6 pages, published on deviantart.net under single_leg

This first entry in a sci-fi serial seems to be an alternative recent past setting, in which a comet passed close by the earth in about 2000. The protagonist is Charles Duquette, a ‘goth’ father, an 80’s survivor apparently, who is a mohawked drunk, embittered about the turn the world has taken. He is out and about on a de-Christianized Christmas Eve. An atheist himself, Charles is brooding over the fact that his fellow atheists are not going to stop attacking religious traditions until the only religion left is the worship of The State.

In this version of December 24, 2005, rolling blackouts have made e-publishing an iffy proposition. Charles has been collecting print books for his three daughters, but has found that much literature has been electronically edited out of existence. There is also the fact that since the near earth comet, fertility rates among women have been down.

A Solstice Story is definitely dystopian sci-fi with minimalistic social alterations, which effectively brings a lot of trends that sci-fi writers are currently predicting for 20 years from now into a technological context that does not require any material extrapolations, which can date near future sci-fi quickly.

I’m interested in seeing where this goes.