Content: genetics

Summary:

Hi everyone.

I've been working on this novel for quite a while now (nearly 10 years!) and finally it's starting to come together as I imagined it and I'm confident enough in it to start getting some feedback!

It's actually a mixture of literary fiction and sci-fi, and although the summary below makes it sound more sci-fi there are actually plenty of literary fiction chapters (mainly about the relationship between Michael, Dylan and Sophie), so I've decided to mark it as literary fiction.

It would probably appeal only to people who also enjoy science fiction though, or at least science related topics

Here's a summary from a query letter I drafted for it:

When Michael Garrison enlisted the help of a mysterious organisation to save his work on genetic modification of the human immune system, he never would have imagined that he would become responsible for helping create an entirely new breed of human that was potentially going to wipe out the old, selfish, less empathetic model.

Before doing so though he has to try to save the mothers of his highly modified fotesus from what’s growing inside of them, who have immune systems so advanced they’re attacking their own hosts.

If only he hadn’t told his environmentalist swinger of a best friend Dylan about what he was involved in, and if only he hadn’t had an affair with Dylan’s struggling artist of a girlfriend Sophie, then maybe information about his project wouldn’t have been leaked to the press and maybe his own company wouldn’t now be so desperate to stop him.

Will he learn from the affair, overcome his own selfishness, and save the perfectly altruistic, disease resistant but potentially lethal to homo-sapiens genetically modified children, will he destroy his own creation, or will he be locked in prison for the rest of his life for crimes against humanity?

PERFECTIBLE ANIMALS is a work of literary/science fiction written from three different points of view: Michael, Dylan and Sophie’s.

Thank you in advance for any feedback!

Tom.

Chapters:

Summary:

WHAT KISS DESERVES TO BE TRADEMARKED? You'll find out in this literate, comedic, romantic, aphoristic, ten-years-in-the-writing, sci-fi thriller. Only the first page is posted below, since that's all I need feedback on at the moment. I'm mostly interesting in sentence-level commentary, not global suggestions. Which lines catch your eye, for better or worse, and why? I put a lot of pressure on sentences to provide immediate pleasure to the readers, not just the accumulative thrill of character and plot development. Novels are often mostly empty space, wasting their readers' time by deferring pleasure through over-focus on plot and character development. Sentences, though, can provide immediate pleasure--as evidenced in "money lines," those beautifully struck sentences that, even in the best of writers, can be found only a few times a chapter. Novelists can do more to thrill immediately by putting more energy into sentences. You'll see what I mean in the brief descriptions of the main characters below (copied from the novel's opening chapters). If lines like these appeal to you, you'll enjoy the rest of it . . . because the texts is filled with 'em. :-) Maya Lyon: "Maya smiled, her face a feature-rich Brazilian package of calligraphic piercings, lash-black hair, museum-quality aquamarine eyes, and unretouched asymmetrical scars." Hannah Mays "[Hannah's clothes] were mostly shot up and torn off, leaving her body on full topographic display. Her muscles were ornate and well-detailed, a variable geography of curves and cables and shadowed cross-cuts that made regular bodies look like tube arms hanging from an egg foundation." Poor Tom: "Just sitting, [Tom] was a few amputations shy of sharing the circle Da Vinci drew around the Ventruvian Man; standing, Tom made Michelangelo's statuesque David appear like a previous species of underfed teen; and in both positions, his hands were notable, large enough to palm a liter of water and, of late, having been all over her." ----- As mentioned, I'm mostly interesting in sentence-level commentary, not global suggestions. Which lines catch your eye, for better or worse, and why? THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR COMMENTARY! ~john

Chapters:

Summary:

Machinery introduces the reader to an amazing scientific possibility through a rather... controversial (if not apocryphal) narrative. This installment is an introduction of sorts, hoping to spark your curiosity about both the science and the narrator. I appreciate your most brutally honest feedback. Thanks!

Chapters: