Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Heather Frederick

Heather lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina, where she is an M.D. She enjoys writing short speculative fiction and has completed a children’s action-adventure novel.

“The Talk” is a remarkably evocative and thought-provoking work and yet does not strain the limits of the flash fiction genre. The mother-daughter “talk” about procreation is bound to strike many — perhaps even most — readers as highly plausible even in its playful irony.

The social background provides a lot of the sauce: Louise is past the age of 100 and is not yet into middle age. Since males can’t have the “anti-aging” treatment, Louise’s son — the “beta” — must be younger than his half-sister Mauri, who is 49 and just entering puberty. And yet the boy must be developmentally far older than Mauri, perhaps old enough to be her father in normal terms. Mauri would nonetheless consider him hopelessly ignorant because he hasn’t been able to spend a five-decades long childhood acquiring as much knowledge as she has... Truly a Bewildering story, but a little close to reality for comfort!

Heather Frederick’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Heather. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!