The Last Christmas

by Alexander Wales

The mantle of Santa Claus has been passed down once again, this time to an industrial engineer who starts to get some dangerous ideas in his head about the true meaning of Christmas.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Philosophy, Fan Fiction

ebook

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Anton Hammarstedt]

(the -1 score is a "bullshit ending adjustment")

Setting presentation, design and originality (how cool is the setting?): 2
Setting verisimillitude and detail (how much sense does the setting make?): 3
Plot design, presentation and originality (How well-crafted was the plot, in the dramaturgic sense?): 4
Plot and character verisimillitude (How much sense did the plot and motivations make? Did events follow from motivations?): 4
Characterization and character development: 4
Character sympatheticness: 3
Prose: 3
Page turner factor: 4
Mind blown factor: 3

Final (weighted) score: 3.4
Manually override sccore: 2.4

Available at: https://alexanderwales.com/category/f...

[rixx · Rating 2 out of 5]

[The Last Christmas](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9915682/...) is a fun premise, but way too short to build it up properly, and so it ends up all over the place. Still: It's pretty short, and a nice read, so if you want to see how an engineer deals with suddenly being Santa, go check it out.

[John Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, "rationalist" short story using the logistics of it Christmas and Santa as a backdrop for exploring problems known in the rationality community like wireheading and the alignment problem in AI. Non-rationalist fluent people probably wouldn't get it *insert Joker meme here* but super fun for those of us who do.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess Christmas needed to be solved, with the bonus inclusion of sexual violence towards women as characterization for villains. Again, at least the author had a clear outline, though they did struggle a bit to stick with it consistently, which is not something I can say about most other serial fiction I have read.

[Lauren Abrishami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorous (if you like dark humor) and very ridiculous. Incomplete.

[Simona · Rating 4 out of 5]

It could have been so much more. Very intriguing concept though

[Yapee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charles takes up a new management position, and starts slinging KPIs like there is no tomorrow, but there is something deeply wrong with this company.

[Oren Milman · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5
Great!