(Climate SF) After his teammate disappears in the ruins of Las Vegas, a newsman goes to investigate—even though he has a desk job and has never been in the field before. (8,438 words; Time: 28m)
Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average
"An Inflexible Truth," by Christopher East [bio] (edited by John Joseph Adams), appeared in Lightspeed Magazine issue 87, published on August 1, 2017.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Pro: It's a nice twist when Roland leans that nothing bad happened to Troy after all. It’s also nice that Roland sticks to his principles, even though it appears to have cost him his life.
The deeper conflict--that the world has gotten into such a bad state that key people believe that only a revolution can fix things--is interesting.
Con: The upcoming revolution is interesting, but almost nothing is done with it.
There are a few things that don't seem to add up: Why did Troy disappear at all? Once he learned how things were and decided to buy in, why didn’t he come back to work?
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 87)
Christopher East Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
The deeper conflict--that the world has gotten into such a bad state that key people believe that only a revolution can fix things--is interesting.
Con: The upcoming revolution is interesting, but almost nothing is done with it.
There are a few things that don't seem to add up: Why did Troy disappear at all? Once he learned how things were and decided to buy in, why didn’t he come back to work?
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 87)
Christopher East Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
This felt more like the beginning of a longer story. The plot reveal was more like a premise. Maybe that was because nothing is done with the revolution.
ReplyDeleteI was quite surprised that something of this length didn't develop to a reasonable ending. Interesting and topical content about news reporting though.
ReplyDeleteToo inconclusive. The author spotlight does indicate that he's working on a novel in this setting.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that should be a special subgenre: "Novel Fragment."
DeleteTor.com used to regularly feature short stories taking place in the setting of a novel the author was trying to push. The idea was to get people excited about the book. I imagine it was a hit or miss kind of thing, given how rushed the stories probably were.
DeleteI read quite a few of those. None was very good, as I recall. They seem to have given that up in favor of printing excerpts.
Delete