An essay by Dr. Darren Hinton, as provided by Stuart Webb
Art by Luke Spooner
Extract From The Very-Modern Prometheus By Dr. Darren Hinton.
When I was a student and first started to study genetic engineering, I used to get teased a lot. The never-ending parade of Jurassic Park sequels didn’t help, of course; every time the ninth or tenth film was released my family would join in with a chorus of “So that’s what you get up to, is it?” and “You were so busy wondering if you could do a thing, you never stopped to ask if you should!” style misquotes when I asked someone to pass the salt at Christmas dinner.
I grew to loathe Jeff Goldblum.
Of course, my fellow students were much more sophisticated. “Hey Frankenstein!” they’d shout whenever I or my colleagues walked in and out of the GE building. You could tell the English students because they’d qualify it with “Hey Dr. Frankenstein!”, though I don’t believe for a second any of them had read the bloody book. They were too busy being more successful with girls as parties with their second-hand poetry.
I grew to hate English students as well.
The hand! It wanted to kill her. It wants to kill everyone! It’s a replacement see? I was in a car accident last year, and they gave me a new hand! An evil hand! It must have belonged to a psychopath or something! Like in those old films!
To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Spring 2018 collection.
Dr. Darren Hinton (2010-2059) was the senior genetic engineer for the Life Finds A Way corporation, based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Specialising in the growth of new limbs for the wealthy victims of accidents, he was a millionaire by the age of 38, before losing the bulk of it in the wake of the Geo-Ware virus of 2057. Two years later, he died as the result of an unsolved revenge attack carried out by a professional gang.
Stuart Webb has been an active member of Transformers fandom for over a decade, writing multiple comic reviews for tfarchive.com. Since 2012, he has been running the Transformation project at thesolarpool.weebly.com, where he looks at each issue of the British Transformers comic at a weekly rate. To date, two book versions have been collected of material from the website. His hands aren’t evil, just mildly confused.
Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having recently graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree, he is now a full time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his web site at www.carrionhouse.com.
“The Hand of Fate” is Copyright 2018 Stuart Webb
Art accompanying story is Copyright 2018 Luke Spooner
