Exemptions - Reflections on an Era
Exemptions was a solipsistic amusement of mine for decades, something I started as a potential short story in 1973 and returned to every time I wasn’t working on something else. There is no counting the drafts, and only a few pre-electronic or typewriter-era pages survived. I think I still have hard-shell floppies of early versions.
Its original title was Fission. In the late 80s I changed the title to Astral Bodies. Finally, the story became Exemptions. Considering the number of versions, it probably ought to be many hundreds of pages long, pages from the Book of Sand.
Exemptions is about a small group of people who failed to disentangle their fates from each other despite their best efforts. The little collegiate worlds of the Hippie era were much smaller than their equivalents today, far cheaper, far more Spartan, and a lot stickier.
Its original title was Fission. In the late 80s I changed the title to Astral Bodies. Finally, the story became Exemptions. Considering the number of versions, it probably ought to be many hundreds of pages long, pages from the Book of Sand.
Exemptions is about a small group of people who failed to disentangle their fates from each other despite their best efforts. The little collegiate worlds of the Hippie era were much smaller than their equivalents today, far cheaper, far more Spartan, and a lot stickier.
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The erstwhile author and his wife circa 1971