Kind of a quiet corner of this forum, but on the off chance... I'm looking for feedback on my current MS. What works, what doesn't, what's unclear, what's unneeded. Happy to read almost anything sci-fi/speculative.
(Content warning: mentions of, and a sequence containing, sexual violence.)
Query blurb version 5.2:
Everybody has bad days. Jim McAllister’s having one that spans two universes.
As an anthropologist, the chance to join the Time Eye project - to pull photons from the Bronze Age and view ancient cultures - was a dream. Plus a massive career boost, of course; totally worth leaning on his ex to score a way in. But then rogue scientists hijacked the Time Eye, sending an engineered virus back thousands of years. Jim, entangled with the controls, was helpless as the timeline warped around him.
Now, he’s the last remnant of the old history: a conspicuous, bizarrely-dressed young man who speaks no recognizable language. Thanks to the virus, men have never been a physical threat to women; quite the opposite. Jim quickly learns just how vulnerable he is - even before he lands in the asylum.
To have any chance of getting home, he must adapt to a very unfamiliar culture. Then, figure out who might listen to him. Then, convince them he’s no ordinary mental patient. Then sell them on a story that's not just impossible and offensive… but also, y’know, heresy.
That is… if he can survive the attention of the sanitarium guards for long enough.
SECONDARY is an adult science fiction novel of 105,000 words. It combines the stakes and detail of Andy Weir’s THE MARTIAN with a deeply-explored matriarchal world like G. R. Macallister’s SCORPICA, by way of Naomi Alderman's THE POWER.
