Story up at Perihelion! “Equations in the Mirror”

My science fiction story “Equations in the Mirror” is up at Perihelion Science Fiction. This is one of the few stories that ever required me to whip out a calculator (another is Ayema’s Fleet in the Battlespace Military Science Fiction anthology) and was based on a number of cool medical techniques I’d learned about. Being for a time a Paleolithic history/pre-history fan, I was delighted to learn that obsidian stone blades are still used by surgeons in the modern day. The idea of dark glass and dark reflections tied in with other, more unsettling medical advances in cosmetic surgery.

That math I did involved taking measurements of my own face (actually just one measurement: I think of the length of my lower eyelid) and then extrapolating the other numbers according to the supposed ratios of the Golden Equation as applied to the human face. You may roll your eyes (which are the perfect length, if I may say) or raise your eyebrows (wonderfully proportioned–not to be creepy), but for what it’s worth, some cosmetic surgeons do claim their work has a basis in the Golden Ratio. Which is why I was more amused than stung my one of the rejection letters I’ve preciously received for “Equations,” one that said The concept of basing cosmetic surgery on the Golden Ratio just didn’t ring true…at all.