“Sarah and the Body” just went live in Scigentasy # 3.

It’s a sad story, so I feel like I should put a trigger warning on it– for body horror, for medical violence, and for the ravages of degenerative neurological disorders.

It’s about a cyborg, but it’s not what you’d call “hard” science fiction, and doesn’t present realist possibilities for bio-medical enhancement. When I was thinking about cyborgs, I was more interested in the physicality and the intimacy of their relationship with technology, which is a little different than our own, but only because it’s more obvious.  That blurred line– that interface– between what’s “us” and what’s “not-us” seems particularly relevant to me, now, with my enormous external & collaborative memory (you know, google), and my dependence on the products of industrialization. I mean, we’re all entwined with our machinery, all extend our perceptions and our abilities with pharmaceuticals and eyeglasses, bicycles and pacemakers and smartphones. The Cyborg just wears those enhancements where we can see them, and maybe has lost the opportunity to withdraw– or escape?– from her relationship with technology.