Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Humanity Splintered


"Flags," my latest science fiction novelette, is now available from "Lillibridge Press" - Read more about it in the Science Fiction section of the Lillibridge Press home page at www.lillibridgepress.com. It is also available at Amazon.com.

"Flags" is a story about humanity driven to the point of extinction in the future by racial, religious and ideological hatred.

Tragically, such things are not confined to fiction. In the real world, Iraq and Afghanistan are plagued by sectarian conflict and suicidal acts of mass murder driven by hatred of any who are of a different religion or creed. The people of Darfur struggle to survive the threat of genocidal war. The nation of Uganda is torn by hatred in one form or another. In the north of that country, the so-called Lord's Resistance Army carries on its campaign of terror, rape and murder, conscripting boys as young as 10, twisting their minds, destroying their innocence and forcing them to become killers. In the south, a law is being debated which, if enacted, could indiscriminately put innocent people to death solely on suspicion that their sexuality may differ from the norm. The most horrifying thing about this law, perhaps, is that it comes cloaked in religious piety, as hatred often does, pervading and perverting the very codes of religious morality, twisting a message of love into one of hate, and teaching bigotry to the next generation while calling it love.

Hatred born of fear of the unfamiliar, of the outsider...that seems to come so easily to the human heart. In an age of nuclear weapons, our hatred may be our undoing.

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