The Meiosis of Cells and Exile

I have a new reprint out! My story “The Meiosis of Cells and Exile,” originally published in Asimov’s, is out in the January issue of Fusion Fragment, which is dedicated to novelettes. I love novelettes, and I’m increasingly writing more of them. They’re a great length for when you want to explore something in a little more depth than a short story would generally allow, but still don’t want to waffle on forever and ask your readers for an hour or more of attention.

“Cells and Exile” is about the Soviet biochemist Lina Stern, who was sent, after a show trial and the execution of her colleagues for anti-fascist activities, into exile. She was in her seventies at the time, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that this whole traumatic, violent experience would have, not to put too fine a point on it, killed her off. Not so. Lina was tough as old boots, and she survived her imprisonment and exile. She even outlived both Stalin and the brutal torturer who jailed her before her exile, and after both their deaths she came back from banishment and went right back to work at the Academy of Sciences, no doubt both deeply grateful and extremely (if quietly) smug.

I’m so glad that this story has seen the light of day again! One day it’ll end up in another collection of mine, one themed around historical scientists, but until that day you can read about Lina in Fusion Fragment, along with the other fantastic novelettes published there.

I have a new story out!

“The Meiosis of Cells and Exile” is a novelette about the Soviet scientist Lina Stern. It’s just been published in the latest issue of Asimov’s.

I enjoy mixing science history and speculative fiction, and “Meiosis” is an example of this. Lina Stern (1878-1968) was a biochemist and director of the Physiology Unit in the Academy of Sciences. She was also a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and Stalin was not impressed. Free speech was not something he found to be a priority, and the scientists and writers making up the Committee disagreed – to their very great cost. 15 members of the Committee were arrested and imprisoned for several years before being sentenced to death in a political show trial. Most were executed in 1952 in what came to be known as The Night of the Murdered Poets.

Lina was the only survivor, saved by her scientific talent and sent into exile in Kazakhstan instead. She was in her seventies at the time, and my story tells of her travel into that exile, fuming with what has been done to her and the rest of the Committee.

There’s (kind of) a happy ending to all that horror. Lina, despite her age, survived both Stalin and the miserable torturing bastard who imprisoned her and the rest of the League. She came back out of exile and spent the next 14 years of her very long life working for science, heading up the Physiology Department again at the Biophysics Institute.

It’s an apt story to be out at the moment, I reckon. Have been on Twitter the last few days, watching accounts from the Badlands National Park and NASA go rogue on climate change, tweeting science facts even though they’re under significant pressure not to. Scientists have the responsibility to speak truth to power, and I reckon Lina would have agreed.

(If you’re interested in reading more, Lina Stern also turns up as a supporting character in my short (free!) novel The August Birds.)