Saturday, June 11, 2016

The First Confirmed Case of Non-Corporeal Recursion: Patient Anita R., by Benjamin C. Kinney

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(Paranormal) Anita used to study ghosts, but now she is one, and she's finding it frustrating to always seem to be arguing with her husband. (3,428 words; Time: 11m)

Rating: ★★★★☆, Recommended

"," by , appeared in Strange Horizons issue 06/06/16, published on .

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

Pro: The charm of this story is the way Anita and Malati work together to find a way to communicate. Even though Anita is limited (mostly) to using lines from arguments with her husband, her ability to pick different lines lets her gives Malati clues, and Malati is fiendishly clever. We're told that light from the sun or moon (but not other sources) makes Anita vanish, so it's very satisfying at the end when the two of them head off toward Anita's old lab.

Con: Given that Anita seems to be free to point, one wonders why Malati didn't set up a board with the alphabet on it and let Ania spell things out.

Anita has been dead thirty years, so it seems unlikely she'll know her way around the lab, even if they still have a team studying the paranormal.

If any ghosts were as reliable and predictable as Anita, they'd have been studied seriously a long time ago.

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