Albert, or, The Book of Man (1995)

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0962712353, Paperback)

Albert, or The Book of Man is the third book in the chronicles of the planet Ki, which have already produced the classic gay science fiction thriller Mirage -nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Science Fiction-and its powerful successor Circles. Albert is even more incendiary and exciting than its predessors. Although it is a continuation of the story of tribal Ki, it deals with new characters and can be read separately. Albert casts its shadow into the future of life on Earth-America. The year 2025, when the country is even more polarized than present and the ultra-conservative White Christian Party has taken over. The country is now scored into rigid "WCP zones" and "gay reserves," those few places where gays and lesbians can live openly and under their own fragile rule. Into this world Albert must seek refuge, after Ki has been taken over by the forces of a renegade warlord, Anvil, and Woosh, the sinister leader of the tribe of the Blue Monkeys. Who exactly is Albert? The long-hoped-for son of a pair of Kivian Same-Sex men and an unknown mother, as a child Albert was raised in the midst of deceit, war, and murder. As an adult, he separated himself from the intrigues of his planet. After the death of his royal father, Enkidu, who has become the Lord of Ki, Albert must pay the price of keeping this distance. Using his powerful third testicle, "the Egg of the Eye," Albert will be reborn on Earth, the son of a "virgin" lesbian mother and an unknown father. Rising from the waters in the gay reserve of Provincetown, Albert will become the center of a whirlpool of personal and political struggles: he will grow to be a man in only four years, find himself passionately loved by his Earth father, and then find the mate who will take his heart away as Albert plots to get his mate back to Ki and attempts to rule life on this strangest of small planets. Albert is the gay Everyman at the crossroads of two planets and two centuries. Like all of us, he is attempting to find his own story, his roots, and to define himself and the tribe he comes from. Albert is indeed the story of Man, and the latest part of the story of Ki, where Same-Sex men mate for life, where power defines love and sex, and where the merciful Sisters of Ki attempt to keep life in balance. As in any great work of Extra-Reality fiction, Albert is a mirror into our own world and presents for us a true picture of ourselves, our nightmares, and our most colorful fantasies.