Lavender: a Strangely Slipstream Novelette

Annatalia, a nineteen year old girl, plans to destroy the paradisical time-sharing alternative world that her mother had named Lavender after Annatalia's favorite color.

She prepares for the big vote regarding the level of destruction she and her fellow Anti-Heroes on Earth might cause. They have to do something together highly unpoetic at the right time, as the time-share world Lavender is constructed out of the beautiful, nuanced quality of -- the poetic.

She leaves her time-share home on Lavender and passes through the Radionics portal -- Radionics machines have been employed since the mid 20th Century by the Psychotronics Association. Her parents were core members of the association. And now is she going to use the technology against them?

This futuristic phantasmagoric novelette is an example of Slipstream, which is is a Literary genre that combines Sci Fi, Fantasy, Horror and Literary without going by the commercial-Genre rules. The term was coined by renowned cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling. He said: "This is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange." Thus the first anthology of Slipstream was called Feeling Very Strange.

If you'd enjoy reading even more about psychotronics and radionics machines gone wild, check out "The Portable Threshold." (I grew up going to Psychotronics Association meetings with my parents, who had a radionics machine. . .)

In that novelette, as in "Lavender," and "Among Giant Leaves," the protagonist must maintain a tricky and subtle state of mind to prevent destroying the world. Or, if desired, rebel. The dilemma.