Guest post by Scales author Christopher Hinz
Christopher Hinz is the author of nine science fiction novels. Liege-Killer won the Compton Crook award for best first novel and was nominated for the John W. Campbell award for best new writer. The book launched the Paratwa Saga (Ash Ock, The Paratwa, Binary Storm). Other novels include Refraction, Starship Alchemon and Spartan X. He has scripted comics for DC and Marvel and co-authored with Etan Ilfeld a novelette, Duchamp Versus Einstein. A former newspaper staff writer and technical director of a community TV station, he lives in Lower Alsace Township near Reading, Pennsylvania.
About SCALES (Out April 8, 2025): A soldier enhanced with dinosaur traits battles monsters, mercenaries and diabolical overseers while falling for the offbeat therapist treating his compulsion to eat the enemy.
Like many kids, both the little and not-so-little varieties, I’ve always loved dinosaurs. First exposure to the extinct saurians was the original King Kong (1933), which I saw on TV at a friend’s house. I don’t remember my age but it was young enough for the movie to have made a lasting impression. Actually, that’s a nice way of putting it. Truth is, it left me with some creepy feelings.
My friend lived at the other end of our block, and when I walked home afterwards – alone, through a darkening alley – I kept nervously glancing over my shoulder. Would Kong suddenly appear in the distance, towering over the line of row homes? Or worse, would the king of the tyrant lizards, the vicious T-Rex that Kong battled as a shrieking Fay Wray looked on, smash through those flimsy wooden structures and swallow me whole?
I walked fast.
By the time Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake came along, with the big gorilla heroically battling not one but three T-Rexes to save Naomi Watts, fear long since had been superseded by fascination. But neither the original Kong nor Jackson’s Skull Island extravaganza had the impact of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel. That was the first time groundbreaking special effects rendered long-extinct creatures as lifelike as the exotic animals you might encounter at a zoo. Dinosaurs burst free of the restraints of earlier techniques such as puppetry and stop-motion animation. With seamless grace, they ambled, charged, fought and consumed the unwary.
Imagination kindled, and later amplified by the Jurassic sequels (a new one coming this summer!), I tried integrating dinosaurs into a writing project. By then I’d had several novels published and was toying with ideas for the next book. Realizing that rampaging prehistoric monsters were saturating fictional universes to the point of cliché, I sought a fresh approach. A tale of prototype soldiers enhanced with dino attributes began to take shape.
However, human-beast amalgamations had always been super-popular as well, and I struggled to generate a story that felt nonconformist. After wrestling with the project for a while, other priorities intervened and dinosaurs went dormant. But they never retreated from awareness.
Years passed. Finally, I took another look at the story. Time and distance provided a fresh perspective. The missing elements for lifting the tale above generic copycat status and toward something original and profound fell into place. Months of feverish writing followed, bolstered by the latest research into the genome, the electrome (the totality of electrical currents in living entities) and other state-of-the-art breakthroughs.
As vital as it was grounding the story in believable science, it was equally important enriching it with social and political aspects. How would Big Tech “sell” dino-humans to the world? Could four unique individuals, no longer 100 percent human, be accepted into our society, awash as it is with sexual, racial and nationalistic prejudices? Could the ambitions of an eccentric corporate billionaire coexist with the military’s desire for an army of next-gen super-soldiers?
All those aspects were fused to create a dynamic action-thriller. Yet at its core, Scales is a tale of forbidden love, of the unorthodox relationship between a soldier who has been wildly transformed and the therapist who challenges that transformation. A strange attraction develops between the mismatched pair, drawing them ever closer even as they must fight for their lives against ruthless and terrifying enemies.
I can only hope that Scales is an exciting and memorable read. Perhaps it even will induce a faint chill the next time you find yourself alone, walking through a darkening alley.
