The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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"The Macrobe Conservation Project" - Sep2019
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Huh. I just read this & I'm not sure what to make of it. I liked it & it definitely has a creepy quality.
Mod
I like that word, "asiMom". It seems to allude to Apple "iProducts" as well as Asimov's robots.
I enjoyed the story and may try to read the rest of the book that it is in: The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria.
The end of the story left me wondering about many things that are only hinted at, such as the "brain trees".
Lightspeed does often publish good stories for free on the net, and they often provide an audio version of their stories, but not for this one.
"The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria." I tried this one AWB & it didn't work for me, at all. Did I post anything? [looks]OK, " Skimmed ebook from library. Didn't look like my sort of thing. "
Unrated by me, my usual practice if I'm uncomfortable trashing a new-to-me writer ;-]
The purpose of the asiMom & asibrother were to provide socialization for the narrator & they failed in a way that I found intriguing. I thought that was well done. The lie was also really well done. I liked the way the father is portrayed. There's a lot more than the narrator knows & yet it becomes obvious.
Mod
What's an AWB?
Just read it. OK but meh; 2.6 stars. Reads like a novel WIP extract? Hernandez has a middle-grade SF novel out now.
Peter wrote: "Just read it. OK but meh; 2.6 stars. Reads like a novel WIP extract? Hernandez has a middle-grade SF novel out now."What's a WIP extract?
I'd give it a better grade than that, but I thought the end could have used a bit more kick than a question. He did a marvelous job of developing the kid & then kind of let it trickle away.
Ed wrote: "WIP = work in progress"It's a good thing we can translate for each other.
;)
Hee hee. A lot of this stuff is from USENET days, & before fill-out macros became common on the primitive computers of the day. My God, our first Mac came with (ims) 20 MB of RAM, and a HUGE 1 MB hard drive!
I can only keep a dozen or two computer chat acronyms in my head since the rest of the limited space is taken up by working computer ones. There are far too many & they've changed over time. In the time of your first MAC, the boards used to use < g > (without spaces) for grin, but I haven't seen that in ages. Smiley took over.
Mod
Anyway, funny in this story that the robots don't have butt cracks. What a strange little detail.
Ed: "funny in this story that the robots don't have butt cracks. What a strange little detail."Heh. A nice touch.
It does seem odd that they didn't call Dad in the climactic (view spoiler) Since Asimom did call in a similar incident, earlier.
" if Malloy or Grisget or any of those other pieces of skrat thought they were going to hone in on his dream, they had another thing coming"think not thing
parallel to what the skrat *thought* you see
Gad I hate being shoved out of a story by poor editing.
Ok, that's at the beginning. The rest of the story is great.Leaves me speechless.
Very much Asimovian, so yeah asi must be for the classic author.Will def. look for more by Hernandez.
Peter, it seems to take a bit of time for Dad to respond to the call and we just didn't watch that long this time; I think the ending was open-ended about that detail.I wonder where "here" is. That poor kid; they're probably blaming him just because Dad lied to his sons.
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...
I haven't read it yet, so I hope it's a good one. Lightspeed publishes some wonderful stories, though.