Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Madeline Bridgen

Madeline is studying Creative Writing at St, Lawrence College, in Kingston, Ontario and has published in various on-line magazines.

Madeline says she’s always wanted a career in writing and that her earliest story, written at the age of seven, featured a superhero shark that saves the planet Venus. She says that early story has long since been lost and she no longer writes about heroic sharks.

Nonetheless, “Strange Genesis” shows that her childhood spirit remains. Our story may have no shark, but it does have two well-defined animal characters: mechanical dinosaurs who serve as guides at a theme park.

Now, two intelligent artificial dinosaurs might have been idea enough for many or even most writers, but Madeline takes the story further. The mechanical beings are anxious at the disappearance of their creator, Doctor Manning. Upon investigating his house, they discover his corpse and fall into a state of grief at his demise.

And yet Dr. Manning seems to have achieved a kind of “strange genesis” of his own: he has immortalized himself in computer code and lives on presumably in cyberspace or perhaps even in his own creations.

“Strange Genesis” might have been a cynical science fiction parody of the doctrine of the Resurrection. But it can’t be read that way: the dinosaurs’ grief makes the scenario a transposition. Perhaps in a larger story they stand at the edge of the dark night before the coming of grace.

However readers may interpret the story, they are bound to find it touching and thought-provoking.

Madeline Bridgen’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Madeline Bridgen. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!