A Princess of The Linear Jungle
by Paul Di Filippo
Life
is traditionally arduous, constrained and tedious for the average
university graduate student, even in the exotic Linear City: that
fathomless construction—natural or artificial,who can tell?—which
stretches infinitely in a narrow ribbon of buildings and street, bounded
on one side by an enigmatic Heaven beyond a wide River, and on the
other by an equally nebulous Hell beyond the Tracks of a common train.
So it is no surprise that the smart and ambitious young woman named
Merritt Abraham, lacking a steady boyfriend, stuck laboring in the
bowels of a dusty museum, frustrated in her profession and short on
cash, yearns for some excitement in her studious, mundane life.
But
she little reckons what fate has in store for her: a sweaty descent
into the dangerous wilderness of the savage Jungle Blocks, where weird
natives worship a little-seen barbaric queen!
But
first Merritt must satisfy her mentor at the museum, navigate the
pitfalls of romance, and narrowly escape a fatal encounter with two
collegiate ghouls. Only then will she find her talents appreciated by an
Indiana-Jones-style professor named Arturo Scoria. Forced by politics
to link up with his rival, Professor Durian Vinnagar, Scoria soon
assembles an expedition’s worth of queer characters, including Merritt,
and our young female adventurer eagerly leaves behind the humdrum
collegiate Borough of Wharton for the walled enclave of rampant, furious
greenerythat might well be the very Omphalos of the Linear City. There,
she will meet a Burroughsian destiny that is simultaneously
frightening, glorious and astonishing.
is traditionally arduous, constrained and tedious for the average
university graduate student, even in the exotic Linear City: that
fathomless construction—natural or artificial,who can tell?—which
stretches infinitely in a narrow ribbon of buildings and street, bounded
on one side by an enigmatic Heaven beyond a wide River, and on the
other by an equally nebulous Hell beyond the Tracks of a common train.
So it is no surprise that the smart and ambitious young woman named
Merritt Abraham, lacking a steady boyfriend, stuck laboring in the
bowels of a dusty museum, frustrated in her profession and short on
cash, yearns for some excitement in her studious, mundane life.
But
she little reckons what fate has in store for her: a sweaty descent
into the dangerous wilderness of the savage Jungle Blocks, where weird
natives worship a little-seen barbaric queen!
But
first Merritt must satisfy her mentor at the museum, navigate the
pitfalls of romance, and narrowly escape a fatal encounter with two
collegiate ghouls. Only then will she find her talents appreciated by an
Indiana-Jones-style professor named Arturo Scoria. Forced by politics
to link up with his rival, Professor Durian Vinnagar, Scoria soon
assembles an expedition’s worth of queer characters, including Merritt,
and our young female adventurer eagerly leaves behind the humdrum
collegiate Borough of Wharton for the walled enclave of rampant, furious
greenerythat might well be the very Omphalos of the Linear City. There,
she will meet a Burroughsian destiny that is simultaneously
frightening, glorious and astonishing.