TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Free in E: Post-Orwell high school nightmare—plus a nice, tight ‘vampire’ short story with an O. Henry twist

By David Rothman

Sometimes you have to go to France to get discovered—ask Hemingway’s ghost.

Here I am poking through some recent additions to Feedbooks‘  listings on my iPod Touch when this wryly titled story pops up in Stanza. It’s called Hooking Up—about a nasty, Washington-bossed high school where nasty avatars make Big Bro’s rats seem like pet hamsters.

I love it. Then, a quick Google later, I find that the writer featured by the French-based Feed is one Tom Doyle, 44, who writes "science fiction and fantasy in a spooky turret in Washington, DC." He’s across the Potomac River from my haunts in Alexandria, VA. Psst! We locals know the secret, Tom, don’t we? All of D.C. these days is spooky, or at least the White House and Hill.

SFish mix of comedy and horror

For New York editors on the prowl for good, light-hearted reads, Doyle might be someone to keep an eye on. Same for a stray Hollywood studio or two looking for an SFish mix of comedy and horror in the vein of Escape from New York. John in some ways could be "Snake" Plisskenas a kid.

I see a novel in Tom Doyle’s story. The plot stops too soon. Please, someone: finance Doyle’s overthrow of the federal government (humor alert). Doyle isn’t Hemingway, an entirely different kind of writer. But he does a memorable job of being Doyle.

‘This high-tech educational prison’

Here’s the start of Hooking Up, which appeared earlier in something else worthy of mention, Futurmistic Magazine:

John sauntered lazily towards his new high school, making his parents wait as long as possible in their stupid H-cell car. He hoped that he was pissing them off. Their idea to send him to this hi-tech educational prison, their idea to wait out front until he synced on the school grounds, both because they didn’t trust him. So screw them.

He glanced back over his shoulder, saw their fake big smiles and waving arms, waving him on. Shit, how humiliating.

Ahead at the main entrance, the view held more promise. Two perfect girls, lush hair, blemishless skin, full lips, sculpted curves. The best features their daddies could buy, and probably too fancy for John. But he could still enjoy the scenery.

The girls smiled; John smiled back. Friendly — this place could be tolerable.

Then John stepped over a thin red line on the entrance walk, and his skin tingled all over. Now he saw that the two girls had two neon-glow companions. His implant must have synced with the school system. The girls’ avatars were just a shade more perfect than their phys bod counterparts.

The avatars also smiled at him, and then they struck him with bolts of joy, and kept striking. The bolts manifested as a bright golden stream of cupid’s arrows endlessly, painlessly piercing him, slamming the blood into his groin. Embarrassing, difficult to walk even, but damn, this school might be all right.

The avatars and the girls kept smiling, and the bolts kept coming. They went deeper, working up his spine in a roaring wave, filling his brain with white light. They were going to burst his skull.

The literacy angle: For teachers and librarians without wingnut pols to harass them over the very mild sexual content, I’d heartily recommend Doyle’s 6,500-word story as one way to help get young men to read. What red-blooded male could resist a lead like the above? Could part of the literary problem arise from prudish educators, or at from their elected bosses who care more about special-interest votes than about kids, books and reading in general?

The e-book angle: Yet again we see that some good nonDRMed fiction is out there on the Net—in fact, even the free variety. One more reason for Random House and the others to trim back "protection"? If I were a literary agent, especially one representing new talent, I might even make lack of DRM a contractual "must." Might not be possible, considering the power and rapacity of Amazon. But give it a shot. And remember, over at Pan Macmillan in the U.K., Sara Lloyd and crew are very open to DRMless books fit for the house.

Also recommended today: The Vampire, by Jan Neruda. No, the villain isn’t a vampire in the usual sense, but you’ll see why the title is justified.