★★★☆☆ Mixed
(SF Horror) Merribelle hasn’t been herself since they put C-9 in her brain, but if it would just let her alone long enough, maybe she could remember who she used to be. (6,447 words; Time: 21m)
"When We Flew Together Through the Ice," by J.R. Dawson [bio] (edited by C.C. Finlay), appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction issue 11-12|18, published on October 27, 2018 by Spilogale Inc.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2018.600 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: I think this is supposed to give us a feeling for the horror of paranoid schizophrenia. Voices in your head that tell you awful things about yourself and occasionally tell you to do awful things. Regardless, the conclusion is horrifying and yet inevitable.
Con: The bad science really drags the story down. In this story, everything in this universe is very close together and moving very slowly. The mom finds a comet right above the planet’s atmosphere—not tens of millions of kilometers away. They fly through it’s tail sliding “between the cracks in the ice.” In reality, there’s nothing in the tail to hit, but if they hit the ice in the head, they’d be smashed to bits. This sort of complete misunderstanding of the scale of the universe repeats over and over throughout the story--and for no reason whatsoever; nothing in the plot ever depends on it.
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 11-12|18)
J.R. Dawson Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: I think this is supposed to give us a feeling for the horror of paranoid schizophrenia. Voices in your head that tell you awful things about yourself and occasionally tell you to do awful things. Regardless, the conclusion is horrifying and yet inevitable.
Con: The bad science really drags the story down. In this story, everything in this universe is very close together and moving very slowly. The mom finds a comet right above the planet’s atmosphere—not tens of millions of kilometers away. They fly through it’s tail sliding “between the cracks in the ice.” In reality, there’s nothing in the tail to hit, but if they hit the ice in the head, they’d be smashed to bits. This sort of complete misunderstanding of the scale of the universe repeats over and over throughout the story--and for no reason whatsoever; nothing in the plot ever depends on it.
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 11-12|18)
J.R. Dawson Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
I really liked the story. The bad science didn’t really ruin it for me. I do not have a thorough understanding of science and I could never write a hard sci-fi but I recognize that some of the science was way off. That said, I read this in the hopes of being told a story, and in that I think Dawson did a pretty good job.
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