Release date: May 31, 2018
Subgenre: Science fiction anthology, Biopunk, Cyberpunk
About Infinite Dysmorphia:
~Infinite Dysmorphia~
An anthology of science fiction and speculative stories exploring how science and technology could change what it means to be human. Bio implants, cybernetics, genetic modification, age reversal, robotics and technology...what is the human experience of undergoing these procedures, and what is the advance of technology going to bring?
What does the future hold in store for those who are pushing the definition of humanity?
Ren Warom -- David Boop -- Isha Crowe -- Dolly Garland -- Thomas J. Spargo -- Elizabeth Hosang -- Ron Wingrove -- Sean Grigsby -- Courtney M. Privett -- Steve Cotterill -- Anne Nicholls -- David Sarsfield -- Frances Kay -- Alec McQuay
Excerpt:
Secrets of Flesh and Steel by Ren Warom
They stand in the shadow of construction to eat their food. For E4,
it's almost a religion. It reminds her of what she is. The bodies,
the raw materials, hacked up in the Cutting Rooms, go on to the
Separation Rooms, where they are stripped and catalogued into their
component parts: muscle, bone, sinew, viscera, eyes, brain matter,
skin, hair. These parts are purified and reduced to their cellular
matter in the Preparation Rooms. And then they come here. To be
remade.
There is no such thing as death. Every part of every Batch member
who ends will find its way into the bodies of a new Batch.
Recycled. Retrofitted with custom intelligence. Race memories. Made
fully grown and sparked to life with minute machine parts to begin
work immediately.
There is no such thing as birth here. Or growing up.
E4 remembers the day she was made. The confusion upon waking. The
terror. The stench. There are parts of her even now that suffer
confusion and fear, that seem to work in opposition, as though the
memories of past Batches have seeped through her consciousness at
the cellular level. Perhaps the horror of waking, the sharing of
consciousness between thousand of cells, has become part of Race
Memory in this fashion. How this can be she does not know.
Cells die and regenerate. In effect, those cells she had from other
Batches, all those cells that comprised her when she was first
made, are gone, replaced by cells uniquely hers. Or are they? Race
Memory tells her what humanity once was, and she is not that. She
is what her eyes, and her experience, tell her now. A thing. A
flesh machine. No more alive than the machines of steel that made
her.
Watching the elegant dance of those machines, sewing sinew to
muscle, coiling intestines into stomach cavities, building hearts
that begin to pump even before the chest is sealed thanks to their
component machine parts, the metal inside the flesh; E4 cannot
believe what she strives to on the bridge each morning, that
humanity has survived somewhere as it was before. How can that be
possible, when it was so easily reduced to this? It's impossible.
Half-hearted, she nibbles at her protein bar and the weight of the
hand curled against her forearm presses into her skin. The
sensation re-vitalises her, bringing a little warmth to ease the
chill in her heart. This is her rebellion. Her way of creating
change where nothing is new. Her way of holding on to hope when
hope is gone.
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About Kate Coe:
Kate Coe is an editor, book reviewer and writer of fiction & fantasy. She writes the sparkpunk GreenSky series and blogs at writingandcoe.co.uk.
In real life she's a typesetter and fills her spare time in between
writing with web design, gaming, geeky cross-stitch and DIY (which may
or may not involve destroying things). She also reads far fewer books
that she would like to, but possibly more than she really has time for.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Google+
About Peter Sutton:
Pete Sutton has a not so secret lair in the wilds of Fishponds, Bristol and dreams up stories, many of which are about magpies. He’s had stuff published, online and in book form, including a short story collection called A Tiding of Magpies (Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award 2017) and the novel Sick City Syndrome. He wrote all about Fishponds for the Naked Guide to Bristol and has made more money from non-fiction than he has from fiction and wonders if that means the gods of publishing are trying to tell him something. Pete is a member of the North Bristol Writers.
You can find him all over social media or worrying about events he’s organised at the Bristol Festival of Literature, Bristol HorrorCon and BristolCon.
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