Under the Hood
What's Behind the Story?
Mixed Marriage
Spoiler Alert: In Mixed Marriage, overpopulation has forced a repressive regime to divide the population by day of the week, enforcing drugged slumber for six days and waking on only one. The focus of the story is on the social divisions that develop between the different "shifts." I call this background the Time Share.
Where Have We Seen This Before: I hadn't read Philip Jose Farmer's Dayworld series (based on The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World, published in New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories, 1971) when I sketched out this background. I really thought I'd created something totally new! Should've known better. I still haven't read Farmer's stories. The novels seem to focus on adventures by rogues who skip from day to day illegally living multiple lives - a fascinating take, and fortunately very unlike my own story. Sadly for me, however, the summary of his original short story sounds uncomfortably similar to my own "star-crossed lovers" plot line. I comfort myself that Farmer's tale is basically a rip-off of The Gift of the Magi
Gimmes: The whole story assumes a world (or part of a world; it's ambiguous) with intense overpopulation. In reality, this Malthusian view of the future is pretty thoroughly debunked. Of course, it's an ingrained idea still held by many, but it's not very realistic.
Enabling Technologies: Hibernation.
Hibernation is often seen in science fiction as a workaround for non-FTL space travel, and sometimes as a "Rip Van Winkel" functional to allow time travel, usually so a "modern man" can see the future; Buck Rogers and Genesis II both used variations. I was thinking about terrestrial consequences of such technology when I thought up the Time Share system - a way to divide humanity by day of week that reduced daily population.
In most fiction, some form of induced hibernation typically stops the aging process. Well, that's not very realistic, and we have absolutely no prospect of doing that with any technology we can even imagine today.
My take on hibernation in the Time Share universe is much more straightforward: The population is split using medically induced comas, also called a barb(ituate) coma. This is much more modest! Although dangerous, this technology is in common use today, although under medical supervision; and it's much harder on the body than TV might lead you to believe. In my story, hibernation isn't a magical path to eternal life; you simply sleep most of your life away. It's really a horrible cheat, although it's definitely advantageous to the regime.
Plot Holes: People in induced comas need food and water, which I provide via a dripline at each wrist; however, peristalsis still functions and people can't go six days without urinating or defecating, which would ruin the comfy little bedrooms I describe. I decided to simply ignore this issue rather than dress my characters in adult diapers.
Spoiler Alert: In Mixed Marriage, overpopulation has forced a repressive regime to divide the population by day of the week, enforcing drugged slumber for six days and waking on only one. The focus of the story is on the social divisions that develop between the different "shifts." I call this background the Time Share.
Where Have We Seen This Before: I hadn't read Philip Jose Farmer's Dayworld series (based on The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World, published in New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories, 1971) when I sketched out this background. I really thought I'd created something totally new! Should've known better. I still haven't read Farmer's stories. The novels seem to focus on adventures by rogues who skip from day to day illegally living multiple lives - a fascinating take, and fortunately very unlike my own story. Sadly for me, however, the summary of his original short story sounds uncomfortably similar to my own "star-crossed lovers" plot line. I comfort myself that Farmer's tale is basically a rip-off of The Gift of the Magi
Gimmes: The whole story assumes a world (or part of a world; it's ambiguous) with intense overpopulation. In reality, this Malthusian view of the future is pretty thoroughly debunked. Of course, it's an ingrained idea still held by many, but it's not very realistic.
Enabling Technologies: Hibernation.
Hibernation is often seen in science fiction as a workaround for non-FTL space travel, and sometimes as a "Rip Van Winkel" functional to allow time travel, usually so a "modern man" can see the future; Buck Rogers and Genesis II both used variations. I was thinking about terrestrial consequences of such technology when I thought up the Time Share system - a way to divide humanity by day of week that reduced daily population.
In most fiction, some form of induced hibernation typically stops the aging process. Well, that's not very realistic, and we have absolutely no prospect of doing that with any technology we can even imagine today.
My take on hibernation in the Time Share universe is much more straightforward: The population is split using medically induced comas, also called a barb(ituate) coma. This is much more modest! Although dangerous, this technology is in common use today, although under medical supervision; and it's much harder on the body than TV might lead you to believe. In my story, hibernation isn't a magical path to eternal life; you simply sleep most of your life away. It's really a horrible cheat, although it's definitely advantageous to the regime.
Plot Holes: People in induced comas need food and water, which I provide via a dripline at each wrist; however, peristalsis still functions and people can't go six days without urinating or defecating, which would ruin the comfy little bedrooms I describe. I decided to simply ignore this issue rather than dress my characters in adult diapers.