Were It Only Exile as Promised

By J.M. Ney-Grimm

In a world of silenced voices, one champion vows her sister will not go unheard.

 

Thania inhabits a far future in which digital goods and virtual reality substitute for physical products and experiences. Thania has always accepted the constraints of her culture, but when her beloved sister discovers real paints and canvas—banned as hazmat—Thania's complaisance starts to crack.

 

After Claro publishes her subversive illegal art—putting both sisters in danger—Thania begs her to return to the safe digital work that originally brought Claro fame.

 

But Claro knows that sometimes the life of the spirit trumps that of the body, and Thania must learn this lesson too or risk losing her soul. Along with everything else.

 

Were It Only Exile as Promised is a dystopian SF story of art, algorithms, and censorship. If you're a creative looking to lance the modern boil by plunging into its worst case, this nightmare scenario offers the terrifying catharsis you seek.

 

Buy Were It Only Exile now to seize the comet's tail!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wild Unicorn Books
• Release date: Sep 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215734056

J.M. Ney-Grimm

J.M. Ney-Grimm lives with her husband and children in Virginia, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She's learning about permaculture gardening and debunking popular myths about food. The rest of the time she reads Robin McKinley, Diana Wynne Jones, and Lois McMaster Bujold, plays boardgames like Settlers of Catan, rears her twins, and writes stories set in her troll-infested North-lands. Look for her novels and novellas at your favorite bookstore—online or on Main Street.

Book preview

Were It Only Exile as Promised

~ A SCIENCE FICTION STORY~

by J.M. Ney-Grimm

WERE IT ONLY EXILE AS PROMISED. Copyright © 2023 J.M. Ney-Grimm.

Cover design:

James at GoOnWrite.com

Table of Contents

Were It Only Exile as Promised

Bonus Tidbits

Excerpt

Author Bio

More Titles by J.M. Ney-Grimm

For Dean,

who suggested that

his students enter their stories

in the Writers of the Future

contest, where this one won an

Honorable Mention

Were It Only Exile as Promised

The silver-grey of the cerametal plain stretched away in all directions as far as my eye could see. Its smooth surface gleamed softly under the wan sunlight. An ill-informed person might think it went on forever. I was not ill-informed.

The disc extended 32.1 kilometers exactly from its center, where I stood.

Overhead, the aluminare dome was so transparent that you might not think it was there, except for the slight dimming of the twin suns and the cerametal arch bisecting the curved expanse—a solid strip of silver-grey rising beyond the northern horizon like a colorless rainbow, arcing across the blue-and-white of a mare’s tail-swept sky, and plunging down to stomp the earth beyond the southern horizon.

How high was that dome? How wide that strip of arch?

3,333 meters and 1,000 meters respectively.

If you didn’t know what this place was, you might find it austerely beautiful, a monument to human ingenuity and engineering.

I knew what this place was. As its former deputy director, how could I not?

I’d once seen