Multiplicity this ain't

Finally, after too many delays (an unfortunate habit left over from 2003 I fear) new fiction has been posted online at RevSF. Since I'm fiction editor there, I have a vested interest, you see. The short piece this week is David Chunn's The Perfect Clone. It's wonderfully depressing and disturbing, taking the standard standard SFnal clone cliché and twisting it in unexpected ways. Naturally enough, social commentary is the main thrust of the story, rather than a Gernsbackian obsession with techno-wizardry:

Why were all these people prying into one man's personal life? For the sake of saying they saw the freak? Most of the crowd members seemed normal, except for the steadily growing number of religious picketers, mostly followers of Tito Freeman, America's evangelist. Those folks carried signs, stomped, and chanted with far too much energy to be productive, well-meaning citizens. Tito himself was out among them somewhere. He was broadcasting his daily show live from the epicenter of America's greatest sin. She didn't even want to consider what might happen if he was standing nearby when she walked in.

I had David make some changes in the story before we ran it, and I think it's a much stronger piece for it. Fortunately, David saw something valid in my suggestions. What we have now is a story with much less a Hollywood ending and one that stays more true to itself.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there are new chapters online for Mark Finn's The Transformation of Lawrence Croft and Don Webb's Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book, both of which are as off-the-wall as you'd expect from those nutty guys. If nothing else, you'll learn why you should always be wary when hunting centaurs--license or no.

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