For Immediate Release
2 October 2007

"The Makeover Men," a dark and troubling near-future novelette by Jayme Lynn Blaschke, has been published by the online science fiction magazine HelixSF #6 in the Fall 2007 issue.

"The Makeover Men" can be read online at www.helixsf.com.

"The Makeover Men" takes place in mid-21st century Houston, a city of the future that is both alien and familiar. Radical cosmetic surgery is accomplished in almost cavalier fashion via genetic engineering while religious fanaticism lurks beneath society's superficial facade like a bomb waiting to explode.

"This is the most difficult story I've ever written. It's the closest I'll ever likely get to doing something in the James Tiptree, Jr., vein," Blaschke says. "It's a cautionary tale, in the mode of a lot of classic SF. It's brutal and graphic. I had to travel down some dark roads while I was writing it — places I wasn't entirely comfortable visiting — but as a writer, you have to be true to the story. 'The Makeover Men' is a wicked little story with a cold, black heart, but it's one I'm proud of."

HelixSF was founded in 2006 by noted science fiction authors William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans as a reader-supported venue specializing in stories too fierce, too eccentric, too politically incorrect or simply too weird for publication — the stories that just didn't fit in any of the standard niches.

Blaschke is a resident of New Braunfels, TX, and works at Texas State University-San Marcos. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies as well as the long-running British science fiction magazine Interzone. He is also author of Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction & Fantasy Speak, a critically-praised collection of interviews with 17 editors, authors and comic creators, currently available from the University of Nebraska Press.