s set sixty years after the Plague, a sexually-transmitted disease that triggered mass deaths, riots and massacres. The government, superficially more benign than that the thugs in Quarantine, requires that all citizens submit to a mysterious libido-suppression technology, in order to prevent a resurgence of the deadly virus. Most people are satisfied with monthly government-supported, hormone-enhanced procreative sex. But Lena is different. Though she loves her husband Jeff, she yearns to experience the thrill of forbidden lust, to know what it feels like to couple with a stranger. There are rumors of an antidote to the government’s technology. Lena’s willing to risk everything for a taste.

Superficially, Lena’s world is peaceful, prosperous and orderly. But can one truly be human without knowing sexual desire? I guess my personal opinion is pretty clear.

The Last Amanuensis (currently out of print, but hopefully to be re-released soon) once again is set in a world overseen by an intrusive, authoritarian government. In this case, though, it’s not sex that’s forbidden, but literature and art. The Preceptors envision a purely rational society, controlled and harmonized by logic, mathematics and science. They arrest and eradicate people who challenge their ideology. Adele, the amanuensis of the title, is hired to record a secret trove of brilliant poems written by her employer and help to keep them hidden.

Trespass, published in the altruistic erotica collection Coming Together By Hand, presents a different type of dystopia, one in which a small, super-rich elite lives in beautiful, soaring cities, supported by a destitute, struggling under-class. Again, almost a natural extension of today’s realities... The tale chronicles a tragic romance between a woman of the Tower People and a young man from the Sub-urbs. It also explores how notions of obscenity and transgression can vary from one society to another.

My dystopias reveal a good deal about me, I guess. It seems I’m worried most about losing freedom: freedom to love whomever one desires, freedom to experience lust even without love. Deep down, I’m worried about the eradication of the erotic. Love, sex and the joy they can kindle are precious. In today’s world, however, let alone tomorrow’s, I see them as fragile.

I’ll end with a bit of flash fiction I wrote a long time ago, on the same basic, dystopic theme. 

Yes, you can imagine that I’m the one speaking.

Before the Plague

Of course you can buy me a drink. I'd be honored to have the company of an attractive young man like you.

Sorry, I can't help it. I know that I look like a lusciously ripe thirty-five. I've always had fabulous tits, and shapely legs, too. And the hair is all mine, even if the color is augmented. I've got to be honest, though. Don't be fooled by all the wiles of anti-aging technology. I'm old enough to be your grandmother. No, probably your great-grandmother.

Don't be shy, though. Didn't you ever fantasize about an older woman? You don't have to admit it, I know you have. Every young man wonders what it would be like: the willingness, the experience, the gratitude.

So, here I am. The older woman. The woman who remembers. Yes, I remember, I swear, remember what life was like, what sex was like, before the plague.

You were born to the plague. So were your mother and father. For you, making love has always been tainted by the threat of death. What a tragedy – an abomination! Can you even begin to imagine a time when two people who were drawn to each other could have sex without fear, without consequences, other than the fact that the emotional connection might or might not strike true?

It's nearly inconceivable to you, I know, the notion of spontaneous sex. No vaccines, no tests, no questions asked. No barriers – at least no physical ones. You might enjoy yourself, you might not. That was the only risk.

I lived in that age. The golden age, it seems now. You could revel in your own body, in someone else's body. Anyone you fancied. Maybe a stranger. Maybe your best friend's husband – or even your best friend herself! If desire called, you answered, as long as that was what felt right.

Every day was ripe with erotic possibilities. We moved through our world (well, perhaps I should speak only for myself) in a continual state of borderline arousal, ready to recognize and enjoy the next sensual adventure.

You're trying to be polite, but I can see your nose wrinkle with disgust at my "promiscuity". To you it sounds unthinkable. Irresponsible. Try to understand. Sex was safe – without drugs or viral inhibitors or any other "precautions". Oh, you could be hurt. You could fall in love with someone who didn't care for you, or with a stranger you'd never see again. But you were always free to try.

The Pill was the liberator that gave us this age of deliciously decadent exploration. My mother might have been as horny as I was (and let me tell you, I was horny. All right, I admit that with the rejuvenation treatments and the tailored hormones, I still am.) But she couldn't let herself go, because she might have gotten pregnant.

Pregnancy! Another life! Now there's a consequence, fully as weighty as potential death! Again, hard for you to comprehend the risk of accidental impregnation. Your parents probably paid a pretty penny for fertility boosters and gene customization, to produce a boy as cute as you.

Now don't get offended. Here, it's my turn to buy a round. All I'm trying to say is that even though we're sitting together in this bar, we come from different worlds. My early life is nearly as alien to you as the world of that Rigelian in the corner nursing his beer.

You want to hear more, though, don't you? Should I tell you about the afternoon that I rode my bicycle along the California beach, my nipples poking through my top, advertising my constant excitement? A man picked me up and took me up to his penthouse overlooking Venice. (That was a quirky little beach town near Lost Angeles. Before the Big One. Hippies and millionaires and body builders. There's really nothing like it now.)

He got me high (yes, I know you don't approve) and then screwed me for the entire afternoon. I came four or five times, and so did he. He was insatiable, the horniest guy I ever met. I can still visualize the curly black hair on his chest, the angry purple of his cock. I felt twinges in my deliciously sore cunt for days afterward.

As it turned out, I actually didn't like him much, once we started talking. He turned out to be intolerant and conceited. That afternoon, though, in that king-sized bed above the ocean, he was my stag, my centaur, rough and hard and unrelentingly physical.

You're blushing, you know. I understand. When the plague came, suddenly all pleasure became suspect. Forbidden. Denied. Improper. The media still sell using sex, but the images are impersonal, sterile. Flesh without warmth, sex without pleasure, and by subconscious implication, without risk.

I'm annoying you. But I'm turning you on, too. I can tell. Don't laugh. Like I said, I have a lot of experience.

Not all my adventures were of the casual variety. I made love to my husband the first night we went out together, and we stayed together for thirty years. He took me to a Burmese restaurant and told me wild, picaresque tales of his travels. My attraction to the exotic merged inextricably with my attraction to him. Later, near midnight, he lifted my skirt (I rarely wore underwear in those days) and fucked me on a street corner, bent over the hood of his car. I followed him literally to the ends of the earth.

Where is he now? What can I say? He's gone. Taken by the plague. He couldn't adjust, couldn't accept the constraints. The restrictions. He said that he'd rather die than worry if every fuck would kill him.

He got what he wanted, ultimately.

No, of course I'm not crying. That's the latest cosmetic enhancement – makes my eyes sparkle.

You're right, I'm a romantic, but don't you think the world today needs a romantic or two? Look, my conapt is just a few levels up. Wouldn't you like to come up and join me for a nightcap?

That swelling in your britches is answer enough. No, that's OK, let me get the tab. Come on now, don't be such a prude. You know that you want to.

Of course I have a supply of condoms, viricide, gloves and dental dams. I'm a woman of my times. But I hope that I can make you forget all that. I want you to relax, to trust me, to let me give you a glimpse, a taste, of what pleasure was like before the plague.

Because, so help me, if someone doesn't know, and remember, we're doomed. Or might as well be.

The Book That Almost Wasn't

By Lisabet Sarai

Last Monday saw the release of my seventh novel, Quarantine. I've been so busy setting up promotions (while simultaneously preparing for an overseas business trip!) that I haven't really had time to be grateful. And yet, it's a minor miracle that this book has actually been published.

I came very close to abandoning the project halfway through. I guess I can thank my stubbornness (plus Garce's inspired muddling) for the fact that my gay scifi romance is finally available.

Many authors live and write in a constant state of self-doubt. Not me - at least, not usually. I know I'm competent, if not the most creative writer on the planet. I have enough publication credits that a rejection doesn't set me back too much. I've never had a best-seller (even within the narrow confines of the erotica genre) but given the amount of time I devote to my writing (far less than many of my colleagues), I can't really complain about my royalties. When I sit down to produce a story, I'm generally confident I can complete it by the deadline, barring emergencies or acts of God.

With Quarantine, though, my usual self-confidence simply evaporated. The first half dozen chapters went really well – the scenes that comprised the initial seed of inspiration. Then I started to feel I was way out of my depth.

I love reading science fiction. I know the key to a great scifi book is a plausible, richly textured alternative world, along with a “big idea” that drives the story conflict. In contrast, my fictional world felt thin, unconvincing, far too much like the present to snag a reader's interest. Indeed, the original concepts for the story came from the past – the Nazi concentration camps, the WW II internment of Japanese-Americans, the AIDS crisis – and it seemed I hadn't done enough to extrapolate beyond those events and their consequences. Once my heroes escaped from quarantine, I didn't know what should happen next.

I managed to squeeze out a few more chapters. I found myself switching to other projects, avoiding the novel where I was so badly stuck. The longer I went without working on Quarantine, the deeper my sense of inadequacy grew and the more resistance I felt to picking it up again.

Months went by and I hadn't added a single word. Finally, I asked Garce for a crit of what I had so far. I was nervous but grateful that he agreed to help. Few authors are as good at formulating and expressing big ideas as C. Sanchez-Garcia.

We began a dialogue around the story and the characters. Garce came up with lots of questions (many of which I'd never even considered) as well as some wild plot proposals (a few of which I ended up adopting). Garce's critiques helped make my vague feeling that the book was weak a lot more specific.

Our exchange went on for a couple of weeks. But I still didn't resume writing. Nevertheless, I went back to thinking about the book, working on a scene list, roughing out a time line. Finally, about eight months after I put Quarantine aside, I was able to pick it up again.

I'd love to be able to say that everything went smoothly after that point. In fact, I continued to slog along, feeling as though I was wading through knee-deep mud just to finish each chapter. My self-doubts resurfaced. I pushed them away and kept at it, determined that the effort I'd put in so far (and the time that Garce had invested) wouldn't be wasted.

The more I wrote, the more the end of the story seemed to recede. I'd originally expected the book to be about 40K words. It ended up almost 70K.

I finally finished and submitted the book near the end of 2011. I wasn't surprised it was accepted – to be brutally honest, my personal standards are considerably higher than those of many publishers. I was grateful, though, that I could put the unpleasant effort that went into producing the book behind me.

So now the book is out. The readers and reviewers will decide whether the struggle was worthwhile. Ultimately, I'm moderately pleased with the book, though I know it's better romance than it is science fiction. It certainly won't win a Hugo – but perhaps it will succeed in making readers care about Dylan and Rafe and their uncertain future.

Why was this book so hard to write? Looking back, I think I approached it too seriously. It's true that the novel deals with difficult issues and has plenty of dark moments. However, I've found that I write best when I treat the process as play rather than work – exactly the opposite of the way I wrote Quarantine.

I'm trying to apply that lesson as I move on to new projects and new challenges.

(You can buy Quarantine at Total-E-Bound.)

Possible Futures

By Lisabet Sarai

The year is 2045. The sexually-transmitted Plague that killed a third of the U.S. population and left half the survivors sterile has been under control for more than seven years, but the country is still suffering. American technology, already on the decline before the disaster, has fallen further behind the competition from India, Brazil, and other powerhouse economies. People huddle in the deteriorating cities on both coasts; the center of the country belongs to bandits and the survivalist communities who saw the crash coming. The birthrate continues to drop, despite government propaganda and the availability of fertility boosting drugs. Scarred by memories of horrible death and devastating riots, and still afraid of residual contagion, people prefer the simulated sexual experience provided by EyePorn to the real thing.

The Guardians of American Greatness blame the crisis on homosexuals. The Plague first appeared in the gay community, and gay men were the first to die. When existing institutions collapsed, the Guardians stepped in to provide order. They rounded up every man whose profile revealed the homogene, imprisoning the captives in remote quarantine camps patrolled by robot wardens and surrounded by moats of toxic waste. At a time when the mobs were screaming for gay blood, the Guardians called the quarantine solution humane. Now people barely remember the existence of the incarcerated gays, though homosexual activity is still a capital crime.

Twenty four year old Dylan Moore has spent nearly a third of his life in desolate Malheur Camp, in the barren reaches of eastern Oregon. He's determined to escape or die in the attempt. A genius with electronics, Dylan manages to subvert the prison security systems and catch the attention of one of the two human guards in the facility, Rafe Cowell. Rafe is an ex-gang member, forced to work at Malheur as an alternative to a jail sentence. Although he's H-negative, Rafe finds Dylan disturbingly attractive and ultimately agrees to help him flee.

When Dylan's clever plans fall apart, the two men both end up as fugitives. They make their way to the partially ruined city of Sanfran, hoping to emigrate to Brazil or Thailand or some other gay-friendly country. However, they become entangled with the underground Queer Resistance as well as the ambitious city mayor, darling of the Guardians, who has his own private agenda.

This is the world of Quarantine, my M/M erotic romance novel due out in July. It's not so different from our own, and that's very deliberate. It's only a small step from the virulent anti-gay rhetoric one encounters in the U.S. media to a future that includes places like Malheur Camp. That may seem far-fetched, a gross violation of the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, but we've seen those guarantees savaged before in a crisis or emergency. Remember the American citizens of Japanese descent confined to internment camps during World War II? My scenario is not nearly as unthinkable as one would like to believe.

There are other aspects of my dystopia that are far too plausible for comfort. In Rafe's and Dylan's world, many citizens are not literate. Pictures and symbols have begun to replace text on public signs. Huge video screens loom over the city buildings, displaying non-stop images of peace and plenty. The Guardians deliberately cultivate nostalgia for the nineteen fifties, supposedly America's golden age of prosperity and power. Pictures of beloved "Uncle Ike" hang in every public place.

Surveillance devices are everywhere. A microchip buried under the skin of every individual encodes his or her identity and genetic profile. Robotic soldiers prowl the sidewalks, transmitting data back to Guardian headquarters. The only obstacle to complete control of the population is the unreliability of American-made technology.

It took me more than a year to finish Quarantine. I lost confidence about half way through and stopped writing, convinced that my vision of the future was simply too ordinary and obvious to be compelling. There are no starships in this book, no nanotechnology, no cyber-implants that can enhance your intelligence. The most sophisticated invention I describe is the EyePorn pod, a virtual sex device that interfaces with the limbic system and injects genetically tailored hormones into the user's bloodstream. Not too original - I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this available within five years.

I want to thank Garce for helping me get through that bad spell. His "muddling" was invaluable. It also helped to remind myself that I was writing erotic romance first - that the scifi aspect was perhaps less important than the relationship between the protagonists. In any case, Quarantine definitely falls into the "soft" category of science fiction. I'm mostly concerned with societal attitudes - and how they can be manipulated - in particular, attitudes about sexuality. A friend recently compared Quarantine to The Handmaid's Tale, and I think that's apt. Like Margaret Atwood's heroine, Dylan and Rafe are victims of a hypocritical system that demonizes their natural urges.

Here's an unedited excerpt from the book. Dylan and Rafe have made it to SanFran, and have been told to seek out the head of QR in the Castro exclusion zone - the former center of gay culture, now supposedly contaminated with Plague prions.

****

As they approached the corner of Market and Dolores, a wall of gray steel slats, nearly two stories high, rose in front of them. Red-lettered signs plastered the hoarding: "Contaminated Area. Extreme danger. Do not enter." plus scowling skull and crossbones icons for those citizens who couldn't read. The official notices were augmented by coarser, more casual notices: "Die fags!" and "Kill the queers". Dylan was used to such sentiments, but Rafe's body stiffened as they approached the barrier.

The fence ran left along the west side of Dolores as far as they could see. Meanwhile, it stretched for blocks along Market. It appeared at first to be impenetrable, but at Castro there was a closed gate, wide enough for a bulldozer. Dylan was surprised to find that the entry was bolted but not locked and there no guards. He scanned the power poles and neighbouring buildings. He didn't see any cameras, though that meant little.

Market Street was momentarily empty of both people and vehicles. "This is our chance," he told his companion in a loud whisper. "Now!" He slipped the bolt and cracked open the door.

"Wait—maybe we shouldn't—the Plague..." Rafe hung back as Dylan stepped partway inside.

"Come on!" Dylan hooked Rafe's upper arm and yanked him into the shadows on the other side of the door. Rafe stumbled on a heap of debris. Dylan steadied him. Nervous sweat beaded the black man's brow.

Sympathy tightened Dylan's chest. Poor Rafe. Despite his gang background, he wasn't used to being hunted. Plus he still believed the Guardians' propaganda. Dylan pulled off his mask, stuffing it into his back pocket, then moved to do the same with Rafe's.

"No!" The ex-guard backed away. "I'll keep it on."

"Don't be silly," Dylan laughed, snatching the mask away and planting a kiss on Rafe's mouth. He felt his lover relax a bit. "I'm sure we're being watched in here. We need to show who we are, so they know they can trust us." He pushed the hood back, exposing Rafe's scowling face.

"But the Plague..."

"Artemis said it was safe, that the disease has died out. Don't you believe her?"

"Um—I'm not sure..."

"Well, I do. She's one smart lady. I think the Plague is the least of our worries." He held out his hand to his hesitant partner. "It'll be okay, Rafe. As long as we're together, we're okay."

Rafe grunted in reply, but he allowed Dylan to lead him deeper into the exclusion zone.

The devastation was more extensive than anything they'd seen so far. The streets were pocked with grenade craters and lined with heaps of charred rubble that had once been buildings. In some places it was difficult to walk. They trudged uphill, dodging piles of debris, scanning for any signs of life. It was eerily silent. The babble from the vidscreens didn't seem to penetrate here.

Dylan checked the map, then turned left onto a narrower street. Half-demolished wooden structures leaned at crazy angles around them. "This should be Church," he told Rafe as they took a right. "And that should be Wilde Baths."

He pointed to a three story, stucco building across the road. The roof had caved in on the left, but the right side of the edifice appeared to be intact. Splintered boards shuttered the windows. Weeds sprouted on the sills. Despite its dodgy appearance, however, Wilde Baths had a very solid-looking front door.

Dylan knocked, three long, two short, one long, the way Artemis had instructed. Sixty seconds went by. No one answered. The buzz of a helicopter sounded overhead. His heart slammed against his ribs. Could Artemis have betrayed them?

As though sensing his unease, Rafe put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Dylan took a deep breath and knocked again.

Hinges creaked and the door opened an inch or two. "Yeah?" The unseen man sounded annoyed, even angry.

"We're friends of Oscar," Dylan answered with the pass phrase. "Artemis sent us. We need to talk to Hammer."

The gap widened another few inches. A slender man with a trim goatee glared at them. "Hammer's not here now."

"Can we come in? Wait for him?" Rafe interjected. The engine noise grew louder. "It's not safe for us out here."

The man's eyes flicked over them, weighing the risks. Finally he nodded. "Okay." Stepping back, he let them enter, then bolted the door behind them. "Here." He handed each of them a folded, dingy-looking towel and a key, then pointed down a dimly lit corridor. "Locker room's at the end of the hall. Baths are in the basement, massage on the second floor. I'll come find you when he gets back." Dylan didn't expect the grin that twitched at the man's thin mouth. "Have fun."

"Wait a minute..." Rafe tried to return the towel.

Dylan grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall. "Thanks," he called back. "We really appreciate it."

Rafe struggled to extricate his hand from Dylan's grip. "Stop," he hissed. "No way I'm getting naked in front of a bunch of queers."

"Oh really? Do you want to go back outside, then? Well, go ahead." Dylan was suddenly furious. How could he love such a damned homophobe? "Maybe that copter wasn't looking for us after all. Anyway, you're not queer. You don't have to worry. You can explain it all. How you were tricked into helping some Plague-infected perv escape quarantine. It wasn't your fault, was it? Sneaky little fag must have drugged you or something. You're straight as Uncle Ike, right?"

*****

Quarantine is scheduled for release some time in July. Don't worry - I'll let you know when as soon as I hear!

Deja Vu

By Lisabet Sarai

When I heard Kathleen's proposed topic for this week, “Writing the 'Other'”, I experienced an eerie sense of familiarity. Surely I'd composed an article on this very topic, sometime in the past... Combing through my files, I discovered that indeed, I'd discussed my struggles to create characters distinctly different from my self right here at the Grip, almost three years ago. Of course, that was before Kathleen's tenure here (or any of the other current Oh Get a Grip contributors). How time flies!

Given the volatility of the web, I thought it was likely that none of my esteemed colleagues had read that post, and was tempted simply to recycle it. After all, did I have anything new to say on the subject? I couldn't bring myself to that point, though. I want to keep our readers coming back, and nothing discourages a visitor (at least based on my personal experience) like rehashed content.

So here I am, starting at the same realization as three years ago. Pretty much every one of my characters is similar to me in some ways.

It's not as transparent as it was when I began publishing. Kate O'Neill is my fantasy self – younger, sexier, with the green eyes and red hair I've always wanted. Like me, she's a dancer, software engineer, and born submissive. Raw Silk isn't autobiographical but it borrows a great deal from my own experiences. Anyone who knew the real me would find Kate distinctly familiar.

My more recent heroines are less similar to my real world self. Ruby Jones in Wild About That Thing is a black single mother from Chicago. Not a lot of factual connections there! Nevertheless, I share her determination to be independent of the men who want to take care of her, and her openness to sexual experience. Perhaps the most notable similarity is the way she has internalized the voice of her bossy, critical mother. It has taken me decades to mute the mental harangues of my own mom.

What about male characters, though? Kyle McLaughlin in Necessary Madness is an orphan and outcast, driven to the brink of madness by his devastating visions of the future. Given that I had a fairly happy childhood with two loving parents, and only very occasional brushes with the paranormal, you might consider Kyle a prime example of the “other”. Yet Kyle is my psychic twin. Like him, I know what how it feels to be temporarily insane – the terror, the darkness, the sense that the world is crumbling to dust. I've spent time in the same state psychiatric facility where he is a patient in the novel.

Actually, Kyle's lover Rob Murphy is more of a stretch – a thirty-something, divorced city cop who enjoys sports, pizza and beer. What do Rob and I have in common? Stubbornness and a possibly over-blown sense of morality, to start with. Rob tries to push Kyle away even though he's attracted to the tortured younger man, because of Kyle's fragile emotional state as well the age discrepancy between them. I can imagine myself doing just that – being tempted, but sticking to a determination to do “what's right”.

Possibly the most “other” character to spring from my pen is Rafe Cowell, one of the heroes of my forthcoming scifi novel Quarantine. Unlike me, and most of my characters, Rafe has very little formal education. He's a twenty eight year old black man from the notorious ghettos of Ellay, a gang member and convicted murderer (though in fact he's innocent of that particular crime). He's also a foul-mouthed, homophobic, jingoistic bigot, at least at the start of book. Not much resemblance to his white, middle-class, Jewish, bisexual, bleeding-heart liberal creator!

Look deeper, though, and you'll see the strands of commonality. Despite his rough history, Rafe loves to read – quite a distinction in a society where the majority of the population are functionally illiterate. He's a fundamentally decent guy who's confused by the way reality conflicts with his prejudices. He's also something of a slave to his passions. He strives to be rational but his sympathy and desire for the plague rat Dylan overcome his common sense. His decisions are driven more by emotion than reason.

I can identify. I like to think of myself as a deliberate, careful person who weighs all the factors before making a choice. Sometimes I do in fact behave this way. On the other hand, I set off on with my husband on a three week coast-to-coast voyage across the U.S. when I barely knew him. I quit my job and moved to Thailand for two years with barely any reflection on the possible consequences. I sent off a manuscript to a publisher even though I knew the odds were heavily against it being accepted. Not exactly the behaviors of a rational woman.

I sometimes wish I did a better job creating truly original people in my fiction, but I have to face the fact that when I look into the hearts and minds of any of my characters, I see myself. Perhaps that's inevitable. Certainly, it appears I haven't progressed much in three years. Peer carefully enough at the people in my tales and like me, you'll get a sense of deja vu.

First Love

By Lisabet Sarai

Almost as soon as I could read, I started reading science fiction. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight when I discovered Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom Planet books. At this point I don't remember the plots at all, only my emotional reactions – an overwhelming sense of wonder and excitement. (It's fascinating to read adult reviews of these books on Amazon. Clearly I wasn't the only child thus affected.)

Then came Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. When I was perhaps twelve or thirteen, Asimov was a guest on a local radio talk show, and I called in to ask him some question about the relationship between modern politics and the world of the Foundation trilogy. This might not seem surprising unless you knew that I was the shyest child in the world, absolutely terrified of making telephone calls.

Meanwhile, I suspect that Stranger in a Strange Land, which I devoured when I was fifteen or so, may be partially responsible for my personal attraction to polyamory.

My husband introduced me to Philip K. Dick. I started with The Man in the High Castle, Dick's subtle exploration of an alternative world in which the Japanese and the Germans won WWII. I used to think I'd read everything Dick ever wrote, but new titles keep coming to light. Just a few months ago I finished the weird, apocalyptic and sexually charged Dr. Blood money. (I supposed I could have omitted the adjectives “weird” and “apocalyptic”, since they apply to most of Dick's oeuvre...)

In the eighties we joined a science fiction reading group. Every month a dozen of us would get together for wine, potluck, desserts and discussion. We read Sheri S. Tepper, Olivia Butler, Greg Bear, Harry Harrison, John Barnes, Pat Cadigan... a whole new universe of authors. After a year or so, the group fizzled, but not before it had rekindled my early love of the genre.

Recently I discovered Jonathan Lethem. He might not characterize his own work as science fiction, but Gun, With Occasional Music, in which farm animals have achieved a near-human level of intelligence and individuals require custom blended drugs to survive, certainly fits my criteria for the genre.

I'll read almost anything that calls itself scifi, but my favorite tales focus more on people than technology – so-called “soft science fiction”. The best books, in my opinion, start with a relatively simple premise and then explore its societal implications. I read a book in the eighties by Kate Wilhelm, which is an ideal example. (Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the title. Sometimes things that predated the Internet seem to drop into a black hole.) The world passes through a cloud of interstellar dust. At first it appears that there are no negative effects, but soon people begin to die. It turns out that the dust causes water to become more viscous. Since humans are mostly composed of water, exposure to the dust is fatal – and the thickening produces a variety of other consequences as well. Society begins to fall apart, in a most convincing way

As you might expect, I also have a particular fondness for speculative fiction that plays with changes in gender and sexuality. The 1997 Circlet Press anthology Genderflex is my touchstone in this area.

So, now I'm a writer. Given my love of science fiction, one might ask why I don't write some sci fi of my own.

Well, I'll be honest. With all the fantastic models from a lifetime of reading the genre, I'm just plain intimidated. Science fiction demands a level of imagination that I'm not sure I can deliver. I've read so much scifi that all my own ideas feel stale or derivative.

Furthermore, it's not enough to create a vivid, surprising, different alternative universe. Your fictional world must also be at least somewhat plausible, and internally consistent. In science fiction, details matter almost as much as they do in historical fiction. Indeed, writing historical fiction might be easier, because you can consult external sources when you get stuck.

Writing sci fi is hard. I know because, finally, I just finished my first science fiction novel, and it required a level of pain far beyond anything I've experienced with any other book.

Actually, I'm cheating a bit here. Quarantine is sci fi erotic romance, not “pure” science fiction. It will be judged as much on its sex scenes and the bond between its heroes as for the dystoptic future it presents. So in fact, it doesn't feel quite real. Nevertheless, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat proud of the book. For one thing, it focuses on changes in society and their implications for the characters – the sort of soft sci fi that I personally enjoy.

Quarantine is set some thirty years in the future, after a plague has decimated the population of America. The epidemic had its start in the gay community before spreading to heterosexuals, and thus gays are blamed. All surviving men with a genetic marker for homosexuality have been rounded up and sent to remote quarantine camps in places like eastern Oregon. (If you've never been through eastern Oregon – it's flat, empty, dry and desolate – and that's before the effects of global warming.) One of the heroes is an inmate who has been imprisoned in the camp for seven years. The other is a camp guard, an ex-gang member sent to work at the camp in lieu of a prison term. The inmate seduces the guard, who helps him escape. They both end up as fugitives, hiding in Plague-ravaged San Francisco where they are forced to help the queer underground in its battle against the homophobic, nationalistic Guardians of American Greatness.

Ugh. When I describe the book, it sounds like a million other stories. And indeed, it's not such a stretch of the imagination to move from today to my imagined future, which seems all too plausible. Oh well. I suspect that my erotic romance readership will enjoy it anyway. It's likely that most of them did not cut their reading teeth on Bradbury and Heinlein.

I had planned to conclude with a brief excerpt – but I couldn't find one that was obviously science fiction. My fictional world is too much like our own. Instead, I'll give you a snippet from the only other sci fi I've published, a novella called Bodies of Light. This is a bit of space opera (with plenty of sex thrown in), but even so, it's no more than half a century in the future. I guess I don't dare boldly go where no one has gone before!

The bridge was as silent as the suspension bay. However, a survey of the blinking panels and rotating 3D displays revealed that the ship still had power. The pods had been some kind of anomaly. Relieved, Christine settled into the pilot’s chair (Sven Harlsson, gone like all the rest) and searched the cluttered controls until she found the viewport activation button. The curved shields slid open, revealing a hemisphere of blackness. For the first time, Christine gazed out into the emptiness of interstellar space.

Terror tightened her throat. She was falling into the immense void before her, drowning in the utter absence of light or form. She closed her eyes, trying to summon the scientist within her. No one had seen this before, the vast reaches of the universe outside Earth’s solar system. She was the first.

She forced herself to peer into the darkness, pressing against the transparent carbon-crystal of the viewport. As her vision adapted, she found she could see faint glowing clouds that must be galaxies and pinpricks of light that were distant stars. The universe was not totally empty, after all. She swallowed her fear and tried to speak.

“Request interstellar coordinates.” Her long-unused voice came out as a croak, but Archimedes understood her command.

“359˚ 56’ 39.5’’ galactic latitude, -2˚ 42’ 46.3’’ galactic longitude,” the ship replied crisply.

“Request distance from Sirius cluster.”

“Approximately thirty-four-point-seven light years.”

“What?” That was farther away than they’d been when they started! “There must be a mistake! Recheck your calculations.”

The ship’s computer hesitated for a fraction of a second—almost as though it were offended, Christine thought. “There is no error. Current position is 34.68643 light years from Sirius, 41.321966 light years from Terra. Current speed is .917 c. Heading is 22˚ 13’ b by 9˚ 2’ l.”

Forty-one light years from Earth! Had they overshot their goal? Of course, a tiny miscalculation in their initial trajectory would be magnified into an increasingly large discrepancy the farther the ship travelled from its starting point. “How long has it been since departure?”

“Four years, sixty-two days, four hours and twenty-two minutes,” the ship intoned.

Only four years? “That’s not possible,” Christine objected. Given their maximum velocity, they could not have travelled anywhere near this far. Something was very wrong.

“Run full self-diagnostics,” she ordered. “Report any faults.”

The computer was silent for about ten seconds. Christine stared out of the viewport, wondering whether any of the faint, flickering points of brightness might be Sol.

“Self-diagnostics completed,” Archimedes announced. “No faults detected.”

Christine leaned back in the padded chair with a weary sigh. Pain pounded in her temples. Her usually nimble mind felt stiff and rusty. She had to figure this out.

Once again, she saw Ravin’s blank, lifeless face. She had not loved him, but she had respected him, and he had given her pleasure during their pre-launch familiarisation exercises. She found that she missed him. “The crew are all dead,” she murmured to herself. “I’m the only one left, and I’m lost in space, billions of kilometres off course.”

“All suspension pod power was terminated,” the ship commented. “A collision with unidentified debris damaged the electrical distribution cables in the hull. Backup systems failed to engage.”

“What? How long ago did this happen?”

“Sixty-two hours and seventeen minutes ago.” Less than three days! If she had awakened a bit sooner, she might have saved them. The impact must have triggered the reactivation sequence in her own pod. Or perhaps the backup had kicked in to handle the life support for her pod alone.

“EVA is recommended to repair the breach,” Archimedes added. “Probability of atmospheric loss over the next twenty-four hours is point-four-six.”

Christine collapsed on to the control panel, her face buried in her hands, squeezing her eyes tight to hold back the tears. The ship wanted her to risk her life, venturing outside to patch the hole before the air escaped. But why should she bother? She was dead one way or the other.

The vastness of space weighed on her, even when she was not looking at it. The unending blackness threatened to smother her. She felt as empty and hollow as the universe stretching into infinity on every side.