Paula’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2015)

Paula’s comments from the Science Fiction Microstory Contest group.

Greg, what a sweet story and genuinely moving, as we come to feel with the protector's care for these creatures, and his/her/its longing at the end. I think the first paragraph or two mislead us to expect something quite different, a more techno- sort of tale; perhaps a bit of foreshadowing, or a small shift in their rhetoric or description, could better foreshadow/lead us toward what is to evolve there.
A terrific sense here or evolving time!

Carrie, I liked very much the way you opposed the two characters' viewpoints on time--how time and im/mortality affected these--in this story. And the man's hurt at the end felt very real.
I'd have liked more hint earlier on of the woman's immortality--though I realize that could've been hard to do while keeping the intensity of the ending.
Agreeing with others here re the vanishing of the children.
I would suggest tightening the sensual/sexual descriptions of the first third or so of the tale--perhaps fewer but more evocative and/or specific.
A good story, Carrie.

Tom wrote: "Paula wrote: "Tom--and Justin, too--I truly would like to see the long version (whether long story or novella or novel) of your this-month's story, actually. These are both stories that are aching ..."
Tom, in fact it's a fine story as is! I didn't mean otherwise. And btw I agree that Poe is a wonderful model. Definitely. And I can see that you've learned from him!

Justin, I entirely agree, you only do an expansion if YOU feel you should and want to!
Justin wrote: "Paula wrote: "Tom--and Justin, too--I truly would like to see the long version (whether long story or novella or novel) of your this-month's story, actually. These are both stories that are aching ..."

Tom--and Justin, too--I truly would like to see the long version (whether long story or novella or novel) of your this-month's story, actually. These are both stories that are aching to explore their tale and settings and people even more.

Tom, I can't match your critiquing ability, but I can tell you that I loved the style-pushing in your piece! Very cool and elegant, in the long run.

John, thank you for the critique re the Garden story. And I appreciate your point re the main character.
n.b., I found Marianne's story's ending crystal clear. Like the character sharpening his knife--the squatter family's dad, if you know the movie--near the end of The Day After, lol.

Thanks for posting Carrol's instruct'ns here, Jot. Much appreciated.

Tom, thank you so very much for the beautiful review of my "Garden" story. And I'd like to say in general how elegant and fine your reviews are this month--a joy to read. I much agree with most of your comments re Marianne's, Chris's, etc. stories here (though I did not find Chris's style in his "flat" at all). Wish I could do such super reviews. Thank you, Tom.

Marianne, thank you so much!
I must admit that 1. I've no read much by Lois Lowry, and 2. I've read very little by Unamuno. So shall have to look into them more! Thank you again.
Marianne wrote: "Thanks, Paula :)

I enjoyed your Garden for its imagery and poetry. I can imagine a dramatic reading of it as dialogue is your string suit. Immortality is always desired over embracing Death by hum..."

0 minutes ago
Paula Friedman
Re your "Paradise" story--great details and super voice to bring that time and place to reality, and a greater last line, Marianne!

Thank you for the thoughtful review, Justin.
As far back as the mid-twentieth century, sf magazines would sometimes publish stories involving not necessarily spaceships or control consoles but sociologic, medical, or psychological concepts, or even references to Eastern ideas, for instance the concept of Maya [sorry if that spelling is incorrect]--or, in the words of an earlier twentieth (or nineteenth?) century song, "Life is but a dream."
And yes, the wish-fulfillment dreams of persons confronting major loss are of course a recognized phenomenon.
So maybe it's not necessary to postulate a specifically "female brain's approach," confusingly "soft" and "fuzzy," to recognize the "Garden" story. I'd agree, though: the story is not "hard" in the way of laser blasters or the walls of an intergalactic liner, a liner likely running (or at least communicating) via its hard-edged, "masculine" . . . ansible drive.
And I like your last line especially, "the protagonist is left where she began, with a wonderful journey in between." Thanks, Justin--well said.

C: "it sure was a short ride with a lot of nice scenery. . . Apparently it was all a dream . . . Maybe it was simply the scenery that was the point." And "All the lilting descriptions of a fully joyful life become merely the bait."
And relate that to "immortality."
Then you've expressed it--that's the point indeed.
Not all stories follow the workshoppers' rule of a person acts/is acted upon, a person changes, denouement, imo.
Thank you for liking the story and for exploring it even though outside your own style/experience.
And also, given the drink and the curiosity, you might well like Lowrey (the novel is Under the Volcano--and, correcting my mistake, the author's name is Lowrey), especially as it's about someone who acts/is acted upon and does change, some.

Bill, thank you! I'm delighted someone saw what I was doing there. :)
Yes--very fun to write, too.

Good one, Jot!

The Garden
Copyright © 2017 by Paula Friedman. All rights reserved.
(699 words)

“Te gusta, esta jardine?” Jenny had reached the last page of the Lowrey novel (“not at all,” she’d told an argumentative nurse, “trite or clichéd”) and, looking up, had watched night’s lowlit darkness fade to dawn, had listened to the moans and long cacophony of teles as it spread around the ward, and heard the rising beep-beep-beep awaken the last sleepers, on that day.

Even now, she could remember—and how Jeffrey, then her “boyfriend” from the neighboring ward, also an Elder, had walked—walked!—through the doorway, fit and strong and saying “Up now, Jenny, wake, and rise!” and she had stood and glided toward him, glowing. Healthy. And amazed.

As all had been, those first hours—first years, really. Yet all that had been required, as the “headlines” on the “news sites” of those days had proclaimed (along with lengthy, because nontechnical, explanations), had been three flashes of researchers’ brilliance—the fitting together of a simple molecular splicing recognized since 2012 by geneticists at U.C. Davis and Institut Louis Pasteur (Paris 14), an earlier pre-trial procedure employing the most elementary electrolyte manipulations, and a (relatively complex) endocrine process employed since 1999. Et voila! No more cellular degeneration! Instantaneous whole-tissue regeneration! Perfectly calibrated immune response!

And, mere days after that initial infusion of The Cure into the First World’s entire population, Fast-Act, enabling unimpeded reflexes and sensory perception matching that of the fastest human athlete—and, indeed, beyond, with speed matching that of the now-extinct cheetahs, a grip like that ascribed once to “gorillas,” the flexibility of Siamese cats, adaptability as swift as any insect’s—took hold, “phase 2,” as the Rockefeller Institute described it, of The Cure.

Jenny trembled in her joy and Jeffrey held her tight as she held him. “Oh yes,” she sighed, and “Yes” he sighed as well, new-rising libido rushing through their loins, and joy.

So it began. And in those days, for those infused, there was no death. Nor for the chosen animals, nor trees, nor roses, nor of wheat or deep-rooted potatoes, nor of bees or fireflies or moths, nor cow nor horse nor stag upon the high-peaked mountains, nor of another living thing. Except of what—fruit or egg or leaf or somehow broken stem or extra roots—each life could share. And joy reigned.

Wandering through those years, eons latterly, Jenny walked—leaped, danced!—longhaired, lean, barefoot on some eco-prairie of an Interstellar Liner’s forward deck, en route to yet another planet of a long-discovered star amid some distant—ever more distant—galaxy. They sang, they made up tales, the weaved, they built a billion bridges, raised ten thousand homes, six hundred children on as many worlds. Life was an exploration, ever new and never fear-filled. Boredom, even “meaning,” had no place—no place and no need—in this unending, well-loved, loving life.

For, unfearing, their love spread to many, to all life, in their universe. Their joy. As here, lying together in the soft grass amid yellow flowers, warm on this planet’s high-country meadow between the whispering juniper and the sky-reaching grandfather pine.

A new dawn, Jenny thought, and “No, that’s a cliché,” and stroked, with two dusky fingers, Jeffrey’s taut red-gold thigh. A child ran past them. Laughing softly, gently Jeffrey sighed.

No, harshly. Harshly. He had moaned.

Had cried out. Struggling, Jenny turned, lifted herself to one dark elbow, tried to lift her head, to find him in this pallid light, this painful dawn. The walls were still half-dark around her, figures still in shadow, groaning on their beds. As if in a tableau of “Age” and “Illness.” As if bare archetypes of lone “Dying.” As if each formed—again she thought—“a cliché.” But, feeling as if falling, or rather as if the floor beneath her bed were turning, rocking forward and back as in an earthquake, she espied, both below and above, the giant page she rode on lift, and turn—so that there, bright before her, lit as if by failing rays from some lost Eden, only, this time, clichéd, the words (not at all like Lowrey’s): “And then they awoke, and found it had all been a dream.”

I'm very interested to read it!Justin wrote: "Thanks Paula, whenever. Just thought I'd throw it out there."

Not this week, Justin, but probably next month, if that works for you?

Congratulations, Tom.

Very good work, Tom.