Well, I’ve just sold my story, “Toxoplasmosis of the Brain; Candidiasis of the Esophagus; Candidiasis of the Trachea; Candidiasis of the Bronchi; Candidiasis of the Lungs; Kaposi’s Sarcoma; Pneumonia; Tuberculosis; Stab Wound in the Belly; and Bus Accident” to The Machine of Death, Volume 2.
I had a story about Japanese yakuza (gangsters) in the first volume of the book, but while I was writing it, I got the idea for a second story. I didn’t end up writing it until I saw the call for submissions for Volume 2.
As you might be able to guess from the title of the new story, it deals with the intersection of public health administration and a death-prediction machine. Most of the causes of death listed in the title are fatal complications common among people suffering from advanced AIDS, which raises the question: when a machine starts telling people that they will be dying of an AIDS-related complication, even when they’re not (yet) infected with HIV, how will public health administrators react? Worse, how will governments that so far haven’t dealt sensibly with AIDS, and prefer to use machine guns to get things done, react?
(As usual, reality precedes imagination, but not in sub-Saharan Africa, as I imagined; rather, it’s in Cuba… but idiots in the world’s richest countries have also advocated the same kind of thing.)
And now, for the question:
I will be donating my payment for this story to some organization related to AIDS research, palliative care, public health or something like that. I’m thinking about MSF, but if you have a particularly good charity or organization to recommend, let me know.