Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Darwin's Gambit in the June Issue of Analog

For those of you who subscribe to Analog, (non-Kindle version here) I've got a story in the latest issue! Darwin's Gambit is another of my hard science fiction pieces and features my character Amber, who also appears in Polar Shift. I created Amber years ago when I hit upon the idea of a girl raised on a Mars base who has agoraphobia, because in that environment, the outdoors really is lethal. In fact, who wouldn't have agoraphobia? It'd be as natural as a fear of heights is to us. Someone from a low gravity probably would laugh at all of us who can't stand right at a cliff's edge.

So take a girl with a known psychological issue, put her on a spaceship that's about to crash, and have the crew evacuate. Two problems: Amber's at a disadvantage and might not move fast enough for the evacuation, and she and the other children are non-essential crew. They are literally expendable, because if you're getting off a crashing spaceship, the people with the most relevant skills go first. You want your botanists and life support technicians and doctors and so on to survive. It's essential. The people who will end up at the bottom of any priority list will be the children who have no professions, whatsoever.

Now imagine you're Amber's mother, and you've just gotten off that spaceship. Word is, Amber may not have made it to her evacuation shuttle. Now go buy the issue of Analog to find out what happens next. You can order the hardcopy version here, or find it at your local bookstore.

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations! This story sounds so intriguing! I'd love to read it.

    I'd definitely be non-essential, so I can well imagine myself in Amber's place. Scary! ;-)

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    1. Hi Melanie! I'll send it to you. You already read the novel version, the December before last.

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  2. That's right, I did. I wondered why it sounded so familiar ...

    I used to have a brain around here somewhere, I know I did. But it's so small that it escaped from my head and now I'll never find it again. :D

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    1. lol, hardly! I have trouble remembering the novel I read last week, let alone two years ago!

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