{"id":6340,"date":"2023-02-07T13:57:50","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T13:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6340"},"modified":"2023-02-08T22:26:16","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T22:26:16","slug":"the-monogamy-hormone-by-annalee-newitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6340","title":{"rendered":"The Monogamy Hormone<\/em><\/strong> by Annalee Newitz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Monogamy Hormone<\/em><\/strong> by Annalee Newitz (Entanglements<\/em>, 2020) opens with the narrator, Edwina, smearing bacterial slime on the wall of a preschool lunchroom: this introduces one of the two pieces of SF decoration in this essentially mainstream story (\u201ctwenty years ago, nobody would have believed that smearing germs on the walls of schools could save a whole generation from asthma and irritable bowel syndrome\u201d). The other piece of decoration appears when Edwina discusses her love-life problems with two of her friends at lunch1<\/sup> (Edwina has two lovers), and they suggest that she take a magic pill (sorry, a \u201cEternalove\u201d hormone pill) to help her work out which one she truly wants.
Edwina then spends the weekend with her girlfriend Augie and decides she is the one. However, after subsequently spending time with Chester, Edwina realises she is equally in love with him.
Edwina calls her friends for more help, and Alyx puts her right:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Edwina could feel tears in her eyes, and her contacts started to drift off her irises with an annoying string of error messages. She blinked them back into place and used one finger to draw circles on the bar with a blob of water. \u201cI want to have kids. Nobody will let you marry two people and have kids with them.\u201d
Alyx looked more serious than she had ever seen them. \u201cYou know that\u2019s bullshit, right? I can\u2019t think of a better place to raise kids than with grownups who love each other.\u201d They drummed their fingers on the bar and seemed lost in thought for a moment. \u201cMarriage is like every other brand that has staying power. Think about YouTube. It used to be part of a private company, and it was full of really bad stuff, like Nazis and crazies talking about rounding up gay people. But then YouTube spun off and became part of the public broadcasting network, and now it\u2019s all educational programs and people gardening and stuff. That was a major rebrand, but it worked. Most people don\u2019t even know that it used to be dangerous for kids to go there.\u201d
\u201cAnd this is related to my situation how?\u201d Edwina drained her glass.
\u201cMarriage is another changing brand. It used to be only for cis heterosexuals, but now gay people can get married\u2014at least, in a lot of places. People don\u2019t think of marriage the same way anymore. Even in North Carolina, where they have those Family First laws, people are protesting. Here in California, you can create an indie brand marriage. And you know what happens to indie brands, right?\u201d Alyx winked. \u201cThey get appropriated by giant megabrands. Pretty soon, ProTox will be marketing a placebo for people who want to fall in love with more than one person. I guarantee it.\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, when Edwina later discusses the matter with Augie and Chester (each of who know about the other), they are both super fine with the arrangement because Edwina can do things with the other person that they don\u2019t want to. And they all lived happily ever after.
This is a modern day relationship story pretending to be an SF one, and the fact that it is also inane and na\u00efve (its view of human relationships reads like something written by a bright 14-year-old that has never had one) makes it even less attractive. It is also, ultimately, dramatically flaccid as it turns out there is no problem to solve here other than the one in Edwina\u2019s head. At least it is breezily written.
* (Mediocre). 5,200 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. A fellow Facebook group member remarked that, in this type of story, none of the characters ever seem to have a particularly demanding job and spend most of their time hanging out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Mmm, I\u2019m not sure YouTube is \u201cfull\u201d of Nazis, etc.\u2014I only ever see a lot of very useful clips that help people accomplish all sorts of different things. I also doubt there is a huge pent-up demand for polyamorous relationships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monogamy Hormone by Annalee Newitz (Entanglements, 2020) opens with the narrator, Edwina, smearing bacterial slime on the wall of a preschool lunchroom: this introduces one of the two pieces of SF decoration in this essentially mainstream story (\u201ctwenty years ago, nobody would have believed that smearing germs on the walls of schools could save […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1467],"tags":[21,296,1468,460,1469,649,12],"class_list":["post-6340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annalee-newitz","tag-21","tag-296","tag-annalee-newitz","tag-entanglements","tag-love-pills","tag-relationship-problems","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6340"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6372,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions\/6372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}