In figuring out the main crux of my pending sci-fi story I ended up with a bit of a dilemma. My main character has some issues with whether he is human or not – some parts of him are one and some the other. Of course, this has been explored in Blade Runner and it’s not the main theme of my story so I didn’t want to get too involved with it but I did need to find a platform for his ‘kind of person’.

Originally I had conceived this part of the story in quite simple terms using just androids or cyborgs but this didn’t quite seem to cover all the possibilities I needed. Then I thought of sticking to Replicants – a-la-Blade Runner but this just seemed to dilute things and, in fact, make the story almost pointless.

So then I started thinking about a new generation of androids and cyborgs which could have mechanical or biological bodies, real brains but not human ones. The obvious terms to use would be Reploids or Cyblicants, depending on the physical body’s makeup. I am not sure though if these terms sound ‘natural’ – as if they would be in use in a mature society and whether the average sci-fi reader would quickly grasp what they are or whether I will need to do a lot of explaining.

I would be interested to hear from anybody else who has explored any similar themes or has any thought on these two terms.

The results of the first round of the Amazon competition are announced soon. I got chatting to a few people on the Amazon community who have entered the competition and we have been chatting about pitches and reviews. One guy I have chatted to quite a lot is Gary who has submitted a rather good sci-fi/fantasy world adventure called ‘Chronicles of Baltrath’ and are available here in paper copy:

and here for Kindle

He also has a blog.

• Lazlo Ferran - Author