The Aquatic Age by McCamy Taylor

[Lester Curtis]

Wow! McCamy scores another homer with this one, its centerpieces being the tight, intricate plot and the pacing and tension. I won't spoil it for you; read it yourself!

Great job!

[Wormtongue]

Wow! McCamy scores another homer with this one, its centerpieces being the tight, intricate plot and the pacing and tension. I won't spoil it for you; read it yourself!

Great job!

That's not a review, that's an advertisement! :p

Wow! McCamy scores another homer with this one - Great job!

'Homer' as in a work equivalent to that of the classic Greek poet or the fictional Nuclear plant control technician from Springfield, USA? Or is that a baseball metaphor?

I digress.

***SPOILERS***

A nice tale centred around the shenanigans of an Evil Inc. Corporation. The protagonist is a little naive and totally loyal to his sweat heart. All good traits in a man, and a dog. Everyone should be more dog.

The only part I had trouble with was how the MC knew the stilt support beam to his house had been blown up. A paragraph of show over the tell could have helped there. Otherwise, a smooth, seamless read from start to finish, with a satisfying ending.

[davidsonhero]

This was well worth the read. I like the narrative style that is reminiscent of a hardboiled crime story.
And the science fiction elements of a future waterlogged world are pretty seamlessly integrated into the story.

IRC and the cure recalled the recent story of someone cured of HIV by a bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin's lymphoma. I thought this was an interesting link in the story to a current day situation.

One element I had a problem with was the genetically engineered human with gills. I did a bit of research on artificial gills for my flash story "Kiss of the Gill Fish." There are lots of problems inherent with the idea of fish-like gills on a human. The amount of oxygen the human body needs to function (when compared to a fish) and the amount of O2 dissolved in water means gills on a human would have to be huge and a massive amount of water would have to pass over those gills to collect enough oxygen for the human body to continue functioning.

Here is a lengthy discussion on the topic of artificial gills by people that have thought about it a lot more than I have:
http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/smktu/why_hasnt_an_effective_artificial_gill_been_made/

I did notice the following possible typo too:

I was operating on a time of kind delay, thanks to sleeplessness.

All-in-all though, this is another great story from McCamy.

John