Deviants (The Pratchett Connection + extract)
Well, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to need your help.
I'm going to enter the Pratchett Competition, or at least give it a bloody good go!
I'm not sure if my concept is any good - it's not humourous for a start - but hell, if I went around thinking like that I'd get nothing done.
So how can you lot help, eh? By making me bloody well WORK, that's how! I've got around 6 months - I figure that's 3 months getting the story down and 3 months editing / polishing. That's one hell of a tall order, especially with work and a toddler in tow. Luckily I get my 6 weeks off in the summer - I intend to take full advantage of that as much as I can; if I have a basic story written by September, I'll be well chuffed! - so questions about 'how much have you got done', whilst badgering, are good for me. Make me shake that money maker...
Not sure what to call the piece yet - 'The Deviant Strain' sounds at once naff and something Japanese businessmen get friendly young ladies after their yen to do in their spare time - but it's about the consequences of genetic engineering in humans (basically, what if we lived in a world where eugenics, social engineering and germline engineering was accepted as a Good Thing?). It's a bit of a hot potato subject, but I'm hoping it'll suffice.
So - first 1700 ish words to follow - first draft and all, so, you know, don't expect miracles... ;p XD
ONE
Rain spattered against the grimy pane in intermittent bursts, coloured by the neon sign that advertised the strip club opposite. No such sign adorned Angel's surgery; you either knew it was there, or you didn't. She had no need to advertise.
Business was good. A steady stream of 'gangers, wireheads and streetcrawlers kept the wolf from the door, and so Angel had closed early, looking forward to a lost night in front of the box, her feet up, whisky in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
She leaned back into the plush cushions of her favourite easy chair and sighed, blowing smoke as she did so. Nothing of particular interest was on the plasma, just the usual selection of game shows, news propaganda and televised executions. She flicked through the channels until she found something she liked the look of – some kind of old sit-com from the days before the ice – and settled down to watch.
Her reverie was broken by someone pounding upon her back door.
“Fuck off,” she hissed under her breath, burying herself deeper into her nest of cushions. “I'm not in.”
The pounding continued.
An angry sigh erupted from her. She set down a half-empty glass of the finest black-market whisky 20 Eurodollars would buy and straightened herself up. “I said, I'm not in!”
The pounding took on a frantic edge.
Angel growled under her breath and pushed her feet into heavy boots (shit-kickers, her father always insisted on calling them. “If you're going to deal with thugs, then make sure you've got yer shit-kickers on,” he said, before showing her how a decent left hook should be thrown. Good old Papa...) before standing up. She pushed her hair out of her eyes, winding the whip-thin dreadlocks around themselves until they formed a ball at the base of her neck and stalked over to the videocom. She stabbed the keypad and the small screen awoke, its grainy lines coalescing to show a figure huddled outside the door.
“I'm not open,” she barked.
The figure unfolded himself and looked directly into the camera. “Ange... sweetheart – please. Open up.”
A face she once thought handsome peered up at the camera and smiled, the rain running in rivulets down it, dripping off his nose and chin.
“Fuck off, Roman.” She turned away from the com.
“No – please!” There was no mistaking the pleading edge to his voice. “I... I really need your help. Just take a look. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking for.”
Angel closed her eyes and sought the happy place her yoga instructor kept banging on about, but still it eluded her. She sighed.
“Give me one good reason, Roman – just one.”
From outside the camera's influence, Roman hauled something into view.
“Because if you don't, he'll die?” He posed it as a question, but even in fuzzy monochrome, Angel could see the man her former gang-mate supported was bleeding heavily.
“Shit...” She sighed again. Her finger hovered over the button that would unlock the door an allow him in.
“Angel...”
“Yeah, okay; keep your balls on,” she snapped, and finally stabbed at the keypad. It gave a flatulent buzz, and the bolts that held the door closed slid back.
“You are a total peach, you know that?” Roman grinned and blew her a kiss through the com. He caught the door and pulled it open before the bolts could slide back again.
“Arsehole,” Angel replied, mainly to herself.
o0o
On the street, her name was Angel. This wasn't down to any divine pretensions - it could easily have been 'that Irish Bitch' or 'the Fucking Ghoul' - but everyone in certain circles knew that when shit hit the fan and half your insides were hanging out, you needed an Angel.
Roman wasn't his real name, either, but hey, it worked. He dragged the injured man in through the door, straightened up and treated Angel to his most winning smile.
She was not convinced.
“I don't know what you're playing at,” she began, “but if you think you can come around here, in the middle of the feckin' night-”
“It's eight o' clock,” he interrupted.
“Whatever!” Angel snarled and continued her rant. “In the middle of the night and bring some stupid blunt you've accidentally capped and expect me to fix him up before anyone notices, you're sorely mista-”
Roman caught Angel's cheeks between hands slick with blood and kissed her. “Spare me the lecture, Aoife – I don't need it.”
“Get the fuck off me!” Angel pushed him backwards, slapping his hands from her face. She then paused and reached up to touch her face. Even through her anger, Roman saw her sudden consternation.
The neon light outside flickered from red to green, bathing the hallway in an eerie light. The pool of blood seeping from the man on the floor grew, touching the soles of her boots.
“Damn,” she whispered, and ran a bloody hand across her forehead, leaving a crimson streak. “Damn. Okay. What happened?”
Roman shrugged. “I'm not sure. He was dumped on my doorstep about an hour ago. He had this attached to him.” He dug around in his pocket for a moment and produced a tatty, handwritten note.
“For payment.” Angel looked back to Roman. “Payment for what?”
“Haven't got a clue. But whoever dumped him, they've fucked him up pretty bad.”
Angel crouched down by the bleeding man. He was out cold – probably for the best, Roman thought – and without touching him, assessed his condition. She blew a low whistle. “You're not wrong. Looks like half his head is missing.” She looked back up at Roman. “By rights, this blunt should be dead. Who is he?”
“Dunno.”
“So you've brought a complete stranger to me on the strength of some poxy note?” She stood up, and there was no mistaking the tight edge of fury to her voice now. “What are you, retarded?”
“No... I just didn't know where else to go.” Roman shifted uncomfortably. “There's something else, too.”
Angel rolled her eyes and planted her hands on her hips, but said nothing.
Wordlessly, Roman laid the blunt out and lifted up a filthy shirt to reveal a nicely muscled torso.
“So? He works out,” Angel said. “What of it? You've come to show me a good set of abs?”
“No, idiot. Look closer. What's missing?”
Her lips pursed, a sure indication of her rising irritation with him, and she hunkered down again to inspect the injured man's torso. The pout soon turned into a frown, quickly followed by a look of fear.
“No navel,” she whispered.
“No navel indeed,” Roman echoed. “Now do you see why I brought him here?”
Angel snapped her head up and flew at him. “You about bastard!” she spat. “You've brought a fucking 'bom here? To me? Do you realise just how dangerous that is? Mary, Mother of God - you're mental!”
That she blasphemed was all Roman needed to know about her terror. He knew, because he felt it, too.”
“I couldn't just let him die on the street, Aoife...”
“Stop calling me that!” she ran both her hands through her hair. “Anthony... I don't think you realise the gravity of the situation. You've brought an Abomination – a freak of nature that our dear government insists don't exist at all – to my surgery. At eight o' clock in the evening. With all of bloody Southern Conurbation out on the streets.” Each point was punctuated by a stab of her finger against his chest. “You do realise that 'boms don't get out of whatever facility they are grown in without help, don't you?” She glared at him. “Whoever did this, did it to fuck you up royally. And so, in bringing him in to me, you've fucked me up royally, too.”
Roman grinned a little sheepishly before recovering himself. “If it's any consolation, the shot to his head would have destroyed any regular tracking implant...”
He trailed off under her white-hot scrutiny.
“I didn't know what else to do, okay?” he admitted. “Like you, I thought he was just another blunt; another junkie. But then I saw the mess his head was in, and that he was a 'bom, and, well, I panicked a bit.”
“You panicked.”
“Yeah.”
“And so you thought you'd spread it around a bit?”
“What? No! I was going to tip him in the river, but then I saw the note.” He held up the blood stained piece of paper again. “'For payment'. So I figured he might have something, you know, worth taking...”
Angel grinned, but not out of kindness nor amusement.
“Oh, I see. You thought me might have some decent metal on him, huh?” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Something worth flogging? But you know that without a living body playing as host, decent tech decays... and so you need me to extract this shit for you, whilst he's alive, and store it properly.” She gave him a disgusted look. “And they say I'm the ghoul. You'd put Scrooge to shame, you know that?”
“That's a bit rich, coming from you,” Roman shot back defensively. “Your whole operation revolves around tech extraction-”
“I fit and fix tech,” Angel near-shouted. “I do not scavenge half-dead 'boms in the hope of making a quick buck!”
“Oh, that's right – you've got your oath, haven't you?” Roman sneered. “Oh – but you don't, because you crashed out of med school the moment they discovered you were a devo. Or was it more to do with you discovering the undiluted ecstasy of the prescription drugs cabinet?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Angel screamed back.
“Sweet little Angel, the streetcrawler's saviour...” Roman fluttered his eyelashes and cradled his chin in his hands, pantomiming innocence.
A groan from the floor stopped Angel's punch in mid flight.
“He's awake,” she whispered, her fury all but forgotten. “Crap, he's awake!” She scrabbled frantically at his neck, her fingers seeking a pulse. “Okay, calm down... lie still... try not to move... Roman! Get his legs – no time to get the gurney. We've got to get this guy to surgery now.”
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14 Comments
My one misgiving is that this will stop you working on Black Smokers (Waaah!).
I'm not a big cyberpunk reader, but I am a big cyberpunk roleplayer - means I know the conventions of the genre without being caught up with the bullshit that goes with some of the writing (I've tried to read enough William Gibson to know how it goes...). I'm just going to keep going in my own little way and see what happens... got the main premise down, just got a few things to puzzle through.
And I'm not abandoning Black Smokers - that one is a keeper, as far as I am concerned. Shame it wasn't really suitable for this competition, otherwise I would have devoted all my time to it :(
Thanks again, mate - your opinion really means a lot to me! xx
And two, some editing points:
"She then paused and..." No need for the "then", it just slows it down.
"...to reveal a nicely muscled torso." Seems too subjective, perhaps, "...well muscled torso."
“You about bastard!” About?
"You thought me might have..." Me should be he, I think. And in the line above, the comma is unnecessary.
Other than that, excellent :)
I know about the swearing - I wrote this yesterday (so no real editing yet, as you can see... hehee), and was trying to portray a more 'gritty' situation with hardened characters than in my other tales. Problem is, I have doubts this kind of tale will float in this competition - like I said on Jaxx's blog, I think they are going to go for humour over everything else, but since I don't write humour... It's probably a useless endeavour, but you'll never know until you try! Funny thing is, after this exchange, the language will scale back (once Angel and Roman enter an uneasy truce to find out what is going on). It's a tough call, in a way - if this was a movie, harder language would be expected, but in novels, we're still expected to play bu Queensbury Rules, so to speak...
The language seems appropriate. (But I didnt know what the "about' meant.)
I can see how the humour aspect could easily flow from what is happening - black humour, obviously! - if you can set the reader up to be following a particular path and then intersperse bad things with possibly absurd things.
Thanks again!
Tom Holt is a classical scholar with his tongue firmly in his cheek, Since you make a claim that you really want to win this competition. do you really believe in what you have written? This may be a bit harsh but I notice a few other posts have mentioned humour. But both these writers appeal to a family audience. Will your writing do that? If you want to win, watch Dr Who. I don't read them, but the Christine Harris Vampire novels are the more popular books and I have been told by my colleagues at work,who have read them, they are successful because they are funny, J.J Rowling appeals to a family audience too.
If you use fuckalot it loses any effect unless you had written Glencarry Ross where the use of swear words has a certain artistic effect.
If you want to write horror then Stephen King is a good model, He brings horror into ordinary middle-American life - and look at the success of ET. Bring the supernatural into everyday life. I know this is obvious, but it works. Otherwise develop a story that is total fantasy but is some sort of parallel universe to the real one.
You start off with Grimy, , neon light. Strip club.! Is this what is wanted? One of the first words said is 'fuck off' Is this funny? I must admit that I don't read many fantasy books of this type, so I am no judge, but I rather like Terry Pratchett, and like PG Wodhouse.
"You start off with Grimy, , neon light. Strip club.! Is this what is wanted?" Yep! This is Earth 200 or so years in the future, where genetic engineering and eugenics have forced humanity into a double tier of extreme haves and extreme have-nots. There are the Pures, the Devos (deviants, or those with genetic deformities and mutations), the Abominations. Life on the street is harsh - this isn't the sanitised street of cheeky pickpockets and singing chimney sweeps. This is the street where whores and the gangsters that control them work openly and the blunt (junkie) will knife you for the cigarettes in your pocket. Life is cheap, and if you want to survive, you have to play dirty. Angel is a street doc (fitting illegal cyberware and helping to make sure that her fellow devos can pass for at least at-a-glance regular humans), Roman a mercenary for hire and a thug. These people deal with the dregs of society, and I need to show this. 'Oh, goodness - that man seems to have had a bit of a nasty accident at the hands of some dastardly cad!' isn't going to cut it...
"'fuck off' Is this funny?"
Nope. It's just the way she is. Just the way she speaks.
I have plenty of stories where the supernatural is brought into everyday life... but that is not what this competition is about. They don't want 'Earth with a bit of occult', they want a complete alterna-earth concept, either past, present or future. I chose the future, where WW2 ended in a truce and Eugenics was never frowned on and was therefore pursued and made a part of everyday life. It went on until things started going wrong (random hox genes are being fired off, causing remnant genes to awaken and spark off all kinds of mutations) - this is the world of the future. The inspiration came from an Australian doctor who said that everyone will be using IVF to conceive in 10 years time, and the thought of that shook me.
I am a massive Pratchett fan, but I just can't do what he does. I can do gallows humour. I can do dark. I can do weird. But laugh-out-loud? That eludes me. And yes, it does worry me... but then again, if they want a funny book, then why isn't this specified? Why sci fi, and all that entails, instead?
(For the record, I have actually cut out the swearing now. This was just how the characters presented themselves to me at the time...)
As such what I look for in Sci-Fi is accesibility, and you've pretty much hit that squarely, so well done.
If you are worried about the swearing (and you've taken it out now so this probably isn't an issue) then you can always fall back on the ol' reliable 'making up a word that sounds like it should be offensive' ie Frak or the like.
Anyway a good start! :)
Please finish this; even if it doesn't win the contest you'll have a solid audience at the get-go :) I'm hooked already! Post more!
Thanks, EvitativE, zomb00 - this is definitely a juggling act between the age old arguments of 'keeping it real' and keeping it acceptable'. Personally, as long as it fits the scene and the characters, I have no problem with swearing / violence / sex etc (it's when it is used for the sake of using it I have a problem), but I can understand perfectly why people don't like it - it is foul, unpleasant and harsh... but, in a way, that's the point. I'm trying to think up my own words (like frak, chummer (my favourite Shadowrun word by far!), nark etc) but it's quite hard! I've already got devos (which is short for deviant and a play on words for Deros - homage to Richard Shaver) and blunts that can be used as insults, but I need something with the punch of 'fuck' without saying 'fuck' if I want to see it go further, methinks. I'll see how it goes.
Before I can go any further, I have to read up a bit on neuroscience. Got to learn which part of the brain does what O_o Good thing is, I now have an ending. Just got to decide if a certain character dies or not... :p Noe I've just got to knuckle down and write (rather than sit and play Neverwinter Nights. Too many mods to play... got to leave them alone!)
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