(Military SF) Jennifer Balcomb suffers side-effects from the treatment intended to erase her memories of the torture she participated in as a Marine Corporal. (4,796 words)
Rating: 2,
Not Recommended
"Caribou: Documentary Fragments," by Joseph Tomaras, appeared in the May/June 2016 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, published May 3, 2016, by Spilogale Inc.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: The technique of using optical stimulation to control memories is a real thing.
Con: There's not a story here. Jennifer isn't the protagonist. No one is. I think we're supposed to believe that her bad memories became infectious, but even then the scope of the catastrophe seems to be limited to burning down one man's gas station.
Con: There's not a story here. Jennifer isn't the protagonist. No one is. I think we're supposed to believe that her bad memories became infectious, but even then the scope of the catastrophe seems to be limited to burning down one man's gas station.
It's a social story much more than a personal one.
ReplyDeleteInteresting structure to this one - it opens twining the real-life issue with the SF element of memory wipes; then I feel it goes deeper and deeper into the real-life issue - then it brings round the SF element to twist the familiar-but-awful issue into something new-and-awful.
> even then the scope of the catastrophe seems to be limited to burning down one man's gas station.
I think you're misreading this.
The scope of the catastrophe is (A) the constant use of sexual torture as a valid tool, and (B) the memories of that abuse spreading. There's a violent poetic justice to that, basically saying "you can't have this happening 'way over there'; it infects everybody; it's inside all of you, and you can't hide from it."
The gas-station, in my reading, is only a bitter epilogue - it's the cycle of hatred and racism kicking up again, senselessly, because people are looking for anybody to blame and lash out at, except themselves.