I've always loved the speculative-dystopian fiction genre, but I was never satisfied with the novels I read. They lacked the essential human qualities of ingenuity and the will to resist. So I wrote my own: Technium, a two-volume novel that takes place in the America of the 22nd Century.
What happens when three very different people are forced to take the same journey of necessity? The unexpected.
The journey they start won't be the one they'll finish.
In 2010, I read popular accounts of a successful experiment in creating mice with two genetic fathers. That was interesting. Then it was (inevitably?) succeeded by this sly follow-up: Are There Benefits from Having Two Genetic Fathers? The authors dismiss the ostensible reasons for two genetic fathers, but then conjecture:
A final point of discussion is the possibility suggested by the title that now men can have their own offspring. As is clear from Figure 1, a large female contribution is needed, assuming an altruistic attitude from the other sex. In reproduction, this is not impossible, as demonstrated by oocyte donation and surrogate mothers in human assisted reproduction procedures.
Emphasis added. I do not assume an altruistic attitude. I assume coercion… As the lead scientist in the original experiment said, “You need a uterus," Behringer said, adding dryly, ‘People always forget this.’”
I didn’t forget this. I said to myself, “someone will write a book about this.” Four years later, no one had, so I did. The book I wrote wasn’t about mice with two fathers. For that matter it had zero to do with the actual mechanics of so-called artificial reproductive technology. It concerned people—characters, individuals—in a society in which this is routine.
I had never written fiction before. Two volumes flowed out.
Volume I, The Brothers of Redemption:
It’s 2165 in the Old Calendar, 0093 in the New, and half-brothers Jed and Max Kleer are in a rut. They share little except a sperm donor, a mysterious bond neither understands, and a smothered yearning to be free men in a society that has dispensed with the concept.
After an alcoholic breakdown, Jed toils in the dreary Archives Department as a low-level functionary, suffering cruel practical jokes from snotty interns, dreaming of reinstatement to his old job in the prestigious Appraisal Department, where he had the power to decide what to keep and what to destroy from The Before. Max lives as an angry, overaged adolescent, smoking pellets, bartering junk, squatting in one abandoned house after another.
Appraisal takes Jed back—and assigns him to a post in the Sonoran Desert, far from Max. One night, he wins Hannah Joyner, a girl abducted to be a sex slave, in a drunken poker game. Then Max shows up, needing a place to lie low. The brothers resolve to guide the lost girl home, across the vast, deserted continent that once was The United States of America.
What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
The journey they start won’t be the one they finish.
Volume II, A Daughter Of Her People:
The second volume of Technium finds Hannah Joyner, a young girl abducted from her village to be a sex slave, lost in the vastness of the Great Plains with her renegade guides, half-brothers Jed and Max Kleer.
Their journey becomes a battle of wills and wits -- with each other and with the perilous environment. Along the way, the characters spend the winter in a long-abandoned house on the prairie, where they discover clues about the past, a forbidden subject in the New Order.
Hannah wrestles with questions: who is she, a daughter of her people, or an individual with rights and a mind of her own? Can she be both? The brothers face their own dilemma: are they free men capable of redemption, or soulless units of the “Technium” their society has created?
I will send a review copy to anyone who agrees to write an honest review.
Email: techniumbook at gemail dot com
Twitter DM: @demurray8