Gay-themed science fiction adventure. Winner of a StoneWall Society Pride in the Arts Award.

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Product Description

The scientist Taldra is one of the few people on the planet Valchondria who can see in color, but a police force called "the Maintainers" won’t let colorsighted people reveal their ability to the public. Duane Simolke explores that "closet" metaphor more in this revised edition of Degranon; he also recreates three of the major characters as gay men. Taldra’s family becomes entangled with a violent religious fanatic from a war-torn planet called "Degranon." The first edition of Degranon received a StoneWall Society Pride in the Arts Award, and Simolke’s publisher, iUniverse, named Degranon one of their Editor’s Choice books.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280093 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 212 pages

From the Author
This book is for all people who dare to be themselves.

Thanks to the many people who gave me feedback on the drafts of this novel over the years and encouraged me to eventually finish it. I would go for months or even years at a time without looking at the manuscript, but my mind often wandered to the distant worlds I had created.

I wrote Degranon in increments from 1980 through 2001, completing it and revising it numerous times. The first edition appeared in paperback in January 2002. While I thought of Degranon as a science fiction novel that included gay themes but only minor gay characters, I found that many of my readers identified with those gay aspects. In fact, Degranon earned me my third StoneWall Society Pride in the Arts Award! With all of that in mind, I kept wondering what Degranon would be like if I rewrote some of the major characters as gay.

That pondering led to this Revised, Second Edition. Once I wrote down a few of ideas for the revisions, it gained a life of its own. This retelling fully explores the themes that I dared not explore in my younger days and that need exploring in the face of real-life bigotry, oppression, uniformity, and fanaticism.

About the Author
Duane Simolke was born in New Orleans on May 28, 1965, and now lives in Lubbock, Texas. Majoring in English, Simolke studied at Belmont University (BA, 89), Hardin-Simmons University (MA, 91), and Texas Tech University (Ph.D., 96). He has always loved books and movies, especially science fiction and fantasy.

He previously wrote three non-genre books: The Acorn Stories; New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio; and Holding Me Together. Simolke also edited and co-wrote The Acorn Gathering: Writers Uniting Against Cancer. That mainstream fiction anthology is a spin-off from The Acorn Stories, with all author and editor royalties going to fund cancer research!

Degranon was his first novel, and first work of science fiction. He plans to mostly write science fiction and fantasy novels the rest of his life. He is now co-writing a fantasy novel, The Return of Innocence, with fan fiction author Antoinette Davis.

Excerpted from Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure by Duane Simolke. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Her gray eyes sparkled like no eyes Hachen had ever seen. Actually, she had broken the law by secretly telling him that her eyes were light brown, but, unlike his gifted spouse, he couldn’t see in color. He couldn’t even see the redness of her skin, though he knew from history class that most people on Valchondria have red, brown, or black skin, and some of the people who had once lived there had yellow or white skin. To him, everyone simply looked white or black.

During history classes, before the Maintainers expunged certain anti-glory facts from the school curriculum, Hachen had learned about how white-skinned people and yellow-skinned people faded from existence. After the Supreme Science Council realized that those two races contracted certain illnesses that no one else contracted, they worked with the Maintainers to pass a constitutional amendment, banning any two members of those races from marrying. The measure supposedly protected Valchondria’s families and stability. Within three generations, both races ceased to exist; only the red, black, and brown races remained obvious, or some mixture of the three.

That time in Valchondria’s history brought outcries of shame, and the government vowed to never again use the law to promote bigotry. But then, little more than a hundred years later, the SSC found that obesity caused many illnesses, adding to increased national healthcare costs. So another constitutional amendment passed, this one allowing the Maintainers to fine people for not keeping a healthy height-to-weight ratio.

And after the virus came, the Maintainers and the SSC passed yet another constitutional amendment that promoted discrimination. That one made the ridiculous assertion that discussing colorsightedness posed a heavy hazard threat to traditional values, and that claiming to be colorsighted was nothing more than a plea for so-called "special rights." It amazed Hachen that a civilized culture could keep taking away people’s civil rights. It also hurt him, because the woman he loved was the target of that bigotry.

And the new forms of bigotry kept emerging. Next came legally permitted language, initially called "socially recommended rhetoric," creeping slowly into schools and the media and then into the law. And then Maintainer cameras came. And freedom left. All in the names of preserving traditional Valchondrian values. All suffocating Valchondrian creativity, thought, and progress.