Sunday, April 2, 2017

Eminence, by Karl Schroeder

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(Near-Future SF) Nathan watches helplessly as the alternate currency he created collapses, taking down his friends and family with it. (6,499 words; Time: 21m)

Rating: ★★★★☆ Clever, Plausible, Fun
Recommended By: JStrahan

"Eminence," by (edited by David Brin and Stephen W. Potts), appeared in (RSR review), published on by .

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

Pro: Nathan is a good guy. His pain is more for the people being hurt than it is for the collapse of his own fortunes and his own dream. When we see that he's found a way to save it, we feel really happy for him and all the people involved. The fact that he's lost his own savings only makes his success pure and unselfish.

The scene where he makes a connection between the block chain for location (verified by hundreds of surveillance devices) and his own problem feels very real.

The descriptions of the visualizations of Gwaiicoin are pretty cool.

Nathan’s fix for Gwaiicoin seems plausible at first blush.

Con: The potlatch system seems unlikely to work for all the reasons Nathan cites in the story.

Nathan throwing away all of his savings on a whim seems unlike him.

Such a huge software change couldn’t be done by one man in a few hours. A team would spend days designing it and writing it, and weeks or even months testing it.

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Karl Schroeder Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline

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1 comment (may contain spoilers):

  1. Reprinted online at Lightspeed 148 (Sep 2022): https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/eminence/

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