My novella SOL is on sale for .99 cents for the next five days. I wrote it in collaboration with D. H. Lawrence. For those wondering how a sci-fi writer of now was able to collaborate with someone who died 100 years ago, I include below my journal from that fateful day.
But first, here’s the blurb:
Corla defected to the moon to live with the newly arrived and technologically advanced Entozune. Her disdain of earth's old ways led her to embrace the alien society, such that she became a surrogate for a childling Entozune. She returns to the earth's atmosphere in order to recover in the light of the sun and wean the offspring. Back on earth she experiences a crisis, both sexual and existential.
Sol is a powerful collaboration between D. H. Lawrence and H. W. Taylor, combining the sensual prose of Lawrence with the uncanny imagination of Taylor to bring this tale of awakening and renewal. The first of its kind, the world of literary sci-fi will never be the same. Also included is the first draft story by D. H. Lawrence, Sun, and a brief description of the collaboration between the literary titan and the little known sci-fi author.
On the Origins of SOL
from the journal of H. W. Taylor
David Herbert Lawrence, born in 1885, was a writer, poet, provocateur, and time-traveler, who died in 1930. Late in the year 2022, he arrived, disheveled and slightly agitated in the office of H. W. Taylor, the 21st century sci-fi author and Medieval Futurist.
"Bloody!" D. H. yelled and began dismantling his time-traveling apparatus, antique by the standards of today. Once the hoses had ceased spewing ozone, he unzipped and stepped free of his continuous suit. Revealed as a gentleman, he shook my hand and then insisted I rewrite our story.
"What story?" I asked once my composure had been chased across the field, regained, mounted, and subdued.
"You imbecilic, jelly-boned swine!" I revised my assessment that he was only slightly agitated. The 19th century time-traveler continued, "I'm talking about our collaboration! The scientifiction novella Sol!"
My composure was once again scattered across the four corners and the twelve dimensions.
Thus did our collaboration begin— er, middled? …um… Thus our collaboration will have had beginned.
Time-traveling tenses are weird.
For my part, I found Lawrence's story "Sun" after reading an article on parenting in which Lawrence was referenced. As I read it, I was struck by a similitude of sentiment with a long gestating idea I had about an earth subjugated by aliens. Humanity had lost freedom and the only way to regain it was through surrogacy. My story, which in seed form was titled No Greater Love, felt a kinship with Lawrence, though admittedly his story sought to zag where my story wanted to zig.
As I reflected on Lawrence's story I noted certain thematic threads; both my idea and his story were reversals of Eden. In his original story, Juliet returns to the garden, where fruit is abundant, she herself, in fact, is fruit, there is an Eve-likeness to her; the story even has a serpent, but the temptation is the strange fruit of adultery. My idea was too ill-formed to be definitively anything, but to fit it into the universe of what my collaborator had written, I shifted the role of the husband to the alien husbander.
Lawrence told me, "Mankind has got to get back to the rhythm of the cosmos, and the permanence of marriage." I agreed and liked his personifications of the sun, which struck me as not so much pagan and distant as transcendent. Ever the animist, Lawrence wasn't too keen on my monotheism, but allowed my minor tinkering. I was a bit nervous over how bodily the sun was described and I had to remind him that I had only read the expurgated edition of the story and not the original, dirtier, version (which was published later). I was harangued for my puritanical ways, for which I thanked him heartily and asked him to pass it along to my mother who might be in some doubt.
He was less concordant with my characterization of the moon. I had wanted to put the sun and earth in opposition to the aliens and the moon. I argued that the warmth of earth was the argument against the cold interior of the moon. He only assented because the Entozune had no love of the moon and were even hidden away inside it. I was free to contrast the unhuman moon life with the human earth. To further guide my motives he provided me with five of his poems: Sun-woman, Conscience, The Aristocracy of the Sun, Immorality, and Birth Night. It was from Birth Night that I found a satisfying conclusion to our story… satisfying to me at least.
"We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe," Lawrence said. "The way is through daily ritual, and the re-awakening."
"I feel like I did that, D. H.," I said.
"How will you have had liked it whonce Hieron Tinker Whitkins rewrites your Nasostorto saga into a Post-Rip-rock Muz-Opera in 2111?"
"What? I've no idea what— well, to be honest with you, D. H.," I replied. "I don't know anything about that, but it sounds cool."
He gestured to his time-suit. "Would you like to take my calendric-ambulator and check it out?"
"I am not getting into that… thing," I said as I pulled out my Ordo-paradoxi novum. "There are more civilized ways to time-travel."
Lawrence shrugged his shoulders. So we were in agreement with the end of the story. But that wasn't our biggest fight…
"Where are the breasts?" Lawrence said, driving an emphatic finger into my desk.
"The 'alert breasts?'"
"Yes, the 'alert breasts' and all the other references, you miserable sniveling dribbling sod!"
"There was quite a lot of talk about breasts," I said meekly. "I kept some of them, but I felt that maybe you talked about them too much. Also, you described them as 'alert' three times."
He gave me a censorious sneer. A man brought up on obscenity charges is not one to be triflingly edited. He unhinged quite a barrage of abusive language, which I manfully bore, but when he poked fun at my own invention, I admit, a tear blessed the corner of my eye. "'The moons of her white flesh?' You think that's better? How?"
"You didn't like that?" I said. "Moons and mammaries, white like Luna herself, she doesn't have a tan yet? Get it? No?"
"Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body. It's like your story from Rupture, what was it called, Rut?"
"Yes, Rut," I said. "That's the story of the xeno-biologist and her husband. It's about love, so of course you liked that one."
"That's what I'm talking about," said Lawrence. "That's the natural awe and proper fear in the face of sex!"
"Thank you, D. H., that means a lot—"
"However your story Future Sex…"
I rolled my eyes. "Of course, you've only read my sex stories."
"You young people scoff at the importance of sex, take it like a cocktail, and flout your elders with it!"
"Well, that was from my debut book Progeny. I intended that story to be a moral argument against time-travel."
"Counterfeit love is good cake, but bad bread. It produces a fearful emotional indigestion. I suspect you fear the body."
"I don't fear the body. Some of your expressions just came off a bit creepy to me, all that talk about her breasts..."
"Creepy? What do you mean?"
"Well, D. H., you're 138 years old. Corla's over a century younger. You can't talk about women like that in the future— in the now of the future. Not so sure about the future future."
"I really must insist you skip ahead in the ambulatory—"
"No, thanks, I have to get onto all these edits you've suggested."
"Well, I must go. I look forward to our first meeting," he said. "I'll pop into my past future and update him on what I will have said about our story."
I said goodbye to his smoke and static. Truthfully, I haven't heard from him since. I suppose he was happy with the story, because otherwise I feel certain that he'd express his wrath. I did, however, find a note written in the margins of my copy of "Sons and Lovers." It read, "Cheers from the future! -D. H." and the following sentence was underlined:
"The tailor can make it right," she said, smoothing her hand over his shoulder. "It's beautiful stuff."
[Most of what D. H. Lawrence says also appears in various letters and books, particularly his "Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover" —editor]
Above is my favorite (and only) 1 Star review.
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Next newsletter, I promise (promise) that I’ll have a new story for you. I would love it if you left a review for SOL. The D. H. Lawrence Society declined my offer to send them review copies. Here’s the link again: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN9D6PNK