F-A Daily Chronicle Coverage - Molten Alloy and Torn Lace

To the Francisco-Angeles Daily Chronicle's Editorial Board (reprinted here with the author's permission):

I'm emailing you today to tell you how deplorable and despicable your editorial staff is for deigning to review that new 'Molten Alloy and Torn Lace' thing. I can't even call it a novel. It's more like vomit in written form.

Are you aware that children read your publication? Your Style section is displayed in ten-foot block letters on the screens of countless town squares across this fine country. Did you forget that? Can you imagine how many impressionable young minds have been corrupted by being exposed to this horrible, horrible filth? To even describe some of the passages—the things automatons and humans are doing—is grossly inappropriate. Furthermore, to imply that there are people out there actually indulging in this sort of thing in real life …Well, Messirs and Madams, the world may have gone crazy but I see no reason to wallow in it.

This is not the Incorporated San Francisco-Los Angeles Metroplex Area that I know. I grew up in a city of humans, built by humans, for humans, with a rich and vibrant human history going back almost a millenium. I can't believe the kind of smut this place allows nowadays. In the city I know, a man paying for back-alley services knew it was coming from a human being with thoughts and feelings, not some automaton doxy with WD-40 on its hands. It is unnatural, it is immoral, and I will simply not stand for it being splashed across the front of a once-respectable publication.

I demand that you retract the review and immediately post an apology to your readership.

Sincerely, Dolores Putnam

A note from the Editor:

Here at the Chronicle, we strive to provide many different viewpoints. This past Sunday, we ran a review of the controversial new &quot;Molten Alloy and Torn Lace&quot; novel. As many of you know, the novel's depictions of intimate automaton/human relations have kicked off a firestorm of controversy. As a news organization, we feel it is our duty to report on this controversy and to fairly represent all sides of the issue. Reprinted below are a few responses we received, including one from Aada Jakes, spokesperson for the radical pro-bosonic group Foundation for Freedom of Bosonic Individuals.

Stay tuned for next week's interview with secretive &quot;Alloy and Lace&quot; author R. D. Golem, where we discuss the novel and her reaction to the furor!

A final note: please do not send us unsolicited works of fan fiction on this topic. They will be returned unopened.

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To the FA Chronicle Editorial Board:

I applaud you for your ongoing and unbiased coverage of 'Molten Alloy and Torn Lace'. As an activist with FFBI, I think it's important that the media encourage these kind of full-featured depictions of bosonic individuals.

As you know, humanity has had a fascination with mechanical entities for thousands of years. Yet it is only recently that advances in bosonics have allowed us to create such entities with enough complexity to be capable of active participation in these sorts of activities.

We applaud Ms. Golem for her work in fighting to change attitudes about Bosonic individuals and how they can participate in our lives not as property, but as consenting peers. In particular, showing Bosonic protagonist Steele Alloy as a complex character with real emotions rather than simply a walking toy is a bold step forward, even if his emotions are mainly portrayed as amorous in nature.

Aada Jakes

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To the FA Chronicle Editorial Board:

Hi. I liked your review of that new book, what with the people and the 'tomatons doing things.

Could you please post pictures? Like a, what you call, &quot;imaginative rendering&quot;? I don't know, maybe one of them old-fashioned pixel paintings, from the part where Steele's ablative coating is all torn down the front, and he's holdin' that 'lil human lady in his arms?

I am an aficionado with a totally, what you call, academic interest in that sort of thing.

Long time reader. Love your paper.

Anonymous Reader from Oakland