Primal Tears: January 2009

This ran in the Guardian the other day:
Richard Dawkins: How would you feel about a half-human half-chimp hybrid?
Dawkins speculates about how a human-chimp hybrid or the discovery of a living Homo erectus would change the way we see the world.

Well. Give Dawkins credit for realizing that the existence of an ape-human hybrid would blow the judeo-christian worldview right out of the water, but I didn't just come up with the idea years ago, I nearly did something about it! Here was my response as a comment on the Guardian site:

True confessions time. I had this idea a decade ago and became so obsessed with it I almost tried to do it. I thought the existence of such a hybrid might be the most astounding thing ever to happen to humanity, outside of contact from an alien intelligence. I thought it might knock us off the absurd pedestal we place ourselves on in relation to other creatures. It would prove once and for all that consciousness exists on a continuum and that all life is sacred (sorry Dawkins, I know you don't like that word.)

Well, I did not do it. Where to get the chimpanzee sperm? And I wanted bonobo sperm, even harder to get. I wanted to breed myself a little matriarchal humanzee. What I did do, was write a novel about it. Please search out Primal Tears by Kelpie Wilson if you want to read it.

I've had praise for the novel from artists and writers like R. Crumb, Greg Bear, Kate Wilhelm, John Robbins and David Rains Wallace. More at my website www.kelpiewilson.com.

Enjoy!

Primal Tears, the graphic novel, is searching for a publisher

Primal Tears, the novel, was published in 2005.

Primal Tears is the story of Sage, born to a young woman who has volunteered to be a surrogate mother for an endangered bonobo chimpanzee. The process goes awry, and Sage, a lovable youngster, is neither completely one species nor the other. When her existence becomes public knowledge, she needs all the best characteristics of both species to find a place for herself in our human-dominated world.

Book Info: Frog/North Atlantic Books, 2005, $13.95

Read Chapter 1

Praise for Primal Tears:

“PRIMAL TEARS is a high-concept exciting adventure story.... I liked it. It is well written…. I am altogether impressed.”

-- R. Crumb, cartoonist

“PRIMAL TEARS is primal storytelling, thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our definitions of human and family.”

-- Greg Bear, author of Blood Music, The Forge of God, Darwin's Radio, and Quantico

"What a great book! I loved it, and found it to be totally enthralling. As I read, I felt drawn deeper and deeper into a primal sense of hope. Not a naive hope, not wishful thinking, but a hope arising out of a sense of the immensity of human evolution and the profundity of out interconnectedness with all of life. I hope everyone on our dear and endangered Earth reads this book."

-- John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and Healthy at 100

"PRIMAL TEARS is a novel of tremendous power. Passionate and erotic, at times tenderly lyrical, it confronts head-on, without flinching, brutal environmental and feminist politics. Its protagonist, Sage, is unique, magical, and haunting."

-- Kate Wilhelm, author of The Unbidden Truth, Clear and Convincing Proof, and Skeletons

"Kelpie Wilson’s PRIMAL TEARS has rounded, memorable characters, evocative descriptions, lively dialogue, an exciting plot, … and an understated, evenhanded wit that is very engaging. … It is a clear-eyed, courageous look at some of the most denied and neglected threats to the biosphere and the place of humans in it."

-- David Rains Wallace, author of The Monkey’s Bridge and The Bonehunters’ Revenge

Primal Tears Reviews

What Are We? Kelpie Wilson's Primal Tears Offers One Response

"Not long after 9/11, I found I had a sudden intense hunger to know what was irreducibly human, to know exactly what we are, described with the precision, detail and accuracy of science. My archaeologist husband suggested lists of anthropology texts. My colleague, Truthout Environment Editor Kelpie Wilson, sent me to Steven Mithin's wonderful "After the Ice." But for all these books' inherent interest, I did not find any answers there. On vacation this summer, I reread Kelpie's intriguing first novel, "Primal Tears." While Wilson also does not offer "answers" to the what-is-a-human question, she takes her readers down a suggestive and intriguing line of inquiry."

-- Leslie Thatcher, Truthout

Read the review and an interview with author here

“This is a book that deals with serious issues and is unwavering in all of its explorations. Top-notch near-future ecological speculation”

-- John Joseph Adams, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show

Read the whole review here

“Wilson's storytelling talent really shines in this first novel...the main character will feel like a good friend by the time you finish the book. And you'll finish it fast—she has written a real page-turner... In addition to raising some serious issues, she has permeated the book with spirit and hope, particularly in the person of the main character, Sage, whose sweetness is like hope itself.”

-- Karen Wood-Campbell, amazon.com reviewer

Read the whole review here

Anneli Rufus writes in the East Bay Express:

Bonobos are the beasts du jour. Social critics laud them for having so much sex, some of it bi, much of it face to face, and for being a female-dominant species whose males would rather boink than fight. It's not the boinking that matters most to Wilson. "The big news about bonobos is not the sex but their peacefulness. People crave peace and bonobos show us how one peaceful primate society is organized. Human aggression is destroying the planet. Bonobos are a brand-new story."

Read the whole review here

More Reviews:

Bi Writers Association

Dr. Susan Block

Science Fiction Weekly

Sentient Times

Terrain

Earth Island Journal