Fugue

About the Book

Voyd is a bright but troubled rock star of the Marilyn Manson subspecies. On the opening night

of a tour of his group, Voyd Where Prohibited, he has collapsed in the stands where he has gone

to search for Callie. Callie is a brilliant but plain Chinese-American girl majoring in marine

biology. Voyd had introduced himself to get her help in passing the zoology course he needed to

graduate, but soon he found himself strangely attracted to her. He is in danger of losing her,

however, because he cannot express how he feels. The problem is, he has not allowed himself any

feelings about music, women or anything else since his manic-depressive mother died from a

shotgun blast five years before. On this night Voyd has one last chance to tell Callie how he

feels about her. After his collapse, Voyd is taken to the emergency room where he deliriously

recalls the events leading up to the collapse and his relations with Callie, his mother, his

classic guitar teacher, and others from his past. In addition to remembering real events, he

also imagines these characters and others visiting him in the present. Soon we learn that Voyd

may or may not have been responsible for his mother's death, and the key to unlocking his

feelings lies in facing what really happened to her five years before. Woven through the plot

is an exploration of how people balance the opposing forces of feeling and reason in choosing a mate, as well as in art and science.

About the Author

I am a biology professor at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. My previous  published works include a textbook of zoology, a book on the history and philosophy of evolution, and research papers mainly on neurobiology, especially on mechanisms of learning using the  cockroach as a model organism. (Well, they have to be good for something.) My training was in  electrical engineering and physics at MIT and Virginia Tech, then biophysics at Penn State. I  began writing fiction in the early 1980s mainly because it seemed to me that one of the most  potent forces in modern culture -- science -- was being ignored in the world of fiction. I am  discounting science fiction, of course, since the science there is mostly fictional, and the  characters presented in that genre do not strike me as being anything like the real scientists  I know.