SF Canada member David Perlmutter has just released his debut novel, Orthicon. The story draws on David’s many years of studying animation and cartoons.
This sci-fi/fantasy world is based on the idea of cartoon characters being real living people. Orthicon’s plot follows their exile from Earth into space, carried out by the US government. We see the creation, rise, and fall of the Cartoon Character Colony of Orthicon (CCCO) located on the planet of the same name.
“This is Orthicon,” he said. “A sub-orbital lunar projectile located approximately twenty-five million lightyears from Earth. The U.S. government discovered it during the Apollo missions in the 1970s, but we had to keep it a secret from the rest of the world, lest Russia found out about it, for obvious reasons. We have spent approximately thirty years terraforming…”
This was a new term to me, so I asked what it meant.
“Haven’t you read any science fiction?”
“I have never been much of a reader, sir,” I said.
“Well, all you need to know is that it means to make an alien planet look and feel as much like Earth as possible, and therefore, allow Earth people to settle and colonize the planet’s territory!”
These cartoon characters, creatures of ink and paint, may have been created by human minds, but they are remarkably lucid and intelligent. Are they threats to their human creators? Or simply discarded commodities?
David Perlmutter is a freelance writer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His published works include the non-fiction books America ‘Toons In: A History Of Television Animation (McFarland and Co.) and The Encyclopedia Of American Animated Television Shows (Rowman and Littlefield); as well as a number of speculative fiction collections and novellas, including Orthicon (September 2020). His short stories can be read on Curious Fictions and Medium, and his essays on Vocal.
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Order your copy of Orthicon via Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Draft2Digital.