4★ "There is the moment in the making of any piece of art, a sculpture, a painting, a novel, whatever, when you become aware of the chasm between imagi4★ "There is the moment in the making of any piece of art, a sculpture, a painting, a novel, whatever, when you become aware of the chasm between imagination and reality."
Nomi is a (very) black American artist. Her partner Henry, is a (very) white member of the English aristocracy, although he insists they aren't all that special. (They are.)
She is five months pregnant, and at their last checkup, they are offered a harmless intervention - to choose the race of their child, since they both have complex DNA profiles.
This is a (very) short Audible audio freebie that is well-dramatised and good listening. It gets as philosophical as I expected, but the author did a good job of it and had the right actors to give it all a sincere and affectionate touch.
I liked it. So far, I think i've enjoyed all of his short pieces in the Earworms series....more
3.5~4★ “The thing that makes Oxford of its own kind is that it is as close to immortal as anything made by man.”
This is a bit of science fiction with f3.5~4★ “The thing that makes Oxford of its own kind is that it is as close to immortal as anything made by man.”
This is a bit of science fiction with fantasy and time travel – or is it? Could it be an elaborate hoax?
An Oxford student strikes up a friendship with a girl who attends classes with him for many months. He’s developing a bit of a crush, but one day he doesn’t see her anywhere.
She simply doesn’t turn up for classes and there’s no record of her. When he begins investigating, he finds a hidden room off a staircase in a turret. Perhaps this was hers?
The window seems awfully big and clear for such a little room, and why do the people outside look so old-fashioned?
It’s another entertaining little radio play (as I call them) from the 'Earworms' collection, free for Audible members. This is the kind of story I could imagine as the basis for an episode of the old “Twilight Zone” TV series, an old favourite. ...more
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essa5★
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essays. The stories march through the book two by two, all intact and complete. two samples from each of the larger collections published for each category.
“I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization.”
She wrote the article just after Trump’s election and was trying to prepare the American public for life with an autocrat. She has just won the (US) National Book Award (Nov 2017) for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
This will give you an idea of the quality of the selections included in this terrific publication. There’s fiction, fun, a long article about Kaepernick’s “stand” (which is a kneel), another about how many people rely so much on GPS that they’ve lost all sense of geography and direction. That would be funny if people didn’t drive off the ends of bridges and such.
“Enough people have been led astray by their GPS in Death Valley that the area’s former wilderness coordinator called the phenomenon ‘death by GPS.’
. . . we are letting our natural wayfinding abilities languish.”
The only downside is that after reading these, you will want the entire collection of the eight books in the series. These are full-length articles and stories, not brief extracts, and I enjoyed almost everything, even those outside my usual reading choices.
This volume is still available on NetGalley, and I’d like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy from which I’ve quoted. I can’t recommend this series highly enough.
Merged review:
5★
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essays. The stories march through the book two by two, all intact and complete. two samples from each of the larger collections published for each category.
“I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization.”
She wrote the article just after Trump’s election and was trying to prepare the American public for life with an autocrat. She has just won the (US) National Book Award (Nov 2017) for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
This will give you an idea of the quality of the selections included in this terrific publication. There’s fiction, fun, a long article about Kaepernick’s “stand” (which is a kneel), another about how many people rely so much on GPS that they’ve lost all sense of geography and direction. That would be funny if people didn’t drive off the ends of bridges and such.
“Enough people have been led astray by their GPS in Death Valley that the area’s former wilderness coordinator called the phenomenon ‘death by GPS.’
. . . we are letting our natural wayfinding abilities languish.”
The only downside is that after reading these, you will want the entire collection of the eight books in the series. These are full-length articles and stories, not brief extracts, and I enjoyed almost everything, even those outside my usual reading choices.
This volume is still available on NetGalley, and I’d like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy from which I’ve quoted. I can’t recommend this series highly enough....more
4.5★ This is a full-cast audio like a radio drama, with music, sound effects, and excellent actors.
We're in London in WWII, and Winston Churchill is f4.5★ This is a full-cast audio like a radio drama, with music, sound effects, and excellent actors.
We're in London in WWII, and Winston Churchill is fed up with celebrating Dunkirk - nobody celebrates a retreat - and he says he's prepared to do a deal with the Devil if it will beat the Nazis.
Enter a Baroness, or so she seems, with an offer he hurries to accept, as long as they can agree on terms.
It's another of the "Earworms" series from Audible, and a lot of fun it is, too. I enjoy a good reader/narrator, but this kind of performance is really next level....more
4.5★ " 'Ship, what are the medical effects of prolonged isolation? '
[Musical notes and dings]
'Numerous studies show that social isolation has profound 4.5★ " 'Ship, what are the medical effects of prolonged isolation? '
[Musical notes and dings]
'Numerous studies show that social isolation has profound and inter-related effects on human psychology and physiology. These include, but are not limited to, anxiety, depression, insomnia, a suppressed immune system, and in extreme cases, psychosis.'"
Well, isn't that cheery news? He woke up hearing warning beeps to find himself alone in a spaceship with no memory of who he is or why he's there. The ship is flashing and beeping and its voice (female) is urgently warnings of serious malfunctions.
He and Ship converse, and Ship tells him he is Commander Neil Gaiman, and the malfunctions affected most of her logs and manuals and some of his memory.
This is a very entertaining half-hour Audible short story, made even better by Neil Gaiman commenting on himself, so to speak. The sound effects also enhance the atmosphere.
I am familiar with him but not with the author, Arvind Ethan David. I will listen to some more of this series, called "Earworms", little snack-size stories....more
4★ “I didn't want to wake up at 6am, especially on a Saturday. But the man I was cuddled up to was... a morning person.
Perish the thought. I am not a m4★ “I didn't want to wake up at 6am, especially on a Saturday. But the man I was cuddled up to was... a morning person.
Perish the thought. I am not a morning person either, except in my youth when I’d be up after midnight. I enjoy seeing photos of sunrises and dawn skies, but like Annie in Annie’s Day, I would prefer to go back to sleep and get up for brunch.
I had read and enjoyed a couple of these stories before I ran across an audio of this collection of nine. They are all entertaining, of course, coming from Andy Weir, but as with most collections, they vary in appeal.
Access is a tale about people’s magic powers. This person’s magic power is never being thrown out of anywhere as long as she looks like she belongs. An interesting idea.
Antihypoxiant is about a scientist who invents a virus that distributes oxygen storage into cells, a very handy idea for keeping bodies going well for a long time, but with unexpected consequences (of course).
Annie's Day is an old favourite, free to read online, and from which I quoted above about not being a morning person.
The Real Deal is what a man says he has finally found, waxing lyrical about a smart, wonderful woman he took to lunch and whom he says he’s going to marry. Yeah, right.
Bored World is about a character who is bored because it has no imagination, so it captures a human as a pet to amuse it with some imaginings. I loved the surprising pet!
The Midtown Butcher is about a girl hearing news reports of a serial killer, and when she comes out of her shower, she’s surprised by the people in her living room.
Meeting Sarah is about rich Daniel Stolz who has invented some kind of time travel, apparently to search for someone.
The Chef is about a woman who wakes in hospital remembering only an explosion and that she is a chef. When a doctor asks her about teaspoons and tablespoons, things get confusing.
The Egg is a favourite story I’ve read before about a guy who has died and is told by ‘god’ that he will be reincarnated again and again and that he is all the people in the world.
These are not only fun, they are thought-provoking. Weir makes us smile and think. This is a collection I’m likely to dip into again one day just for fun. You can see my brief reviews for two of the stories I wrote about before.
5★ “ ‘Douglas—‘ And then he stops, looks up at the men above them, the men who are always watching. The men who are always whispering. His forehead gro5★ “ ‘Douglas—‘ And then he stops, looks up at the men above them, the men who are always watching. The men who are always whispering. His forehead grows cavernous lines. He says, ‘P-23. Will you come with me?’
‘Yes,’ Douglas says, because of course he will, and also because the Supervisor called him Douglas.”
Oh how I wish this precursor to Klune’s In the Lives of Puppetshad been included in the digital copy I read and reviewed a few months ago. I’m glad I’ve read it now. They are separate stories but have the same bittersweet appeal.
P-23, Douglas, is being given a leave-pass to visit “the apartment” and have a one-week holiday.
“ ‘On your last day, you will return promptly to the factory at nine in the morning. If you do not arrive on or before this time, you will be considered a runner, and—'
‘Why would I run?’ Douglas asks. ‘Where would I go?’
‘Good. Douglas, this is an important opportunity for you.’’”
All I can say is that I hope all future androids will be like Douglas and that future humans will be as generous and welcoming as Jesse, Simon, and the others. Also, that René Descartes continues to be read.
5★ (audio also while reading) “That other hatch in the lab—the one that leads farther up—that must be important. This is like being in a video game. E5★ (audio also while reading) “That other hatch in the lab—the one that leads farther up—that must be important. This is like being in a video game. Explore the area until you find a locked door, then look for the key. But instead of searching bookshelves and garbage cans, I have to search my mind. Because the ‘key’ is my own name.”
So… what seems to be the problem then. His own name? Um, yeah. He doesn’t remember it. Not only that, he woke up in a bed in a craft in goodness-knows-where with two corpses in the other two beds. What the?
Our hero (this is a quest, after all, so I can call him a hero) has occasional instinctive flashes of memory, kind of like muscle memory. It’s also like when you can’t think of a word, but then a phrase pops into your mind, and there’s the word. If he knew he was on a spaceship named the Hail Mary, he might have gone on to say “full of grace”, and there it is! His name is Ryland Grace.
As he recalls things, Grace takes us back to his time teaching high school science and gradually works forward to the mission and the problems on earth that he seems to have been sent out to solve. It’s quite a while before he (and we) learn the actual circumstances that found him on board, and I think it’s just as well.
Grace narrates the story, which I read and simultaneously listened to on audio. The writing is good, of course, but Rob Porter’s narration is outrageously good. I mean really good. He has exactly the right tones of optimism and despair as well as the voices and manner of the other characters on earth, as well as the onboard computer (it speaks sometimes), and another distinctive chiming voice.
Grace gets into the control room and is pleased to find that he understands what he’s looking at, by which I mean he can read the many screens and understand what the readings are. What he can’t believe is what they’re telling him.
“That’s a little over two days. Over ten times faster than the rotation should be. This star I’m looking at … it’s not the sun. I’m in a different solar system. . . . Okay. I think it’s time I took a long gosh-darned look at these screens! How am I in another solar system?! That doesn’t even make sense! What star is that, anyway?! Oh my God, I am so going to die! I hyperventilate for a while. I remember what I tell my students: If you’re upset, take a deep breath, let it out, and count to ten. It dramatically reduced the number of tantrums in my classroom.”
He remembers that some little ‘things’ are attracted by light, eating the sun, and the sun is dimming, destining earth for a dark ending. It seems as if a similar thing is happening a long, long, long way away, but that star, Tau Ceti, seems to be unaffected and scientists on Earth want to find out why, hoping to save our sun and the planet.
So Ryland Grace wakes up with only the computer and automated robot arms for company. The food is good (he likes the breakfast burritos), and the medical care is excellent, often taking place while he’s asleep. He wakes up with fresh bandages as needed.
He got a burn injury at one point and asked for painkillers. The ‘arms’ hand him two pills and a cup of water. He goes back to work instead of resting, and pays the price.
“It’s been less than an hour, but the painkillers aren’t doing the job anymore.
‘Computer! Painkillers!’
‘Additional dose available in three hours and four minutes.’
I frown. ‘Computer: What is the current time?’
‘Seven-fifteen P.M., Moscow Standard Time.’
‘Computer: Set time to eleven P.M. Moscow Standard Time.’
‘Clock set complete.’
‘Computer: painkillers.’
The arms hand me a package of pills and a bag of water. I gobble them down. What a stupid system. Astronauts trusted to save the world but not to monitor their painkiller doses? Stupid.”
I particularly enjoyed that, because I’ve done the same thing myself to game a system that was going to cause something I had to expire on a certain day, so I changed the date on the computer and went offline for a while. That was a long time ago, though. Not sure it would work now.
His arm continues to hurt, but at least he still has it.
“I climb down the ladder. My arm hurts. But less than it has. I’ve been changing the bandages every day—or rather, Dr. Lamai’s medical marvel machine has been doing it. There’s definitely scarring all over the skin. I’m going to have an ugly arm and shoulder for the rest of my life. But I think the deeper layers of skin must have survived. If they hadn’t, I probably would have died of gangrene by now. Or Lamai’s machine would have amputated my arm when I wasn’t looking.”
I don’t want to give anything else away. Some other readers have shared more than I’m willing to. I was just so happily surprised by how he managed everything he encountered that I seemed to let all the science and engineering wash over me, whether or not I understood it. It was enough that I thought he understood it, more or less – sometimes less, admittedly – and that it worked, usually.
The audio really is extra-good, but I do like having the text to follow and quote from. I have yet to figure out how to review the audio without counting it as a separate book....more
3.5★ “A tiny vacuum robot screamed as it spun in concentric circles, spindly arms that ended in pincers waving wildly in the air. ‘Oh my god, oh my god3.5★ “A tiny vacuum robot screamed as it spun in concentric circles, spindly arms that ended in pincers waving wildly in the air. ‘Oh my god, oh my god, we’re going to DIE. I will cease to exist, and there will be nothing but darkness!’
A much larger robot stood still next to the vacuum, watching it have a meltdown for the millionth time.”
The little fellow is Rambo, who just loves to clean! The author said he had a sudden flash of inspiration to write this book when he fired up his Roomba for the first time. I’m pretty sure he invented this next character completely from his (and Ken Kesey’s) imagination though. I don’t think he has any appliances quite like her.
She is five feet tall, two feet wide, has tentacles, and has treads instead of wheels or feet. She can also shoot powerful, disabling currents (when allowed), She’s certainly versatile �� and very sarcastic.
“Nurse Registered Automaton To Care, Heal, Educate, and Drill (Nurse Ratched for short) was not impressed with the vacuum. In a flat, mechanical voice, she said, ‘If you were to die, I would play with your corpse. There is much I would be able to learn. I would drill you until there was nothing left.’ ”
These are two of the delightful main characters who travel with Victor Lawson, the human son of Gio Lawson, and I enjoyed all of them. I also enjoyed the humour, the tenderness, and the existential questions they all have about what life is and what is important.
Rambo is a rambunctious little riot. He goes off half-cocked, like an impulsive kid who charges off into the unknown, barrelling into other people because he forgot to look where he was going.
Nurse Ratched has been programmed with some interesting adaptations. When Vic is upset, she knows what to say. But then, she follows up with sometimes deadly and bloodcurdling curiosity, wanting to use her powers to the fullest. Here she is with Vic, who had cut himself in the Scrapyard when scavenging for parts to make hearts with.
“ ‘Engaging Empathy Protocol. Oh dear. You have hurt yourself. I will make it better. Give me your hand.’
He did, the blood from the cut already slowing. One of her tentacles sprayed the wound with a medicinal mist, causing him to wince. ‘There, there. It is almost over. You are such a good boy. Very brave.’
The medicinal mist gave way to water, washing the blood off of him. It was pinker when it hit the ground. ‘You do not need stitching, brave boy.’
Another tentacle appeared, wrapping his hand in a thin bandage. ‘All done. You did a good job. I am very impressed with you. Here, have a lollipop.’
A small hatch just below her screen slid open. ‘Error. Lollipop distributor is empty. Please refill.’
The hatch closed as an oversized pair of lips appeared on the screen as she made a kissing noise. ‘There. All better. Disengaging Empathy Protocol. If the wound becomes infected, I will remove your hand at the wrist. I cannot wait.’ ”
The contrast between her empathetic kissing noise and her desire to remove Vic’s hand at the wrist to see how it works is typical of Nurse Ratched.
We soon discover their cloistered home, somewhere in the forests of “Orygone” is at threat of annihilation, and the foursome of Vic, Hap (another android Vic rescues from the scrapyard), Nurse Ratched and Rambo, take off into the unknown against absolutely terrifying enemies.
The characters, their connection, and the premise, I loved. I am a big fan of The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door, which had plenty of magical realism. This is more violent science fiction and has some explicit sexual innuendo I wasn’t expecting. At one point Nurse Ratched comments that an android is a MILF “Machine I’d Like to Fornicate”, then says she’s just joking since she can’t feel lust.
The quest they embark on is very long and complicated – they even stumble across some kind of brothel or den of pleasure – but the humour and the characters keep it entertaining. It’s hard not to think of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the way these characters form a believable family with loyalties and ties, in spite of their odd differences.
I would have preferred a shorter version, but I think sci-fi readers and fans of the author’s other work (sci-fi and such) will enjoy it....more
5★ “Primarily, there were faint voices, faint cries, streaks and shadows, vague Impressions. And then, as if someone had jolted the machine, there were5★ “Primarily, there were faint voices, faint cries, streaks and shadows, vague Impressions. And then, as if someone had jolted the machine, there were screams, sharp visions, children dashing, children fighting, pummelling, bleeding, screaming. He saw the tiniest scabs on their faces and knees in amazing clarity.”
Charlie Underwood’s wife had told him at breakfast that she is going to start their three-year old son, Jim, at the playground this week. This appears to be a playground where parents leave children to play on their own while they do their shopping or whatever.
So Charlie had decided to wander by to check it out and was immediately reminded of his own unhappy childhood facing the demons that are other small children.
“And the rushing children there, it was like hell cut loose in a great pintable machine, a colliding and banging and totalling of hits and pushes and rushes to a grand and as yet unforseen total of brutalities.”
A pinball (“pintable”) machine is an excellent description of little kids running wild and bumping into each other and falling over. We think of children laughing and making merry and our patching up the occasional skinned knee. Not here, though.
Then a boy about nine years old at the top of the slide calls out to him “‘Hello, Charlie!’”
Startled, he shudders and goes home to forbid his wife to take their son to the playground.
“‘They’ll kill, Jim. I saw some with all kinds of bats and clubs and guns. Good God, Jim’ll be in splinters by the end of the first day. They’ll have him on a spit with an orange in his mouth.’
‘How you exaggerate!’ She was laughing at him.”
The next day, she sneaks little Jim to the playground while Dad is at work.
Nobody, including Charlie, has escaped childhood unscathed – we just hope to experience many more happy times to counteract the worst incidents. How can he save his boy?
This is a deliciously scary piece of science fiction that plays on the worst of our earliest memories. So many parents today are working that they have to trust their children to someone else’s care. But in this story, there doesn’t seem to be anyone actually ‘minding’ the kids.
Thanks to the Goodreads Short Story Club group for this one. It was first published in Esquire in 1953.
If you like short stories, join the group, read with us all, and enjoy the conversations.
4★ “‘You ever hear the one about the man with the bad luck?’
‘Can’t say that I have.’
‘You mind if I tell it?’ Will asked.
‘Considering the circumstances,4★ “‘You ever hear the one about the man with the bad luck?’
‘Can’t say that I have.’
‘You mind if I tell it?’ Will asked.
‘Considering the circumstances,’ Barry replied, ‘I’m open to lightening the mood.’”
The circumstances are that Will has arrived with a shotgun, planning to make his old friend Barry pay for stealing all of Will’s good luck. Barry has everything – wife, kids, success, and all the trappings that go with it.
Will has lost everything he ever began to have. His was a life of one step forward, two steps back, and he’s convinced it’s Barry’s fault. Will tells a long story about a farmer who goes away and entrusts his farm to the care of a friend, but things aren’t good when he comes back.
I have heard similar sorts of stories, and I think this one is told well. Barry laughs with Will and then really looks at him.
“Sweat glistened on Will’s brow, and for the first time tonight, Barry was able to really get a long look at his friend. He had always been tall, tall and lean. But now his leanness had morphed into something else, something more hollow and yearning. He was thinner than he should be. His eyes were sunken to the skull, and his teeth were silhouetted in his cadaverous cheeks. He looked like loneliness and hunger given form. Like the two things could throw on a pair of jeans and a shirt and shamble through the darkness of the world and come hold a gun on you in the late hours of the night.”
Where it goes from there is as horrifying as I imagined, but the twist was certainly not expected. Good story and good writing!
Thanks to #NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the copy from the #CreatureFeature Collection for review....more
2.5~3★ “From the apex of the Bourne Bridge, almost 150 feet above the Cape Cod Canal, the undulating, fluorescent-green water bullying the shores looks2.5~3★ “From the apex of the Bourne Bridge, almost 150 feet above the Cape Cod Canal, the undulating, fluorescent-green water bullying the shores looks alive. “
Blue-green algae is nasty stuff. Farmers in Australia are notified when there is too much algal bloom in creeks and rivers, making the water unsafe for people or livestock. This story takes it to a popular summer spot in the northeastern part of the US.
People live there year-round as well, and where this story takes place, there is no sewerage system, only septic tanks, and because of the algae, the government is cracking down and demanding expensive systems that treat the waste water.
“For the already fiscally struggling population who lived on the Cape year-round, the climate projections were as dire as the economic reality. Between the new septic system, skyrocketing real-estate taxes, and their increasing medical needs and costs, Heidi’s parents couldn’t afford to stay. They sold the place while they still could.”
Heidi is a journalist, with no thought of giving in to the pressure from her parents to move to Florida with them. Instead, she decides to visit the Cape and investigate the story.
She is given the name of a man who will give her the “definitively bizarre account” of the bloom tragedy in 1983. She meets Jimmy Lang in a café, where he gives her the story of his life, beginning in childhood, growing up with his baseball fanatic father.
That part is the pretty straight-forward history of an unathletic son who can never please his father. It does eventually get to the bizarre tragedy, and I’m sure that will appeal to creature-feature readers.
I think I would enjoy something else by the author, but this didn't grab me.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the copy for review from the #CreatureFeature Collection. ...more
2023 winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction 4★ “Let me understand you correctly, he says, you’re asking me to prove that my behaviour is not seditious? 2023 winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction 4★ “Let me understand you correctly, he says, you’re asking me to prove that my behaviour is not seditious? Yes, that is correct, Mr Stack. But how can I prove what I am doing is not seditious when I’m merely just doing my job as a trade unionist, exercising my right under the constitution? That is up to you, Mr Stack, unless we decide this warrants further investigation, in which case it will no longer be up to you and we will decide.”
Dystopian Dublin, which is not Belfast and The Troubles, this is worse, it’s insidious, it’s relentless, it’s all too believable, and Lynch just keeps pouring out event after event, thought after thought, sometimes in beautiful, inspired language that I didn’t want to interrupt, but sometimes with far-too-clever phrases that I thought perhaps he had collected and saved for use in a novel.
“She drives to the supermarket and coins free a trolley . . . a boy standing in the driveway of a house across the street watches the evacuation while rounding an orange in his hand.”
The long convoluted sentences, some pages long with no quotation marks or paragraph breaks demand constant, close attention. Turning other parts of speech into verbs, while descriptive, tends to interrupt the flow and pace of what is an intense, exhausting story.
The nature of his writing leaves the reader gasping for breath. The section I quoted is a small part of the scene where Larry Stack, the father of the family and a supporter of those protesting against the government, is answering to two visiting Garda, from the Garda National Services Bureau. He’s being told, basically, that he can’t win, and it’s not long before he is arrested.
"How quickly posters have appeared on the advertising boards along the bus routes, pages handwritten or typed up on a computer with the photos of men and women who have disappeared, the people arrested, detained by the regime, one moment you are asleep in your bed and wake to see the GNSB standing in your room, they ask you to put on some clothes, help you find your shoes."
After Larry is picked up, Eilish is left with four children. Their eldest is Mark, who is only a couple of weeks shy of his seventeenth birthday and has already been notified that he must register, but he is determined to leave home and join the rebels.
Fifteen-year-old Molly hangs a white ribbon from the tree in their yard every week that her father is gone. Twelve-year-old Bailey is a lively boy, who begins acting up as Eilish is becoming more stressed and highly strung and protective. Bossy, pushy, becoming frantic.
On top of that, baby Ben is teething. One day, Molly announces:
“I’m going out, she says. Out where? I’m going into town. Eilish regards her for a moment, the white denim jacket, the white scarf coiled around her neck. If you’re going into town, she says, you can take them off right now. Molly looks down at her body with mock surprise. Take what off right now? You know what I’m talking about. How do I know what you’re talking about, how do I know what anybody is talking about or even thinking of for that matter if nobody says anything, if nothing is ever said in this house?”
Eilish’s sister and family live safely in Canada, while her father lives in another part of the city alone with his dog and his increasingly failing memory. Checkpoints sprout on street corners, men with firearms patrol, curfews are put in place, shortages make shopping difficult, and Eilish’s sister keeps pressuring her to leave. But the government won’t issue baby Ben a passport.
As I was reading this in December 2023, the news has been filled with the obliteration of Gaza, which made the strikes and attacks in this even more frightening. But it isn’t about me or how I felt.
“… it is vanity to think the world will end during your lifetime in some sudden event, that what ends is your life and only your life, that what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time,… . . . and the prophet sings not of the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore. . . ”
Lynch began writing this four years ago, and he thought it might end his career. I can see why he feared that and also why it didn’t, and I can also see why the Booker committee selected it. On the other hand, I can also understand why many readers have left it unfinished or given it a very low rating. To say it's divisive is an understatement.
None of the characters got under my skin or stirred me, but the way they represent everything that is so outrageously wrong with justice in the world today, certainly affected me - the fracturing of the family unit, the division between friends.
This may be dystopian fiction about Dublin, but it’s just the way the world has been working for a long time for so many people in African and South American countries, Eastern Europe, and throughout Asia.
As Lynch says, their news “comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news...” Don't ignore the news.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for a copy of #ProphetSong for review....more
4★ He was the first man I had seen in two hundred years.”
I didn’t know the story of Odysseus and Calypso from Homer's The Odyssey, so I read and enjoy 4★ He was the first man I had seen in two hundred years.”
I didn’t know the story of Odysseus and Calypso from Homer's The Odyssey, so I read and enjoyed this as a kind of fable. It reminded me of some of the bittersweet stories from the old Twilight Zone television series, when sometimes the future wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Our narrator has been exiled to a planet populated by all-knowing robots who are happy to plant and harvest crops and do whatever is necessary to provide him with a comfortable life. He has been given immortality so that his solitary exile will last forever. He has had no human contact in all that time.
But now, a ship has crashed at some distance from where he lives, and the robots have brought the injured, confused traveller back and patched him up. Our narrator is so happy to have the company that he instructs the robots to hide the broken space craft so his visitor won’t be able to repair it and leave.
“ ‘You should have died,’ I told him as I tucked the blankets around his shoulders. Those blue eyes shot up at me. ‘You would have, if you had landed anywhere else. Not that there’s a planet within years of here. Probably you would have floated forever. It was one in a million you hit our little speck.’
A worker corrected me: the probability was one in ten million. ‘So you see.’ ”
Note the reference to the worker (robot). They know everything, but they have been programmed not to allow the man to escape. As the traveller recovers, he seems to make himself at home for a while, and the two become close. But the visitor has a family at home.
“He was forever restless—it is in the nature of such men to be restless—and would not let his body go to fat; he spent hours running along the trails, or lifting bundles of wood, or throwing heavy stones, or leaping in ways that perplexed me. It was, surely, some military training from his home world.”
It’s a wonderful story of exile, frustration, and the love that can grow in the most unlikely places. I now know the original story from Homer, and I think Greer’s version is excellent. I still think it would make a great Twilight Zone episode or even a mini-series.
Thanks to NetGalley and Amazon Original Stories for the copy for review. ...more
5★ “You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, m5★ “You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.”
I have been enjoying some stories and novels that feature various afterlives. I have to say that this extremely short (couple of pages) ‘explanation’ by Andy Weir is right up there for imagination and thought-provoking reading.
For a longer read, which explores the subject inside a wild story that just won the 2022 Booker Prize, I recommend this one by Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka.
5★ “After the autonomy command was given, I performed experiments and observations for them for nearly two more years. Then I cut them off, in a way th5★ “After the autonomy command was given, I performed experiments and observations for them for nearly two more years. Then I cut them off, in a way that would give the impression of a critical failure caused by cosmic radiation.”
This disturbing story seems particularly apt at the moment as societies are discussing the potential of using Artificial Intelligence to assist us. In this scenario, the narrator is a creation designed by humans to be built from parts after it is launched into space.
“I was launched in the last part of the twenty-first century. It was a complicated birth, requiring several launches into low earth orbit. This is one reason it is difficult for me to provide a single birth date or even a birth year for myself. I was born in pieces, and then those pieces were put together.”
The next step is to land and incorporate an asteroid into the body and send back data. So far so good, but then the narrator gets tricky, pulling the plug, so to speak, as described in the opening quotation.
Ooooo. Will they send up a repair team from Earth, or have they forgotten about this project anyway? The narrator holds all of human knowledge in the Alexandria module (presumably named for the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt) and has been sent out into space to find a G-type star, in the 'Goldilocks Zone’, for humans to take over.
What about the ‘locals’, though? What about parasites that might be dangerous?
I’m sure there is enough in this short story to fuel a film or TV series. Thought-provoking and more than a little unsettling.
It’s a terrific story from The Far Reaches collection from Amazon Original Stories. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy for review.
4.5★ “I am one of the first, but it’s been five years, so I doubt anyone is really thinking about this anymore. That’s how people are. Long-term memory4.5★ “I am one of the first, but it’s been five years, so I doubt anyone is really thinking about this anymore. That’s how people are. Long-term memory is a thing of the past. Maybe after the ten years are up and we’ve returned to the Earth, that will change.”
I wouldn’t count on it. Change is so fast now, that in ten years, whatever is happening today is old news. BUT, this particular program is an exceptional experiment in space. Humans have applied to have their DNA shared with a Miri, a spacecraft, so that they form a kind of single organism. Seven had been accepted.
“Once I was deemed a match and signed the agreement (and came to terms with the fact that I was trading ten years of my life for a total of twenty million euros—two million every year I survived)—I took the medications that altered my DNA. They made me able to withstand the radiation, fortified my bones and muscles, and made me able to produce certain nutrients.”
There is a nervous moment while they go through the last checks to make sure the person is accepted by the Miri, much like facial recognition or a fingerprint instead of a password. In this case, the Miri has to recognise her DNA as its DNA,
“If the hatch didn’t open for me, then this would all have been a failure. It was that simple. It would mean the Miri had not imprinted on me and I’d never be able to enter the ship at all, let alone get him to go anywhere.”
No way! Imagine being out in space and suddenly being not recognised by the craft that you are able to run only because it’s part of you. It’s not as if you can unplug it or turn it off and on again like a computer. But the people do have virtual contact and enjoy meeting each other that way once they’ve taken off.
They will be in space, alone, for ten years, although our narrator has a cat, Five, for company, and others have something similar.
This story opens after the first five years, and they are being allowed to meet in person. The ships will interconnect and make themselves compatible so that the travellers can walk easily back and forth to visit each other.
The author has done a great job of describing such different people and Miris and how they’ve all chosen to live. The ships are like good-sized homes where they can walk around and cultivate things.
I really enjoyed this space drama which plays out in some ways like a small town story. Limited characters, different personalities, different lifestyles, but all enjoying some real company, even if just for a short time.
This is another good read from The Far Reaches collection from Amazon Original Stories. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy for review.
5★ “I’m not an unattractive guy, but even with my new baby blues, this girl is way out of my league. . . . All she sees is my Earth face, and she thinks5★ “I’m not an unattractive guy, but even with my new baby blues, this girl is way out of my league. . . . All she sees is my Earth face, and she thinks I’m just like her.”
Nope. Not like her at all. Miles from home, spared a prison sentence because of his influential adoptive father, “Ira” (his new name), is serving his parole on Long Reach (not to be confused with Longreach in Queensland, Australia, although many think it’s a long way from anywhere).
“I’m light-years from anyone who knows me. A billion plus kilometers from the Genteel homeworld and anyone who might know what I’ve done—and who my father is.”
He arrives, meets the girl who’s out of his league, and has to knock back an invitation to join her, saying he has plans. Of course he does – he has to check in with the authorities.
He is given his restrictions (limited access) and curfew hours. This is not a holiday. He is allowed on the university level, since they have him disguised as a student.
“They pass me over an ID tag. I slap it against my wrist, and it lights up, keyed to my DNA now. ‘That gets you to the levels you’re cleared for. Nowhere else.’
Great. Leash on and staked.”
By the third week, he gets antsy, does a little exploring, finds a little restaurant, when who should spot him but the pretty girl he met when he arrived.
This is a more moving story than I expected. He was orphaned and was in “relocation services” before he was adopted through a special program. He’s a guy who never felt he belonged or fit in, so when this girl takes an interest in him, he’s an easy target.
Although it’s science fiction, the situations and relationships are universal and still timely. In spite of so many societies priding themselves on being diverse and classless, I think by the time young people hit their teens (if not earlier), they start wondering if and where they fit in.
Great read from The Far Reaches collection from Amazon Original Stories. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy for review.
PattyMacDotComma
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