Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Eighth Iteration, by Bond Elam

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2015; ~14,500 words
Rating: 2, Not recommended

Lucas has taken over the small human colony on a jungle planet, and Jake and Margret try to resist.

Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)

Pro: The robot's dialogues with Jake about the iterations are interesting, as are the robot's dry comments on what went wrong for humanity. The final description of the ninth iteration is satisfying.

Con: There is way too much editorializing. All of the dialogue involving the bad guys is unnatural--they're basically cartoon villains. The notion of an alien world with food that humans can eat is not realistic, but the idea of viruses that can infect humans--with similar effects to those it has on the local animals--is beyond incredible.

1 comment (may contain spoilers):

  1. I liked the premise and plot of this story. It starts a bit slow as a typical worker after landfall then progressed well into puzzling out what’s actually going on. Love the settings but I also felt there’s a bit of exposition with the AI having to explain and narrate to us what’s going on multiple times. Some of the science is a bit fantastical as well, but it does explain that the virus passed down memory pool to the native birds and gives mild hallucinations to humans, at least we have the AI that supposedly re-engineer the whole virus for their needs 😏

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