What do you think?
Rate this book
The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island
In "The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island," a programmer finds himself working for the self-proclaimed "Bad-Boy of Virtual-Reality Therapy.” While his boss is breaking new ground and breaking the rules and his coworkers are engaging in questionable uses of the latest technology, the lonely programmer is in a state of mourning over his deep personal losses and must figure out his own form of therapy.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
23 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 25, 2017
2 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Julianna Baggott
41 books1,479 followersCritically acclaimed, bestselling author Julianna Baggott has published more than twenty books under her own name as well as pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. Her recent novel, Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2015). Her novel Pure, the first of a trilogy, was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2012) and won an ALA Alex Award. Her work has been optioned by Fox2000, Nickelodeon/Paramount, and Anonymous Content and she currently has work in development at Netflix with Shawn Levy attached to direct, Paramount with Jessica Biel attached, Disney+, Lionsgate, and Warner Brothers, to name a few. For more on her film and TV work, click here. There are over one hundred foreign editions of Julianna’s novels published or forthcoming overseas. Baggott’s work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Modern Love column, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, Glamour, Real Simple, Best Creative Nonfiction, Best American Poetry, and has been read on NPR’s Here and Now, Talk of the Nation, and All Things Considered. Her essays, stories, and poems are highly anthologized.
Baggott began publishing short stories when she was twenty-two and sold her first novel while still in her twenties. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, the national bestseller Girl Talk. It was quickly followed by The Boston Globe bestseller, The Miss America Family, and then The Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, an historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006 (Kirkus Reviews); it has been optioned by Anonymous Content, and currently by BCDF, with a screenplay penned by playwright Keith Bunin.
Her Bridget Asher novels, published by Bantam Dell at Random House, include All of Us and Everything, listed in “Best New Books” in People magazine (2015), The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, The Pretend Wife, and My Husband’s Sweethearts.
Although the bulk of her work is for adults, she has published award-winning novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as her own name. Her seven novels for younger readers include, most notably, The Anybodies trilogy, which was a People Magazine summer reading pick alongside David Sedaris and Bill Clinton, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girl’s Life Top Ten, a Booksense selection, and was in development at Nickelodeon/Paramount. Other titles include The Slippery Map, The Ever Breath, and the prequel to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman. For two years, Bode was a recurring personality on XM Sirius Radio. Julianna’s Boston Red Sox novel The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins) was on the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards List and The Massachusetts Children’s Book Award for 2011-2012.
Baggott also has an acclaimed career as a poet, having published four collections of poetry – Instructions: Abject & Fuming, This Country of Mothers, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, and Lizzie Borden in Love. Her poems have appeared in some of the most venerable literary publications in the country, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry (2001, 2011, and 2012).
She is an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts where she teaches screenwriting. From 2013-2017, she held the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. In 2006, Baggott and her husband, David Scott, co-founded the nonprofit organization Kids in Need – Books in Deed which focuses on literacy and getting free books into the hands of underprivileged children in the state of Florida. David Scott is also her creative and business partner. They have four children. Her oldest daughte
Baggott began publishing short stories when she was twenty-two and sold her first novel while still in her twenties. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, the national bestseller Girl Talk. It was quickly followed by The Boston Globe bestseller, The Miss America Family, and then The Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, an historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006 (Kirkus Reviews); it has been optioned by Anonymous Content, and currently by BCDF, with a screenplay penned by playwright Keith Bunin.
Her Bridget Asher novels, published by Bantam Dell at Random House, include All of Us and Everything, listed in “Best New Books” in People magazine (2015), The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, The Pretend Wife, and My Husband’s Sweethearts.
Although the bulk of her work is for adults, she has published award-winning novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as her own name. Her seven novels for younger readers include, most notably, The Anybodies trilogy, which was a People Magazine summer reading pick alongside David Sedaris and Bill Clinton, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girl’s Life Top Ten, a Booksense selection, and was in development at Nickelodeon/Paramount. Other titles include The Slippery Map, The Ever Breath, and the prequel to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman. For two years, Bode was a recurring personality on XM Sirius Radio. Julianna’s Boston Red Sox novel The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins) was on the Sunshine State Young Readers Awards List and The Massachusetts Children’s Book Award for 2011-2012.
Baggott also has an acclaimed career as a poet, having published four collections of poetry – Instructions: Abject & Fuming, This Country of Mothers, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, and Lizzie Borden in Love. Her poems have appeared in some of the most venerable literary publications in the country, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry (2001, 2011, and 2012).
She is an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture Arts where she teaches screenwriting. From 2013-2017, she held the William H.P. Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross. In 2006, Baggott and her husband, David Scott, co-founded the nonprofit organization Kids in Need – Books in Deed which focuses on literacy and getting free books into the hands of underprivileged children in the state of Florida. David Scott is also her creative and business partner. They have four children. Her oldest daughte
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 15, 2020
We are who we are. We need what we need.
i was so excited to see that julianna baggott had a free tor short. why more people aren’t as in love with her pure trilogy as i am, i will never know
like all my favorite tor shorts, this is a bleak little nugget of a story, full of beautifully-written hopelessness, like this, where the narrator reflects upon his wife’s response to their personal difficulties:
She was very scientific about the miscarriages. She mourned the first, but then explained the statistical frequency of miscarriages with the second. After the third, she decided it was better to shut things down for a while, a fallow fields approach. She didn’t mourn at all, or not in front of me. She said that each time she started to express her sadness, it was as if she gave me permission to be sad, and my sadness was too much for her to bear. “This is simple biology,” she kept explaining. “This is just how the body works. You can’t take it personally.” I imagined the small fetuses in their watery worlds, drowning, and how I couldn’t save them. What kind of father could fail, so consistently, at saving his children from drowning? Of course it was personal. Failure usually is.
ugh, right?
but this is a tor short and they don’t let you in unless you bring your SF/F game. and this one brings it in the form of virtual reality.
i read this one pretty close to Final Girls, which is also concerned with virtual reality technology being used towards therapeutic ends; facing simulated threats in order to overcome psychological wounds. this one doesn’t go as horrifically awry as Final Girls, but if this ever becomes a thing - opting to make yourself completely vulnerable by giving all your emotional baggage to some geeky coder and strapping yourself to a table in the hopes of making all your problems go away, do yourself a favor and sleep on it. the decision, not the table you are strapped to in this scenario i’m presenting. definitely don’t sleep on that - you are powerless enough without adding an extra layer of cognitive remove.
again, this one isn’t a horror story, it’s more sad and melancholy than scary, but while some of the therapeutic reality setups are uncomplicated and sound like they might indeed soothe a troubled mind:
others are unpredictable, invasive, and easily manipulated.
this is a beautiful story, with an ending that is sad on a stick. and that stick is then used to poke you in the eyes and heart, which makes it sadder.
but maybe it's just for me - this one, like her trilogy, has some pretty tepid-to-low ratings. i don’t care - i liked it, even if i’m a lonesome fan.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir...
lalalalalaaaaa
come to my blog!
i was so excited to see that julianna baggott had a free tor short. why more people aren’t as in love with her pure trilogy as i am, i will never know
like all my favorite tor shorts, this is a bleak little nugget of a story, full of beautifully-written hopelessness, like this, where the narrator reflects upon his wife’s response to their personal difficulties:
She was very scientific about the miscarriages. She mourned the first, but then explained the statistical frequency of miscarriages with the second. After the third, she decided it was better to shut things down for a while, a fallow fields approach. She didn’t mourn at all, or not in front of me. She said that each time she started to express her sadness, it was as if she gave me permission to be sad, and my sadness was too much for her to bear. “This is simple biology,” she kept explaining. “This is just how the body works. You can’t take it personally.” I imagined the small fetuses in their watery worlds, drowning, and how I couldn’t save them. What kind of father could fail, so consistently, at saving his children from drowning? Of course it was personal. Failure usually is.
ugh, right?
but this is a tor short and they don’t let you in unless you bring your SF/F game. and this one brings it in the form of virtual reality.
i read this one pretty close to Final Girls, which is also concerned with virtual reality technology being used towards therapeutic ends; facing simulated threats in order to overcome psychological wounds. this one doesn’t go as horrifically awry as Final Girls, but if this ever becomes a thing - opting to make yourself completely vulnerable by giving all your emotional baggage to some geeky coder and strapping yourself to a table in the hopes of making all your problems go away, do yourself a favor and sleep on it. the decision, not the table you are strapped to in this scenario i’m presenting. definitely don’t sleep on that - you are powerless enough without adding an extra layer of cognitive remove.
again, this one isn’t a horror story, it’s more sad and melancholy than scary, but while some of the therapeutic reality setups are uncomplicated and sound like they might indeed soothe a troubled mind:
I invented a level for a grieving widower in which his wife was alive and he was watching her jump off a dock into a lake where he was waiting for her.
I meant: Don’t get over her. Live here.
I invented a level for a girl who’d been raped by her neighbor in which she got to run through the woods in the body of a lion.
Nothing to catch. No hunters to outsmart. Just running for as long as she wanted to run.
others are unpredictable, invasive, and easily manipulated.
this is a beautiful story, with an ending that is sad on a stick. and that stick is then used to poke you in the eyes and heart, which makes it sadder.
but maybe it's just for me - this one, like her trilogy, has some pretty tepid-to-low ratings. i don’t care - i liked it, even if i’m a lonesome fan.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir...
lalalalalaaaaa
come to my blog!
March 20, 2018
So I was trying to create a world where the eleven-year-old was saving white-throated sparrows who’d been tangled by debris along the coast of an island off of Maine. He didn’t have to kill any Beasts at all.
A programmer of Virtual-Reality Therapy works to create new worlds for the mentally and physically wounded, even though he has to endure his own losses. Children and adults get their own contrived artificial environments, away from insecurities and traumas. This is a world we are heading into, probably sooner than later.
It's an okay read, but I never became involved. In fact, I went through this Tor short so quickly, I had to go back and re-read it just to see if I was missing something. I wasn't.
Book Season = Winter (trauma games)
A programmer of Virtual-Reality Therapy works to create new worlds for the mentally and physically wounded, even though he has to endure his own losses. Children and adults get their own contrived artificial environments, away from insecurities and traumas. This is a world we are heading into, probably sooner than later.
It's an okay read, but I never became involved. In fact, I went through this Tor short so quickly, I had to go back and re-read it just to see if I was missing something. I wasn't.
Book Season = Winter (trauma games)
March 17, 2017
Lovely short story with a creative set of virtual-reality therapy that is so vividly new mind-catching and heartbreaking. I love to see psychology mixed with real-time uses. I hope I can be part of something similar one day.
Read it here: http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir...
Read it here: http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir...
March 3, 2017
I wish it was longer.
April 19, 2017
It was OK.
July 31, 2017
Interesting ideas that never really seem to gel thematically.
February 7, 2017
You can read this free on Tor's website: http://www.tor.com/2017/01/25/the-vir...
Stories such as this are an awesome gift Tor provides readers.
Because this is such a short story, giving plot summaries is a bit spoilerish, but I will say that I can envision a future not too far off where "capitalists" and "entrepreneurs" do indeed make mega-bucks off virtual reality therapy. I also envision the suicide rate skyrocketing like the little Tor rocket logo when it happens.
This is a well-written little short. My actual rating is 3.5 because so much of the ending is involved in the story that occurs "off the page." In a short story, that device can be used to great effect, and it does work here. The ending was just slightly too abrupt to be rounded up to a full 4 stars.
We are who we are. We need what we need.
Stories such as this are an awesome gift Tor provides readers.
Because this is such a short story, giving plot summaries is a bit spoilerish, but I will say that I can envision a future not too far off where "capitalists" and "entrepreneurs" do indeed make mega-bucks off virtual reality therapy. I also envision the suicide rate skyrocketing like the little Tor rocket logo when it happens.
This is a well-written little short. My actual rating is 3.5 because so much of the ending is involved in the story that occurs "off the page." In a short story, that device can be used to great effect, and it does work here. The ending was just slightly too abrupt to be rounded up to a full 4 stars.
We are who we are. We need what we need.
February 6, 2017
It’s amazing how a title can pull you in. The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island just sounded so intriguing that I had to read it. Plus I loved the illustration. Instant want to read.
The story looks at childhood trauma. The narrator codes virtual reality games that are used as part of therapy to assist people deal with their past. It is an interesting idea. But Archer, the narrator, also has issues and grief of his own to deal with.
As I said, it is an interesting story, but as with so many short stories I was left wanting more. A good thing in many ways I suppose :) I’d certainly pick up more by this author.
The story looks at childhood trauma. The narrator codes virtual reality games that are used as part of therapy to assist people deal with their past. It is an interesting idea. But Archer, the narrator, also has issues and grief of his own to deal with.
As I said, it is an interesting story, but as with so many short stories I was left wanting more. A good thing in many ways I suppose :) I’d certainly pick up more by this author.
February 6, 2017
I immediately read this as it brought to mind the barrier island off the coast of Virginia's Easter Shore. The story is actually referencing an Island in Maine, but I'm still glad I read it.
The central idea involves expanding traditional talk therapy into custom made virtual realities. The narrator deals with layers of trauma that echo the issues dealt with in the VR games created for patients.
There's a sort of Kafka vibe and I dig it. There's also an interesting effect where the most import aspects of the story float around the edges.
The central idea involves expanding traditional talk therapy into custom made virtual realities. The narrator deals with layers of trauma that echo the issues dealt with in the VR games created for patients.
There's a sort of Kafka vibe and I dig it. There's also an interesting effect where the most import aspects of the story float around the edges.
May 31, 2020
I absolutely loved this. It felt original, and honest. I do not know if the author has written anything else but this was so comfy that if she has I am eager to pick up the rest. When I set myself up with any form of entertainment, I ask myself "Does this wow me?" I don't have time in my life for things that I am unimpressed with. This story gave me that wow.
February 4, 2017
In The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island, a programmer finds himself working for the self-proclaimed Bad-Boy of Virtual-Reality Therapy. While his boss is breaking new ground and breaking the rules and his coworkers are engaging in questionable uses of the latest technology, the lonely programmer is in a state of mourning over his deep personal losses and must figure out his own form of therapy.
I loved the premises of this story: a psychologist creating a virtual world to expose his clients to experiences to help them cope and conquer their problems. I was very disappointed by the story ending though (I will not say anything to avoid spoilers).
I loved the premises of this story: a psychologist creating a virtual world to expose his clients to experiences to help them cope and conquer their problems. I was very disappointed by the story ending though (I will not say anything to avoid spoilers).
September 25, 2017
This short tale is all about a programmer who try to solve his problem in virtual world. I must say the concept is unique but to be honest it's just not for me. Neither I liked the tale or that disgraceful matter toward his wife that what he like to see her with another men. No big deal right? Never mind. I just didn't catch it or say not my style...
September 22, 2017
Interesting premise of a therapist using virtual reality told from the point of view of one of his code monkeys. Sadly the therapist is more interested in self-aggrandizement while the coder is the one who actually wants to make others feel better...possibly to his own detriment.
December 31, 2019
3.5 stars
March 21, 2020
I liked the ideas and concepts in this little short story, but I also think that this needed one extra go over by the editor. There's a little bit in the middle that feels a little muddled.
February 10, 2017
The Virtual Swallows of Hog Island is all about therapy using virtual reality situations. It's an interesting concept, but the story relies on you caring about the characters which I had a hard time doing given how little I knew about each. The narrative seem to turn on the view point characters issues, but I never connected to his feelings. I'm sure, given a bit more time with him, I might have felt more empathy, but as it stands, the story had some neat ideas, but nothing that really made me care about what was happening.
February 19, 2017
I debated adding this to my good reads total as it's a stand alone short story and at 30 pages, but after reading it and liking it so much I decided to give it the credit it earned and enter it into my reading tally.
The story is about a group of therapists who operate a virtual reality program that allows their patients to overcome their trauma. Archer codes the "games" the patients play including the tiniest of details to make the games seem real. Archer's marriage is in peril and he's coded a game for himself as well.
I'm so so sorry that wasn't a five hundred page masterpiece. But, maybe that's the point.
The story is about a group of therapists who operate a virtual reality program that allows their patients to overcome their trauma. Archer codes the "games" the patients play including the tiniest of details to make the games seem real. Archer's marriage is in peril and he's coded a game for himself as well.
I'm so so sorry that wasn't a five hundred page masterpiece. But, maybe that's the point.
January 24, 2026
3.5
Interesting premise
Interesting premise
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews