Caitlín R. Kiernan is rebuilding her YA Mars story

In a recent entry in her LiveJournal, author Caitlín R. Kiernan revealed that, after some discussion with her editor, she is rebuilding her new Young Adult science fiction short story. Originally called “XX” but now carrying the working title “Romeo and Juliet Go to Mars,” the story is set on the same Red Planet as her novella “Bradbury Weather” (2005). Here’s how Caitlín R. Kiernan described her new story:

“Mars, bereft of men a century after a biowar that destroyed the male population and left the planet quarantined. The female colonists have adapted. We have a society where lesbianism is the normative state, and where heterosexuality dooms one to a life of loneliness and stigma. Women breed via frozen-sperm deliveries from Earth, and also by a complicated parthenogenic process. And this story is about a young girl who is heterosexual. It's just the way she is, despite all the careful social conditioning to insure there will be no straight women, despite genetic engineering, whatever. She's into men, even though she's only ever seen photos and read of them. And, so, what's it like for her?”

The story will be published in a SF anthology, probably next year.

Pictured: Cover of Subterranean magazine Issue #2 (2005), depicting "Bradbury Weather."