Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure

Rating:
Summary: As good as his short stories!
Review: 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.