Backstage for Firedance (Patreon)

Backstage for Firedance, #23 of the 52 Project.

As a preteen I read Harlan Ellison's "Again, Dangerous Visions", a collection of New Wave, absolutely edgelord, science fiction whose raison d'etre was to push the boundaries of what was allowed in print. There was a lot of sex, violence, and futility stories about the world being dark and horrible. This inspired me greatly, and for some time I wrote stories about really dark scenarios, like the President of the United States wiping out almost the entire human race to allow a small group of children to repopulate the world (overpopulation fears were huge in the 70's, not entirely without merit since at the time we hadn't yet seen what birth control would do to the population rate), things like that. "Firedance" is one of very few of those that I felt was worth rescuing and re-writing as an adult, and in fact miraculously it didn't need much rewriting. Hardly my best work, but I still think it's kinda cool, and I'm no longer capable of this level of edginess in my writing anymore.