Chimera Catalyst

Chimera Catalyst
194 Pages
ISBN 194550272X

When Finder is hired to locate charismatic, green-haired Miraluna Rose, it seems like an easy job. Crack into corporate databases, brew up some biologics to enhance his thinking, and get the job done with the help of the Parrot, a bird/dog chimera with the finest traits of both species.

The search takes Finder and the Parrot to the sun-broiled streets of Laxangeles, the canals of Seattle and the weirdly mutated vegetation of the Area. It turns out that it's not a simple missing-person case after all. Finder discovers that ReMe, a corporation providing medical cloning services, is illegally breeding human/animal chimeras. ReMe is selling these exotically beautiful female creatures, branded as ArcoTypes, as playthings to the wealthy and ruthless.

Miraluna Rose is its finest creation, but she has other ideas. She's holed up at Refuge, a haven for runaway ArcoTypes, where she's planning a future of freedom for her sisters. To help the ArcoTypes fight ReMe, Finder and the Parrot will need the help of a couple of sympathetic AIs, the CEO of the world's largest advertising company and a posse of highly modded, celebrity-crazed media kids.

Susan Kuchinskas

About Susan Kuchinskas (Berkeley, California Author)

Susan Kuchinskas

Having been a strange kid, Susan Kuchinskas has always appreciated the weird, in nature and in art. She works as a technology journalist from her home in El Cerrito, Calif., where she lives with her partner, a dog, a cat and a few thousand honeybees.

Her latest book, the science fiction/detective novel Chimera Catalyst, takes place in a drought-stricken Berkeley of the near future, where the Chez Panisse Tower almost blocks the view of the Black Zone (formerly Lawrence Berkeley Lab).

She's also the author of The Chemistry of Connection: How the Oxytocin Response Can Help You Find Trust, Intimacy and Love, a book that explains why and how we love -- and why we sometimes can't. She runs Dirty Old Women, an erotica reading series at Oakland's Octopus Literary Salon, and writes short fiction that's been published in numerous literary journals. Find her digging in her organic garden or walking at the Albany Bulb.