About This Book
A dying Earth, a desperate choice, and a terrible question: What is human? Solomon’s Choice, by bestseller Ruthanne Reid.
Solomon Iskinder has a plan: Force adaptation so humans no longer need to depend on the Fey for survival…
Book Details
Solomon Iskinder has a plan: Force adaptation so humans survive the climatomagical apocalypse and no longer need to depend on the Fey and the Night-Children for survival.
Today, he’s succeeded in a magical-human DNA graft, the result of which allowed him to see magic for 18 seconds.
He has no idea how big the can of monsters he’s just opened is.
Coming Soon
Excerpt from Chapter One
What is human?
Tom once answered, “It’s like porn: you know it when you see it,” and he laughed, then grew frustrated with me when I could not laugh with him.
How could I? We don’t know it when we see it. Kin look human all the time. Monsters, completely alien to human cell structure, look human. Spells can be worn like costumes to let them hide. Human cannot be based on appearance.
So then what is human? Some say the current surviving genomic DNA is human, but I disagree with that, too. For one. it would preclude all archaic humans, as well as any who come after. How is that possibly a practical definition for a survivable future? It would mean only the genus Homo sapiens will ever be considered human, and I don’t see that working out well for us. We’d adapt out of our own definition.
Not to mention we’re so closely related to the things that are not human, we can produce viable offspring. This seems a poor way to define anyone.
Jason’s mother, Mara, replied to my late-night ramblings with this: human is about the heart. I had to disagree with that, too (and she wasn’t happy, and I reminded myself not to speak so freely, even in the chemically induced foolishness of post-orgasmic bliss).
Non-humans have families, social structures, and tools. They have emotions, and ego, and cultural histories. They respond to insults with anger; they respond with fear when hurt. They love, dearly, deeply, even over thousands of years. These things are not what make us human.
So then, for the love of hell, what is human? I don’t know.
Those monsters have a definition for us, though. A definition that includes previous and future generations. A definition that sums us up in just a few words: we are the ones who cannot do magic.
I grind my teeth as I swap my PPE for soft, shapeless garments (lab-clothes, rather than home-clothes, and am reluctantly delighted to find tiny versions ready and waiting for my son). “I’m very subjective, really,” I tell him as I change out his booties for soft socks to keep his tiny feet warm. “I know this is an unscientific opinion, but… it isn’t fair.”
It isn’t. They are so close to us, genetically. We are barely the scope of one taxonomic order away, one microevolution shy of this special talent—yet they can see and control magic by will, like choosing to hold one’s breath or expelling it with passion—and we cannot.
The ability to see and control magic should not be the dividing factor. That is an accident of adaptation, nothing more. It cannot be what defines us. I refuse to believe we can be defined by what we are lacking.
So then what is human?
I have to find an answer. I’m working to adapt us, to force mutation, to help us survive this ruined world in which we live—and the definition of “human” will either imprison or free my son, and any who come after. I must find the words.
Coming Soon