This story can be found in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
It
starts as a fairy tale would "Once upon a time , in a faraway land,
there was a forest" but these forest memories are not the memories of
trees, but the memories of four young men in the mid 1960's going there
to experience their first 'grass' . Yet it is none of these men who are
recalling their memories telling others the story or stories of that
night. Instead, it is the daughter of one who is the narrator of this
story years later, after her father has died. Her own memory of it is a
six year olds, and that amounts to him going away and returning from
this "Short trip north, some fishing, a little duck hunting, maybe"
So
how does she 'tell' the story of that night? ****SPOILER ALERT ****Why
via one-foot-square yellow Mandala Consciousness Cube of course! It
seems her father took part in a consciousness storage project and his
consciousness stored for that academic experiment was later transferred
to a Cube where she could view them, and later she had them transferred
into the Collective Consciousness, where lucky for her as the narrator
of this story she found all four men’s memories.
From these she
has constructed the story, or at least a fuller version of the story of
that night. Her authorial problem is in many ways the same as any
researcher for a historical biography would have " ... my problem is the
same one that everyone who gathers information has: What to do with it?
How to sort and shape and use it? How to keep from drowning in it? Not
every story needs to be told."
I wish more had been made of this
authorial dilemma. On one reading this I am left with thinking -
Consciousness Storage is an interesting concept but not totally novel so
why use it as a device in this story? Well the answer comes not in the
story but in the linked New Yorker interview Egan does entitled "The
Dangers of Knowing" https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-... .
So if you intend to read her forthcoming book The Candy House
this is for you as that is where this is explored further through a
common character, one of the men Lou Kline, the father of our story's
narrator.
Monday, 3 January 2022
Short Story Review: What the forest remembers by Jennifer Egan
Sunday, 2 January 2022
Short Story Review: The Uncurling of Samsara by Koji A. Dae
The author, new to me as so many of these CLarkesworld stories are, has a website where many of her other short stories are listed there https://kojiadae.ink/published-elsewhere
It is a story about grieving set on an generational ship making its way from to some brave new world. The ship is called the Samsara, the Sanskrit word that means "world", the concept of rebirth and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", a fundamental belief of most Indian religions, the cycle of death and rebirth and rebirth, regeneration and recovery are themes in this story. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra )
Ever thought how food might be produced on such ships? One possibility lingers through this story. Gram and our narrator had been 'printing' food, trying to perfect recipes with the flavours, textures and tastes of old. But Gram has died and the narrator still in training for this role is left bereft and cannot bring herself to eat. We follow the narrator through the month following Gram's funeral as she struggles to come to terms with her loss. On Day 10 facing the prospect of Potato stew in the canteen she considers that no one on the ship has ever eaten Earth potatoes so why do they have to copy them, to copy all their shortcomings - a bit like what I think about Vegan meat!
Gram had been working on trying to perfect Cherry Pie, her famously good flaky pastry works but cherries are an altogether different problem, one she had yet to conquor. SPOILER ALERT Our narrator's inability to eat eventually leads to her collapse and recovery and with it her novel solution to the cherry problem. Thus life goes on and it is all cherry pie!
At the Creative Writing Group I attend we are always saying "forget the last line" as folk often overwrite it, but here the best line of the story is undoubtedly its final one "Real cherries may not have had fat, but we're drifting curled un space, playing fugues on memories of Earth" Lovely.
Saturday, 1 January 2022
Shoart Story Review: Different People by Timothy Mudie
Different People by Timothy Mudie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I listened to this on the LeVar Burton Reads Podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Cl7..., and the originalstory is available online on LightSpeed Magazine https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fi...
This was the first piece I'd read by Timothy Mudie and was pleasantly surpised. It is a well constructed, well written storyline which flows along well. It is about the issues surrounding a relationship between a man and a woman who was his wife in another universe, becomes his wife in this one, and the person who is this wife in his universe. Actually it is a deft way of showing the questions never asked in relationships which might have made the difference to us understanding each other better, of considering how one's life could have been different and what it might be like to meet one's doppelgänger.
Good story, worth a read/listen.