Note on The Abridged Version of The Explanation

~This note is inserted right after the title page.

Essentially I'm doing this whole 'abridged' dealio to take some of my own internal pressure off of myself. That's a little 'mind trick' I'm playing upon myself to keep me going. We'll see how it works, eh?

The three stories mentioned below are Final Solution, A Day In The Life, and Visit To A World Called Dirt. I picked 'Solution' because at this point it's the only one of the Near Future stories I've finished, a fact I'm rather unhappy about about.

I have printed up a 'master copy' of this version and just need to get my ass down to Staples to print up the 'distribution copies'.

I'm going to get ten copies printed up this month and another ten next month. That's about what I can afford. The first five are spoken for, a couple of local gals, two old friends and my ex-wife. If any of you want one, give me a mailing address and I'll put you on the list, but please be serious about this.


Dear Sister,

If you are reading this then you are among a select group of women who have been given the responsibility to vet and provide feedback upon this early version of The Explanation. Your thoughts and opinions will help shape and guide the flow of this document for thousands of your fellow Sisters for decades to come. And if we are half as successful as is hoped, then such will be measured in millions of Sisters and in the passage of centuries.

Therefore please read carefully and think deeply as you go though these pages.

Okay, now that I have impressed upon y'all how seriously serious this is, let's go into the specifics of what the 'abridged version' of The Explanation is actually about.

I am a Impatient Perfectionist, a rather discomforting combination to say the least. I have been working on this volume for two and half years now and feel like I'm about a year behind schedule. The didactic portions – Parts One through Five and Part Seven – are roughly 97% complete from my perspective, as are all the Addendums. However, Part Six: “One Possible Future”, a collection of stories about just such a thing, keeps expanding.

Therefore, in order to reconcile those two disparate parts of my nature, I've put together this interim compromise edition. The primary abridgment is Part Six, which has only three stories. Hopefully, these three will give a sense of how the 'flow' of The Explanation is supposed to work.

The final version will have roughly thirty such stories, creating a much deeper 'experience of immersion'. The unabridged version already has twenty five stories, some finished, some 'in process', some only outlined. To give an idea, this abridged version runs slightly less than 42,000 words, while the 'in process' version is presently at over 67,000 words and I fully expect it to top out around at least 90,000.

But the three stories included should provide an effective overview of the final structure.

As for the thing itself, I suppose some of you may read it and go “OMG, this crazy person knows where I work!!” If so, you can tell me to never speak to you ever again, though I'd appreciate it if you'd return your copy. For those who do not flee, your feedback and thoughts will be greatly valued, even if they are 'negative'.

So, what follows is a DIY manual for an entirely new form of Matriarchy, a phrase I intend to add to the Preface. About the only thing I can promise with any assurance is that this volume will not bore you. You might toss it across the room in a fury or laugh at it like a mad woman. But you will never get bored.

Michael Varian Daly
The SoCal High Desert
Summer 2011