Sarah scrambled for the remote on the kitchen table and turned up the volume.

“-was found dead in a refrigerator in Smythe’s apartment. Police believe Smythe also went by several other names, including Devin Smythe, Daniel Smithers, and Danny Simpson. There have been reports of suspects matching Smythe’s description in the Vancouver and Seattle areas.”

“Jesus. Two years,” Sarah said. “They always call her ‘little.’ Of course she was little. She was five years old, for Christ’s sake.” It was the most she’d said in my presence since the day before.

“Authorities in those areas are assisting local police in their inquiries. Coming up: Take a close look at those bills you’ve got in your wallet. They may just be counter-”

Sarah turned off the TV, dropped off her plate and cup in the sink, and went upstairs to brush her teeth before heading into the city. I refilled the kettle and plugged it in to make some coffee for myself. While the water heated I went into my study around the corner from that ground-floor laundry room, which was no longer the aphrodisiac it once was, booted up my computer, and opened the file folder next to the keyboard where I kept the pages of my manuscript. The word “Position” was scribbled across the otherwise blank title page, but that was just an inside joke. The real title, the one that would appear in the publisher’s spring catalogue, was TechnoGod. There were 357 more pages under that title one, and only a last chapter to write and some proofreading to do before bundling it off to my editor.

I write science fiction, mostly, and you could probably figure this out by stepping into my study. Or else you’d conclude that I’m a thirteen-year-old boy trapped in the body of a forty-one-year-old man. Maybe you’d be right on both counts. The room is littered with SF kitsch. Star Wars figures, Terminator statuettes, plastic Jurassic Park dinosaurs from Toys “R” Us, a rubbery shark from Jaws, small diecast models of the various flying machines from the Thunderbirds puppet show, an assortment of Enterprises from all the Star Trek series and movies. My writing center constitutes the short end of a large L-shaped desk, while the long end is my modeling center. On this particular day there were two model kits on the go-a foot-long Seaview submarine from the 1960s television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and a resin model of Ripley, the Sigourney Weaver character from the Alien movies. I like building models of things-spaceships, submarines, futuristic cars-more than assembling models of people, but I’ve always been partial to anything related to the Alien flicks.

I’m aware that it may not be normal for men in their forties to collect such toys, but then again I don’t make my living in a normal way. Being an author of more conventional fiction would be unusual enough, but writing SF puts you in a different category altogether. Science fiction writers don’t find their books reviewed in Time or Newsweek or The New York Times, although the latter has its token science fiction column in the book section every couple of weeks. I’ve never understood the ghettoization. Science fiction offers cutting-edge social commentary, inventive allegory, a grand vision of where our current social and political trends are taking us, an exploration of the human condition told through high-tech metaphor. And, of course, little monsters with razor-sharp teeth bursting out of people’s chests.

I’d been putting the finishing touches on my fourth book, and had hopes, as all authors do, that this would be the one that would once again earn me some critical attention, even if only in the cozy SF community, but in the pit of my stomach knew it wouldn’t be. The novel would be published to little fanfare. There would be virtually no publicity. The author tour would consist of two magazine interviews by phone. It would be ordered by the major book chains in such disappointing numbers as to make it impossible to create an impressive display of copies near the front of the store. Instead, it would be put back in the regular stacks, spine out, on a shelf reachable only by NBA stars, thereby guaranteeing that no one would ever find it. The publisher would arrange one book signing, not at one of the big chain bookstores, but at a mall store, where I would be seated behind a table in view of passing shoppers weighed down with Gap and Banana Republic bags and carrying containers of vinegar-soaked New York Fries, who would wonder who I was but not care enough to stop and ask, and I would smile and nod as they passed, and then, miracle of miracles, a middle-aged couple would slow as they walked by, pause and look at the display of my books, turn, and approach, and my heart would begin to swell, that someone was actually going to talk to me, and maybe even buy a book, which I would be delighted to sign, to make out personally, even. And the woman would say to me, “Do you know where the washrooms are?”

I actually thought this new book might have a chance. It was a sequel to my first novel, Missionary, a title my publisher really liked because it would make people think that, at some level, it was about fucking, but which was actually about missionaries of the future. Or more precisely, reverse missionaries. The time is several hundred years from now, and religion has been outlawed on Earth. Faith has been overtaken by technology. Computers are God. The missionaries decide to take their message to other worlds, to persuade civilizations deemed more primitive than ours to abandon their beliefs in supernatural beings and embrace the computer chip. Things go badly when our know-it-all Earthlings, in the act of setting ablaze a house of worship on the planet Endar, have the life crushed out of them by a huge hand reaching down from the clouds.

I’m not a particularly religious person, but this book found its way into Christian bookstores as well as the mainstream ones, did reasonably well, and it was that book’s success that has kept me going since. It seemed odd to see Missionary in the window of a religious bookshop, displayed alongside God Is My Anchorman, by a noted network news executive, and the collected scripts of Touched by an Angel. The book probably never would have made it there if the shop owners knew my editor thought its title would make people think about fucking. He’s not a particularly religious person either, but it was his irreverence that prompted me to tentatively call my new book Position. My second and third books tanked (number two, Slime, was about nasty sewer creatures that pass among us by disguising themselves as cable company executives; and number three, Blown Through Time, about a guy who goes back in time to keep the inventor of the hot-air hand dryer from being born, had real potential, I thought, but went absolutely nowhere), so my decision to revisit my missionaries was an easy one. They seemed my best hope of coming up with another modest hit.

I was in the newspaper business when Missionary came out. I’d started out as a two-way, a reporter-photographer, which meant that most out-of-town assignments went to me. No need to buy two airline tickets for a reporter and a photographer-one seat would do. Although I liked shooting pictures, I grew weary of being on the road so much, and when a position became available at the city hall bureau, I applied. This, as it turned out, was a mistake. I became an expert in everything municipal. I knew all there was to know about planning acts and planning boards and official plans and amendments and amendments to amendments and zoning restrictions and parking enforcement and snow removal and zero-based budgeting, and there were times when I thought I’d like to take a copy of the city’s collected bylaws, tie it around my neck, and throw myself off the pier at the foot of Majesty Street. I began to wonder if maybe journalism just wasn’t my thing, and I plotted an exit strategy. My first book, written late at night and on weekends, became my way out.