Stanford University, the heart of Silicon Valley - at the beginning of the dot-com boom. A young man leads even younger men in developing web sites for one of the world's top medical centers. In their off hours, they stay rooted to their desks, drinking beer, slaughtering one another in the virtual corridors of ultra-violent video games - and dreaming and pondering about... women. When did their difficulties start? Was it six million years ago, when we branched off from our nearest hominid cousins, the chimps? Or maybe the die was actually cast 3.5 billion years ago - with the first prokaryotes squirting around in the Earth soup.
This 7000-word short story, from the author of the acclaimed thrillers The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, traverses some of his most important and incendiary thematic territory: young and frustrated men, beautiful and conflicted women, and the crossed wires of human sexuality. Also the baffling legacy of evolutionary psychology, the absurdities of high-tech modern existence, and technology itself - and not to mention the strange and lovely people who work making it run for us.
Also included in the short story collection, Don't Shoot Me In The Ass, And Other Stories.
Praise for Michael Stephen Fuchs
"Just what a technothriller should be: taut, violent, smart, and very, very technical. As if The Da Vinci Code were written by someone who wasn't an idiot." - Cory Doctorow
"Guns, blackmail, computers, unfathomable corruption, angry young Taoists, and a bloody quest for a mysterious manuscript. Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt, put in a firefight.'" - Kirkus Reviews
"Once the guns come out, it switches gear into a dream-like actioner where characters discuss favourite automatic rifles, perform startling feats of derring-do, and bust caps in various asses. Definitely worth a look." - Dr. Ian Hocking, author of Deja Vu
"Some writers leave you thinking they know things we ordinary mortals don't have access to. Fuchs is stupendously talented." - Creme de la Crime
This 7000-word short story, from the author of the acclaimed thrillers The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, traverses some of his most important and incendiary thematic territory: young and frustrated men, beautiful and conflicted women, and the crossed wires of human sexuality. Also the baffling legacy of evolutionary psychology, the absurdities of high-tech modern existence, and technology itself - and not to mention the strange and lovely people who work making it run for us.
Also included in the short story collection, Don't Shoot Me In The Ass, And Other Stories.
Praise for Michael Stephen Fuchs
"Just what a technothriller should be: taut, violent, smart, and very, very technical. As if The Da Vinci Code were written by someone who wasn't an idiot." - Cory Doctorow
"Guns, blackmail, computers, unfathomable corruption, angry young Taoists, and a bloody quest for a mysterious manuscript. Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt, put in a firefight.'" - Kirkus Reviews
"Once the guns come out, it switches gear into a dream-like actioner where characters discuss favourite automatic rifles, perform startling feats of derring-do, and bust caps in various asses. Definitely worth a look." - Dr. Ian Hocking, author of Deja Vu
"Some writers leave you thinking they know things we ordinary mortals don't have access to. Fuchs is stupendously talented." - Creme de la Crime
Used availability for Michael Stephen Fuchs's Three And A Half Billion Year Old Men