Double X: Episode One: Viva Las Vegas

by Sofia Diana Gabel

The XY Superiority keeps women, double Xs, in their place, hunting them down if they defy curfew or are brazen enough to think they can live in freedom without their DNA on record. But Tandy has managed to escape Las Vegas and live to adulthood in the desert, relying only on her wits and her protective clothing to prevent being scanned by the satellites. That is, until trackers arrive at her little corner of the world.

26 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 19, 2017

About the author

Hello! I'm a multi-genre author living in the Pacific Northwest, but originally from Sydney, Australia.

I do love to write in several genres, but I'm focusing on Sci-Fi at the moment. I have way too many favorite authors to even attempt to choose one or two, although I suppose I can say that I like Andy Weir's style of writing and his original stories. In addition to writing, I try to fit in as much reading as I can, especially from authors I don't know or new authors.

I also love critiquing! I belong to a wonderful critique group and since COVID, we meet on Zoom, which is great since I moved away and can still keep in touch.

For something different, I have the first and second episode of an episodic short story, Double X, published and available on Amazon.

I hope you enjoy my writing, and if I can ever answer any questions, please contact me!

Reviews

[MKYHome · Rating 5 out of 5]

Survival

The best and worst of humanity. Aftermath has double xx's pushed back into a property status for all the xy's. Just a quick outline of their brutal treatment.

[Frank Carver · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was another free introductory story, in this case to a series of books for young adults about a dystopian America dominated by a literal “battle of the sexes”. The series title refers to the XX chromosomes carried by women, as distinct from the XY in the men who run the society. Women and girls are strictly controlled and relegated to menial roles.

The main character, Tandy, starts the story hiding in the desert somewhere near Las Vegas, trying to avoid everything from spotter satellites to tracker patrols - all of which are trying to capture her and any remaining free females. Her family are dead and she survives using her wits, the skills she has built up during her time in the desert, and a particularly gruesome relic of her father. She makes one small mistake and her precarious life begins to tumble around her. Her only recourse is to leave behind everything familiar and seek out the mythical “Silent Revolution” - a group of free women who might just be able to help her overthrow the men and restore balance to society.

The book was certainly gripping. There was a continual sense of danger from every direction, as Tandy was forced into increasingly dangerous and morally ambiguous situations. The setting could so easily have felt like a kind of cut-price Handmaid’s Tale, but it has its own distinctive flavour. Tandy is certainly not a placeholder character, and has her own fears and morals which cause her problems at various points in the story. There are a few other characters but the story is so short that they don’t really get any development.

I did struggle to sustain my disbelief in some aspects of the setting. One of the key aspects of the story, for example, is Tandy’s need to hide or disguise herself from spy satellites which can somehow scan the complete country and tell the difference between male and female DNA from space at a distance of hundreds of miles. If that were possible, it seems odd that there is no more localised version of the same technology which could just routinely scan the few thousand square miles around Vegas, say from the top of the Strat Tower.