Mark David Campbell has a new queer YA sci-fantasy book out (gay, lesbian, homonormative) Gear Box book 1: Gear Child.
From our beloved teddy bear to our cherished first car, we form deep emotional bonds with inanimate objects. Will AI machines inevitably develop the capacity to love us in return?
In a post-apocalyptic world that survives on garbage left over from the Gawd Wars eight generations ago, Sunny Boy, a semi-organic machine initially made to emulate a thirteen-year-old, and later modified as an eighteen-year-old, longs to be loved. His quest to find a family takes him from a farm in Winnipeg to the far reaches of the known galaxy. When Sunny Boy becomes embroiled in an ancient battle between a collective intelligence and a parasitic alien crystal, the boundaries between organic and inorganic life are called into question.
Warnings: Very low sex and violence (no gun play)
Series Blurb
The Gear Box Trilogy, which includes: Gear Child, The Arena of Mayhem, and The Wayward Star, is a journey of the heart that takes you from a devastated post-Gawd Wars Earth, across the Solar System to the far reaches of the galaxy, and explores the line between inanimate machine and animate life form.
Told from the perspectives of Sunny Boy, Fancy Larry, and Loofah—three AI machines—who understand the world around them through symbols, metaphors, and allegories. Along with their capacity for creative thought, empathy, and growth, they likewise struggle with issues of self-identity and self-esteem. Most of all, Sunny Boy, Fancy Larry, and Loofah, like any intelligent being, crave acceptance and long to be loved.
Buy Links:
Gear Child: Universal Buy Link | Goodreads
The Arena of Mayhem: The Arena of Mayhem | Goodreads
The Wayward Star: The Wayward Star | Goodreads
Find All Three Books Here (Click on the Cover for More Details)
Excerpt
From Chapter Thirteen
I unlatched the glass, and a salty, humid breeze blew into the cabin like it was saying welcome. In no time, the burnt land below us gave way to water, and the Captain veered the airship southward.
In the distance, I made out the silhouettes of broken and battered glass and steel towers all jutting out of the ocean like fingers of drowning men reaching up to be saved. I watched as the shadow of our airship glided along the surface of the water, silently sliding over the towers.
“Is that a city?”
“Once was.” The Captain nodded. “Greatest in the world. But that’s all that’s left of it.”
“Why is it underwater?”
“Ha!” the Captain snorted. “It happened a long time ago, during the Gawd Wars and the Great Flood, when my great-great-great-granddaddy was a boy.” The Captain scratched his head. “See, way back then, everybody had their own books full of old stories about Gawd. Most of the stories were the same, but everybody told them in a different way.” He furrowed his brow. “People started fighting and killing one another to prove their way of telling the stories was right, and the way other people told the stories was wrong.”
I looked at him with my mouth hanging open, trying hard to understand why people wanted to kill each other over a bunch of old stories.
“Was Gawd bad?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “But by the time everybody got tired of killing one another and blaming it on Gawd…” The Captain cleared his throat. “They’d already blown up all the big cities and poisoned the land. And as if that weren’t enough, they’d also melted the polar ice caps and flooded everything remaining along the coast.” Taking his beard in his hand, he stroked it a couple of times. “People don’t talk much about Gawd anymore.”
“Is that the hand of Gawd?” I pointed to a giant green hand sticking up above the surface of the water, holding what looked like a torch.
“No. That’s the hand of a giant woman. She was one of the idols they used to worship a long time ago.” He eased the throttle and floated the ship in closer so I could get a better look.
“What happened to her?” I tried to make out her body and head below the surface of the water, but all I saw was a cluster of barnacles and algae.
“I guess she got old and tired, and people had no use for her anymore.” The Captain veered the ship southward and pulled on the big wheel. Leaving the city of dead fingers behind, we continued on down the coast, rising slowly toward the jet stream, again.
“Oh, please! Who do you think designed robos in the first place—the military! And it wasn’t only for cleaning and sex.”
“Only those who get caught are sorry.”
I thought about all the people who had died, and I felt sad, but mostly I felt sad because my name would never be recorded there or anywhere else.
“Hey, kid, don’t feel bad. It’s not about you. That boy’s head’s so full of crap, he wouldn’t know a ray of sunshine even if it was beaming up his butt hole.”
He swept the scanner across the pilot’s groin, looked at it, and laughed. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Your sperm look like a bowl full of goldfish somebody forgot to feed.”
“I thought I was dead.” He grasped both my hands. “Who are you? Some kind of a superhero?”
I felt my face flush. “No, I’m only a robo.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “Not to me.”
“Something tells me we’ve just met the resistance.”
Spinner frowned. “Beyond those doors, there’s nothing for me. I’m not like you.”
“I’m a robo, like you.”
“No, you’re not!” Spinner practically spat out the words. “You can grow, adapt, and evolve. I can’t. This is all I can ever be.”
“We’ll go to the opera and art galleries. You’ll learn about second-hand stores and how to shop for bargains, we’ll create and redecorate, dance the night away, and sit in cafes trashing the latest clothing trends until the sun comes up.”
Author Bio
I have a passion for science/speculative fiction that is socially and culturally driven. Maybe that’s why I studied anthropology and archaeology.
My recent publications include: Eating the Moon (NineStar Press, 2021), a dystopic story of an elderly anthropologist who stumbles across a hidden society where homosexuality is the norm and heterosexuals are marginalized. Secrets of Ishtabay (Ninestar Press, 2023) is the story of a Maya village in Belize, which struggles with its transition to globalization after the completion of a highway linking it to the outside world. The Homework Assignment (Polar Borealis Magazine of Canadian Speculative Fiction, March 2025) is a short story about an anthropology professor who asks his students to imagine first contact with an alien intelligence with whom they share only one sense.
Currently, I live in Milan, Italy, with my husband. When I’m not writing, I work with Italian sociologists, biologists, and psychoanalysts, assisting them with their English academic publications. I enjoy reading both classic and newer books, immersing myself in steampunk and futurism. I love adventure stories, and most of all, I want to fall in love with a great MC. I am dyslexic, which means I can’t spell, and I have a love/hate relationship with computers and the internet.
Author Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markdavid.campbell.9
Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/14116939.Mark_David_Campbell
Author Liminal Fiction: https://www.limfic.com/mbm-book-author/mark-david-campbell/
Gear Child by Mark David Campbell Exclusive Excerpt Chapter Nine
“Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived!” Fancy Larry stood on a bale of hay with his arms stretched outward, his ball of fleece carefully arranged on his head, and his face all chalky white.
Both Grease Spot and I looked around, but there were no ladies or gentlemen in the barn.
“What moment?” Grease Spot asked.
“The farm is upgrading with newer task-specific robos.” Whenever he was excited, Fancy Larry spoke in an alto tone.
“Are they going to terminate us?” Grease Spot said.
“Well, I overheard the guards this morning. They are sending the older robos to the toxic dumps, and the higher-end robos, like us, are going to be shipped to Winnipeg City and reprogrammed for urban cleaning and sanitation duty.” Fancy Larry clasped his face in his hands. “All my dreams have finally come true.”
I looked at Grease Spot. “I don’t know anything about the city.”
Grease Spot patted my head. “Don’t worry,” he said, even though he had a dreadful expression on his face.
On the night before we left the farm Grease Spot and I sat on the worktable, as usual, while Old Gus finished his dinner.
“Things in New Winnipeg City are a mite different than things here on the farm,” Old Gus kept sniffing like he had a cold.
“You boys promise me you’ll do exactly what you’re told to do and don’t look them gots directly in the eyes.”
“We promise,” we said in unison.
“You won’t have me no more to come running to when you got a problem.” Old Gus’s eyes filled with tears, and he dropped his head.
Grease Spot slid himself off the table, went over to the bed, and flopped down with his head on Old Gus’ lap. Old Gus bent over, wrapped his arms around him, and buried his face in Grease Spot’s fiery red hair. “My boy, my beautiful, mechanical boy,” Old Gus cooed while he cuddled and rocked Grease Spot.
As I sat there and studied them, I pictured my lambs all alone in the barn, and I wanted to cradle and rock them, one last time. I slid off the table and, without saying a word, went to the sheep shed.
All night long, as I hugged my lambs, I thought about Old Gus and Grease Spot over in the mechanics shed without me, the two of them huddled together in the dark on that steel cot. I couldn’t understand why Old Gus had never cradled me that way.
Grease Spot was only a machine, like me, wasn’t he?
