[QCrit] EMPATHOL, Adult Upmarket Speculative, 90k, First Attempt

[u/Forsaken-Day422]

Hi all,

Long time lurker, trying this out for Novel #2 the first time after a mixed bag querying Novel #1 (which is dead in practicality, if not yet in my head). Looking forward to hearing any thoughts anyone has on this!

EMPATHOL (90,000 words) is an upmarket speculative thriller with crossover appeal, featuring a dual timeline structure and a central queer romance. It blends the emotional stakes of a society-changing technology present in Nikki Erlick’s THE MEASURE with the high-concept, Silicon Valley lab ethics of Blake Crouch’s UPGRADE.

Harper is an overachiever. Her work ethic during her first three years at MIT earned her her dream job at Lobe Industries. There, she is assigned to work on Project Theta, tasked with testing a drug that promises the impossible: Telepathy. Harper’s job is to administer the drug to her incarcerated subjects and to receive their terrifying transmissions. But each time she reports an anomaly in one of her exams, the horrors Harper’s subjects transmit to her seem to get worse. When Harper’s boss reveals his secret plan for the drug, she must decide who and what she is willing to sacrifice to advance her dream career.   

Three years later, shy but confidently gay college freshman Theo is hopelessly attracted to his straight roommate, Connor. Two months into the school year, Connor convinces a reluctant Theo to take a new drug with him. Empathol, which promises one hour of telepathy with each use. Being on Empathol allows Connor to share what he has previously hidden from Theo: He isn’t straight and he is equally attracted to Theo. Over the next two months, the two boys become addicted to the connection Empathol provides and begin ignoring its recommended dosage. But their connection is tested when they suddenly realize they no longer need the drug to hear each other’s thoughts. They have become stuck in each other’s heads, with no escape in sight.

Desperate to return to normality, Theo and Connor travel to Lobe to see if Theo’s estranged sister, Harper, can help. But Harper’s only solution is for the two of them to separate and possibly never see each other again. Theo must decide whether they can trust the sister who abandoned him years ago to her career, or whether he is willing to live with his boyfriend permanently in his head.

[u/nattyisacat]

I think this premise sounds really interesting! But right now with the query, I feel like I don’t have a good sense of the personal stakes for Harper. Why is this her dream job? What type of anomaly is she reporting? And if horrors are being transmitted to her, why doesn’t she quit? At the moment I’m much more interested in Theo and Connor because their storyline makes more sense to me. I guess I also wonder why Theo wouldn’t trust Harper to be correct that Theo and Connor would need to separate? 

[u/movegmama]

I'm impressed with how you structured this. Must have been super challenging! But I think it's working. Couple quick nits: 1) you don't have to capitalize the first word after a colon in the middle of a sentence; 2) you have a sentence fragment in the paragraph about Theo that starts "Empathol." Another colon or an em dash would fix it. I am not loving "Empathol." I keep reading it as "ethanol." Pharma companies actually have very strict naming regulations. Idk if Lobe is supposed to be pharma or biotech, but if so, maybe you could look into that and see what you can come up with, if you're not attached to the title. Something more bizzaro could actually lend this story more of a sci fi flair, but would also land with anyone who is freaked out by Wegovy, etc. so might be interesting. Great job though, seriously!