A collection of stories actually. They were short stories, all put up together. They were undoubtedly written for adults. And they were about dinosaurs, but dinosaurs told as I have never read them.
(warning: adult themes ahead)
It was a mix of fantasy and horror and sci-fi and erotica and some stories had more of some kinds of genre than others. But they all were unique and disturbing and they are as vivid in my mind today as if they found their home in my soul so many years ago.
They were not particulary pretty. They could be primal and brutal and sexual in a vague and entirely uncomfortable way. But they stuck with me. They each reflected something truly human but from such an alien perspective that it made them Other.
I remember one about a game in which you hunt and you run away in the bodies of dinosaurs. Teenagers played it. The one they hunted knew all the glitches. He was overpowered by the numbers and the teamwork of the hunters, but he bluffed them out. His weapons were a glitch, a long neck and a longer tail. Long necks, long tails. He died from the strain at the end of the game. His body gave out. Dead but undefeated.
Another was about a T-rex cloned back to life. He remembed his past life and told the human handler he befriended about it. He said that they were not the beasts humans believe them to be. He told stories of machines that could move the continents, that split Pangea in smaller parts. He told of climate change at a flick of a claw. He told of war and of weaponizing the meteor. But he did not share the technology. The humans refused to clone any other but him, deeming it inhumane and dangerous. T-rex, once of a highly developed race of alien sapient beings, died because he entered a Heat and had no mate. Killed by the most carnal need.
And another of a dinosaur shapeshifter and her human lover. How he saw her true form after she tried to spare them both from heartbreak by running away, and how he decided to love her still. She warned that the Change would be bloody and painful and that he may not live, but he decided that she was worth trying. We do not find out if he lives. But we know that he loved the Other.
There were other stories, I am certain, but I don't remember them anymore. I should read them again, as weird and scary and uncomfortable and alien as they are.
And I would love to see them trough eyes that are a bit older, a bit more world-worn, and try to see what was it that made them so memorable? What resonated? What worked?
And they worked. The claws the teeth, the hunger, long necks, long tails, alien, familiar, human and other. Life and death and the Stranger's eyes.
Also if somebody read it and knows how/where to find it, please tell me. I would also recommend it, as strange as that might sound, and will update this if I find the names of the authors or their stories.
