Rotten Row

A novella. Cover art by Christopher Walker.

Rotten Row is the worst place we’ve made.

Humankind can travel to the stars – but only if you’re sure of yourself. Content to be flung as a datastream through space, flitting from male to female, dark to fair, tall to short to broad, one random discard body to the next. Those who go are the Upshot, rare individuals subject to their own rigid laws.

And then there’s Rotten Row.

Outcast from the Upshot community, in breach of all codes, in Rotten Row people design their own bodies and sell them on for re-use after. Outlandish bodies: furred and feathered, winged and hooved and worse.

duLaine is an artist, but all art is about identity; where one blurs into the other beyond physical limits and legal restraint, what is art worth and how can anyone be certain who they are?

duLaine travels to Rotten Row in search of answers, and finds himself snared by passions, plots and betrayals beyond his worst imaginings, far beyond his ability to control.