Conjuring a future world that’s rife with homophobia, misanthropy and societal sickness, Leigh V. Twersky’s Olympia Heights buzzes with bizarre invention.
Set in a society patrolled by “gynocop pairs in squeaky pink leatherex dungarees” as “swarms of sphecocops” hover overhead, themes of identity and change are threaded through a story that’s largely centred on a spheco protagonist.
Sphecos are males who were deemed to be NICEBOYS (Not Into Conventional Eroticism) from an early age, separated from their families at the age of seven, genetically altered and transformed into wasp-men hybrids. Once in this altered state, sphecocops serve their Queen in police forces tasked with genetically cleansing BestCoe Britain of male felons. Alongside this, the novel follows the survival story of a female character who’s been slammed to the edges of society.
Despite the offbeat context, both protagonists’ plights and metamorphic journeys are compellingly convincing through a boldly executed novel that shakes up the status quo.
Olympia Heights is set in a future corporate world, where only money and celebrity count. C-class people dread disemployment and D-classification, and homo 'niceboys' get metamorphosed into 'sphecos', a hybrid wasp-man auxillary police force with crime-busting assets.
It is the story of one spheco's quest for identity, lost family and proscribed love and also the tale of a woman's struggle to survive on the outlawed fringes of a society, where the revelation of a dark secret threatens to tear her life apart.
Homophobia and genetic cleansing. Pre-morten funerals and putting 'quality' into equality.
His stories have appeared in Chroma, A Boxful of Ideas and Lost Places (both Paradise Press) and A Coup of Owls. His dystopian novel, Olympia Heights, is also published by Paradise Press. Recently, he had two poems in the Flash Dances anthology.
