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Short, weird, locally grown sci-fi
Jul. 26th, 2013 10:35 pmIn my ongoing quests to read more science fiction, read more short stories, support more non-big-name authors, and spend the last of my Amazon Promotional Credit, I decided to kill... *counts* four birds with one stone and purchase the ebook (which is the only form) of Dystopian Love by Jay O'Connell. Jay O'Connell is in the writing group I recently joined because the writing group is full of fancy creative people who actually finish stuff.
Dystopian Love contains eight stories, seven of which are solidly not just science fiction but truly speculative science fiction, with a science- or technology-based premise building into a story that explores how it affects us as humans. (The eighth story is essentially an extended sci-fi nerd joke.) The collection kicks off with a very well-done male pregnancy story (this surprised me, as the entirety of my experience with mpreg is Lord of the Rings fanfiction) and gets thoughtfully weirder from there. While there is one space story, most of these pieces deal with Earth-based issues--computerized banking, disease, self-aware and/or rogue AI, alternate timelines, human evolution, the dangers of living entirely off of peanut butter and oatmeal. The major theme in this collection is relationships, and the stories explore how the various sci-fi premises allow the protagonists to pursue familial or romantic relationships--or, in some cases, very convincing facsimiles thereof--in ways that would be impossible in our current reality. I think the AI stories are particularly well done, or perhaps just particularly well suited to this theme, but either way, I found them the most intriguing and enjoyable stories in the collection. The one about the guy trying to buy an illegal body for his AI son was a particularly great mix of cute, sad, and thought-provoking. (I do love a well-done baby cyborg story.)
This collection is self-published, but I believe many of the individual stories have been published in various places over the last several years.
Overall I very much enjoyed this collection, and it also got me thinking, which are two things that go very well together. If you like sci-fi and have a bit of a dark sense of humor, I would recommend it pretty strongly.
Dystopian Love contains eight stories, seven of which are solidly not just science fiction but truly speculative science fiction, with a science- or technology-based premise building into a story that explores how it affects us as humans. (The eighth story is essentially an extended sci-fi nerd joke.) The collection kicks off with a very well-done male pregnancy story (this surprised me, as the entirety of my experience with mpreg is Lord of the Rings fanfiction) and gets thoughtfully weirder from there. While there is one space story, most of these pieces deal with Earth-based issues--computerized banking, disease, self-aware and/or rogue AI, alternate timelines, human evolution, the dangers of living entirely off of peanut butter and oatmeal. The major theme in this collection is relationships, and the stories explore how the various sci-fi premises allow the protagonists to pursue familial or romantic relationships--or, in some cases, very convincing facsimiles thereof--in ways that would be impossible in our current reality. I think the AI stories are particularly well done, or perhaps just particularly well suited to this theme, but either way, I found them the most intriguing and enjoyable stories in the collection. The one about the guy trying to buy an illegal body for his AI son was a particularly great mix of cute, sad, and thought-provoking. (I do love a well-done baby cyborg story.)
This collection is self-published, but I believe many of the individual stories have been published in various places over the last several years.
Overall I very much enjoyed this collection, and it also got me thinking, which are two things that go very well together. If you like sci-fi and have a bit of a dark sense of humor, I would recommend it pretty strongly.
