Real Boys by Salieri (R)

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Real Boys by Salieri (R)
Fandom: DUE SOUTH
Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski
Author's Website: Outside the Box
Author on LJ: troyswann

Why this must be read:

troyswann is an amazingly talented writer and I'd heartily recommend any of her more traditional due South stories (like, say, the incredible Dysmas) but Real Boys condenses everything I love about Sal's writing into a neat little AU sci-fi epic that interrogates the meaning of love, the nature of reality and exposes some of the truths of life and death. This AU modelled on loosely on the 1982 Ridley Scott flick Blade Runner, a film which I loathe and find infinitely forgettable. Prior knowledge of the movie isn't at all necessary: all you need to know is that in the distant future, Ray Kowalski is a private eye struggling to make ends meet, and he falls into an odd partnership with a handsome Mountie who isn't quite what he seems. Sal is writing good science fiction here, the kind that asks big questions about the human condition, and this story expanded my definition of what fanfiction could do. Hell, it expanded my notions about what literature could do. Sal peoples her tale with recognizable faces from the show and her characterizations are great. The writing is incredibly creative and snap-crack-pops with wit and energy, and there is something in this fic for everyone.

Real Boys is so much more than tense sci-fi potboiler, or a fannish romance about PI Kowalski's love for the lost and lonely Mountie searching so determinedly for the killers of his father. When Sal first put this fic up I predicted that it would someday be recced along with the Hockey AU or Strange Loops or End of the Road as one of the towering classics of the fandom. Not only are her Ray and Fraser recognizable and fully realized in their Philip K. Dick trappings, but their friendship and, later, their romance, grows into something profound and sacred in the midst of the sad artificialities of life in the future. Rocks, trees and grass, as well as most plants and people, have been entirely eclipsed by stims and holorooms and 'liners. Daily urban existence for painfully-human Ray, superhuman Fraser, and even so-rare-he-could-be-an-exhibit Dief, is gritty, dangerous, and filled with pressure to conform or risk becoming obsolete. Only in the far-flung Colonies does the artificial give way to the real, the human, the possible. Post-CotW stories rarely carry that kind of weight, but it works in this fic where the loss of the natural world and the importance of connection is so keenly felt.

I hope I've whetted your appetite for one of the true pleasures of the due South fandom, and if you like this story, you'll be pleased to know that Sal is in the midst of composing the sequel fic, A Chip Off the Old Blog, which should be completed soon (click on the link to read the first part). Pimping aside, do try Real Boys. It's an extraordinary reading experience, and I find myself revisiting it whenever I need to be reminded of what we writerly types are capable of when we have the raw materials of a half-wolf, a Mountie and a Chicago cop or two.


"It's only a dog, Dewey," Ray said with a small, superior sneer as he got up and went around his desk to boot up the dino. "What, you never seen a dog before?"

"Sure," Dewey said. He put one toe gingerly down on the floor and then snatched it up again when Deef looked at him, because, you never know, maybe protein was protein and maybe Deweys were delicious, on account of how they came marinated in yesterday's eau de bacon. "Sure, I saw them, when I was a kid. There was one next door. Only it was... it was, you know, smaller. Like this big." He held his hands up to illustrate. Ray'd seen rats twice that size.

"Yeah, whatever." The dino's screen flickered and wavered in the space over Ray's desk as he unrolled the keypad and started typing. "So Constable Mountie, good thing you decided to materialize here because my Lieutenant's got a bet going with the Cap that you were in fact quote the hallucinatory product of my mild-to-moderate concussion unquote, and also I need your particulars for the report." Ray scanned the floor around his desk for the Wailer's file which he'd dropped during that little demonstration of his superior agility and reflexes and said, "Oh, yeah, thanks," when the Mountie handed it to him. The screen was still flickering, so he had to bend down to jiggle a few connections. When he straightened, the Mountie was sitting in the chair across from him, looking at him through the data flow.

"You don't have an implant?" the Mountie asked. He shifted in his seat a little to look around the room. Pretty much everyone else was sitting at a desk with the near-stare of implant data retrieval. Even some of the perps were cruising the net behind their eyeballs, which was a definite against-regs but it was hard to jam the feed and perps were good at finding leaks. Ray's was the only external in the room, a dinosaur clicking and whirring and loading data-packs like each one was a thirty-tonne weight on the end of a slow-swinging boom.

Ray drummed his fingers on the mouse and clicked his way into the Wailer's file. "Nope. No implants. I'm queer."

"I'm sorry?"

"You know, funky physiology." He waved his free hand beside his temple. "Implants don't take."

The Mountie nodded, his mouth going sort of soft and downturned in that way that made Ray want to simultaneously kick someone in the head and disappear under his desk. "I'm sorry," the Mountie said.

Ray shrugged and bounced his knee to dissipate the kicking-in-the-head energy. "I'm not. I got enough voices in my head as it is."

"Ah. I understand." He actually looked like he did.


Real Boys