Product Description

This revised version of Duane Simolke's science fiction adventure Degranon features more gay characters and a sharper focus on diversity themes. On the planet Valchondria, no illness exists, gay marriage is legal, and everyone is a person of color. However, a group called "the Maintainers" carefully monitors everyone's speech, actions, and weight; the Maintainers also force so-called "colorsighted" people to hide their ability to see in color.

The brilliant scientist Taldra loves her twin gay sons and thinks of them as the hope for Valchondria's future, but one of them becomes entangled in the cult of Degranon, while the other becomes stranded on the other side of a doorway through time. Can they find their way home and help Taldra save their world?

"A must read."
--Joe Wright, reviewer for StoneWall Society (http://www.stonewallsociety.com).

"A reminder of the danger of fanaticism."
--Mark Kendrick, author of the gay time-travel romance Stealing Some Time.

"Duane Simolke's latest offering is a fascinating scifi excursion into a world as unique as his singular vision."
--Ronald L. Donaghe, author of the series "Common Threads in the Life," which includes Common Sons and The Blind Season.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5716251 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 212 pages

From the Publisher
This revised version of Duane Simolke’s science fiction adventure Degranon features more gay characters and a sharper focus on diversity themes. On the planet Valchondria, no illness exists, gay marriage is legal, and everyone is a person of color. However, a group called "the Maintainers" carefully monitors everyone’s speech, actions, and weight; the Maintainers also force so-called "colorsighted" people to hide their ability to see in color.

The brilliant scientist Taldra loves her twin gay sons and thinks of them as the hope for Valchondria’s future, but one of them becomes entangled in the cult of Degranon, while the other becomes stranded on the other side of a doorway through time. Can they find their way home and help Taldra save their world?

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.

Customer Reviews

As good as his short stories!
I came to Duane Simolke's sci-fi novel, DEGRANON, after first having sampled the author's short stories, as included in THE ACORN GATHERING, Writers Uniting Against Cancer.

DEGRANON is sci-fi that warrants the attention of any serious aficionado, gay or straight, fascinated by alien worlds that mirror our own world -- complete with mind-bending drugs, political machinations, rigid class structures and struggles, cults, small-mindedness, corruption at all levels, loves, hates, aspirations, frustrations -- even bigotry; the planet Valchondria has mainly color-blind societies, long-eliminated prejudices arising from different colored skins having merely evolved into repression of the color-sighted minority by the majority who only see in black and white.

Admitteldy not a breeze-through novel, with its time-travel elements that take the plot from past to present to future to present to past, and its comments upon societal mores and relationships -- experienced through the complications of time travel -- it's nonetheless worth the effort for those who don't mind "food for thought" served up with the dessert of sheer good reading.

NOTE: For those who might prefer an experimental dose of Simolke, before taking on this, his 197-page sci-fi opus, try his and his fellow authors' "shorts" in his non-sci-fi THE ACORN GATHERING which -- all author and editor royalties donated to the American Cancer Soceity -- provides the dual rewards of good reading and benefiting a good cause.

Complicated, enjoyable
If you love science fiction and you don't mind gay heroes or a complicated plot, then you should read this novel. I enjoyed it and hope to read more by Duane Simolke. There was an earlier version of Degranon, but Simolke rewrote it and added more gay characters. I haven't read the first version, but I like this one.

Degranon is another world, or a religion, or just a book - depending on who you ask. Whatever it really is, it's a threat to the survival of the planet where Taldra and her family live.

Painfully adolescent and amateurish
While I feel somewhat bad criticizing someone's first work, Degranon is just not ready for public consumption. There is a reason it was not printed by one of the major printing houses. It feels like it was written by a thirteen year-old. I think the best way to illustrate this is to give some examples:
"Sydra instinctively reached for her laser pistol, but then remembered setting it on her desk. The Top Maintainers never allowed weapons in the upper levels of Urloan Control. Apparently, the Top Maintainers never expected the leader of the Degran cult to slip past the most advanced security systems in all of Valchondria. 'What is your aim? What did you do to them?'"
"With his access to Life Unit and his secret understanding of both temporal doorways and spatial doorways, Geln had managed to adjust the doorway enough to get it closer than any of his people had ever gotten to the time of the great kings of Degranon. And now he was taking Taldra's child there. Yes, he would let Telius live, but he would avenge Taldra's rejection, her insult."
"As the lights springing into his face and body allowed his features to emerge, they revealed a middle-aged man of immediately evident wisdom and confidence-his brown head fully shaved, his dark eyes gleaming with wonder, his simple robe stretched by a muscular body. But most surprising and impressive of all, he didn't look the least bit frightened or astounded. Instead, he merely looked delighted and curious, like an explorer who knew where he was going but not what he would find when he arrived."

Eep. I actually feel maybe the book should have between one and two stars, but because I was sucked in by a positive review (five stars!), I feel something of a need to balance it out. The author is trying to follow in the footsteps of other classic dystopian works: Brave New World or 1984, but is not up to the task.

To get some perspective on what I like, I've read and enjoyed a fair bit of science-fiction (including BNW & 1984): just about anything by Neal Stephenson (especially Snow Crash or The Diamond Age), Greg Egan's Quarantine, Dan Simmons' Hyperion, Ender's Game, Gordon R. Dickson, Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Saberhagen, Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, Brian Aldiss, Greg Bear.... Harlan Ellison also rocks. I also enjoy less serious works (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, or Calahan's Crosstime Saloon). Short fiction, Degranon just hurt. So save your money (or buy my used copy!)