Must Artists Suffer? A New Story up at New Scientist's Arc

My story,  'Drink Deep and Long the Circean Poison' is up at Arc.

It's a story that plays with the supposed link between unhappiness and art. What do you think? Is there a link? My main character thinks so, but I don't agree. This story was lots of fun to write.  You can enter the debate at the Arc site, if you've a mind. 

And Arc have announced their new competition: 'Is the Future Friendly?'

Here's what the editor kindly said about the story: 

Arc’s winning stories: Deborah Walker’s Drink Deep and Long the Circean Poison

Must artists suffer? The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy thought so, quipping that “light writes white”. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World  is a narcotised shopping mall, its zombie denizens, blissed into political quiescence.

Deborah Walker (@deboree), a runner-up in our recent short story competition, broadly agrees - but her story, set in a world where pleasure has been harnessed and commodified, is altogether more mischevious. There is no conspiracy here, no attempt to defraud humankind; only a technology that speaks to some very deep, politically uncorrect (and largely male) assumptions about what greatness is, and how it can be achieved.

It’s also a playful period piece that, in its attention to detail and speech rhythms, knocks all that steampunk malarkey out of the court