About the Book
In The Female Factory, procreation is big business. Children are a commodity few women can afford.
Hopeful mothers-to-be try everything. Fertility clinics. Pills. Wombs for hire. Babies are no longer made in bedrooms, but engineered in boardrooms. A quirk of genetics allows lucky surrogates to carry multiple eggs, to control when they are fertilised, and by whom — but corporations market and sell the offspring. The souls of lost embryos are never wasted; captured in software, they give electronics their voice. Spirits born into the wrong bodies can brave the charged waters of a hidden billabong, and change their fate. Industrious orphans learn to manipulate scientific advances, creating mothers of their own choosing.
From Australia’s near-future all the way back in time to its convict past, these stories spin and sever the ties between parents and children.
Contents:
- Introduction
- Vox
- Baggage
- All the Other Revivals
- The Female Factory
