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    Scream Angel
    Scream Angel
    Scream Angel
    Ebook53 pages

    Scream Angel

    By Douglas Smith

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    AURORA AWARD WINNER

     

    Think of human emotion as a geography, with peaks of pleasure and valleys of pain. Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy.

     

    Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy—of xenocide. They will kill. And they will revel in it.

     

    Welcome to the world of Scream.

     

    Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the enslavement or death of entire races. But Trelayne falls in love with Philomela, a Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug.

     

    Does he love her for her beauty, for the drug she gives him, from guilt for what he has done to her people? And does she love truly him as she swears? Or is he simply her only hope for freedom, for her and her entire race? Forced to choose between freedom and love, what will they do?

     

    Science fiction, space, love story (novelette)

     

    "…the book's most skillfully crafted story…a multi-layered tale about a circus that features a pair of 'angels' who have the ability to produce a drug that produces pleasure based on intensity of emotion. Factor in that the owner of the circus is in love with one of the angels as well as addicted to the drug she produces, and the story quickly becomes one that holds the reader's attention until the very end." —SpecFicWorld

     

    "Smith describes a disturbingly plausible military application for the narcotic … The basic concept behind the drug strikes me as one of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven't heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here." —Strange Horizons

     

    "…remind[ed] me of the reasons I love the author's writing: his characterisation, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption." —SF Crowsnest Reviews

     

    "A visceral work […] a true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking." —Café de Ontem

     

    "The story has so many layers that I'm still sorting them out. And like an onion, I'm not sure if I'll ever find the final layer." —Tangent Online

     

    "A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: 'They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.' (A++)" —Fantasy Book Critic

     

    "Scream Angel was especially horrifying and compelling, and I wound up re-reading it again after I had finished the book." —Fluidity of Time

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDouglas Smith
    Release dateJun 1, 2011
    ISBN9781928048107
    Scream Angel
    Author

    Douglas Smith

    Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of Rasputin and Former People, which was a bestseller in the U.K. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has written for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, National Geographic, and Netflix. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U.S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He lives with his family in Seattle.

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      Book preview

      Scream Angel - Douglas Smith

      Scream Angel

      by Douglas Smith

      Aurora Award WINNER

      Think of human emotion as a geography, with peaks of pleasure and valleys of pain. Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy. Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy—of xenocide. They will kill. And they will revel in it.

      Welcome to the world of Scream.

      Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the enslavement or death of entire races. But Trelayne falls in love with Philomela, a Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug. Does he love her for her beauty, for the drug she gives him, from guilt for what he has done to her people? And does she love truly him as she swears? Or is he simply her only hope for freedom, for her and her entire race? Forced to choose between freedom and love, what will they do?

      ~~

      …a multi-layered tale about a circus that features a pair of ‘angels’ who have the ability to produce a drug that produces pleasure based on intensity of emotion. Factor in that the owner of the circus is in love with one of the angels as well as addicted to the drug she produces, and the story quickly becomes one that holds the reader’s attention until the very end.

      —SpecFicWorld

      Smith describes a disturbingly plausible military application for the narcotic … The basic concept behind the drug strikes me as one of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven’t heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here.

      —Strange Horizons

      …remind[ed] me of the reasons I love the author’s writing: his characterisation, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption.

      —SF Crowsnest Reviews

      A visceral work […] a true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking.

      —Café de Ontem

      The story has so many layers that I’m still sorting them out. And like an onion, I’m not sure if I’ll ever find the final layer.

      —Tangent Online

      A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: ‘They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.’ (A++)

      —Fantasy Book Critic

      Scream Angel was especially horrifying and compelling, and I wound up re-reading it again after I had finished the book.

      —Fluidity of Time

      Table of Contents

      DESCRIPTION

      SCREAM ANGEL

      ABOUT THE STORY

      A REQUEST

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      ALSO BY DOUGLAS SMITH

      CHIMERASCOPE

      THE HOLLOW BOYS

      THE WOLF AT THE END OF THE WORLD

      COPYRIGHT

      SCREAM ANGEL

      THEY STOPPED BEATING

      Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it. The thugs that passed as cops in that town on Long Shot backed away from where he lay curled on the dirt floor, as if he was something dead or dangerous. He watched them lock the door of his cold little cell again. Disgust and something like fear showed in their eyes. The taste of their contempt for him mixed with the sharpness of his own blood in his mouth. And the Scream

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