Synthesis (Stargate Atlantis story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Synthesis
Author(s):	Thingswithwings
Date(s):	2007
Length:	1100
Genre:	slash
Fandom:	Stargate Atlantis
External Links:	online here
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Synthesis is a John/Rodney story by Thingswithwings.

Author's Notes

"I was sitting around thinking about how SGA fandom fulfils every possible kink and type of fic, and had the startling realisation that, actually, I have never read any SGA cyborg fic. How is this possible, I asked myself. It seems as if there should be some SGA cyborg fic, somewhere! Wanting to set a good example to fandom at large, I then sat down and wrote some. Please take this as an encouragement to write some cyborg SGA fic of your own."

Reactions and Reviews

The first story I remember thinking, "SF! Cool!" about was Synthesis, a gorgeous story about how the technology the new Atlanteans discover seems to slowly draw them further from humankind as we know it (but not, necessarily, from their own humanity) and closer to the city and to each other. There's a sort of cool, clinical slide of a progression from the people they once were to the cyborgs they're becoming, built from the city, itself, with ever greater ease as time goes by; at the same time, there's a warm, lush humanity to the way they touch (themselves and each other), the way they ground themselves (in a greenhouse full of growing things or in someone's arms), the way they trace the edges of their scars (with their eyes and with their hands) without judgment or regret. When they finally begin to replace parts of themselves by choice, rather than out of necessity, a line has been crossed that the reader might finally balk at, hesitating and observing with uneasiness as the Atlantans recede further into the city, the way the new recruits seem to balk at it, and at them. Their future is uncertain, now, and, though it's a potentially hopeful one, it's possibly not someplace where we'd want to follow--you'd have to be of the first wave to understand, maybe, you'd have to be one of them. It's a beautiful, evocative, somewhat creepy story, as beautifully crafted as their increasingly artificial bodies are. Sooooo cool--I couldn't remember having read anything like it in SGA fandom, before, and I wanted more.