Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Survey, by Adam-Troy Castro

[F&SF]
★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended

(SF Horror) A young college student participates in an academic survey to earn some extra cash. The whole setup is a little weird, particularly the armed guard, but it’s a lot of money just to answer some questions. (5,050 words; Time: 16m)

Recommended By: πŸ‘STomaino+1 (Q&A)


"Survey," by (edited by C.C. Finlay), appeared in issue 01-02|19, published on by .

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

Review: 2019.038 (A Word for Authors)

Pro: It highlights a fact of college life: the weird research projects where you play some game or answer some questions about a video or text in exchange for a few bucks.

Con: I couldn’t find any way to interpret this that I could suspend disbelief for. If it’s a real experiment, then everything is made up (i.e. no one really dies), but then I’d expect her to be skeptical about it too. If it’s real, then the examiner talks way, way too much.

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3 comments (may contain spoilers):

  1. Typical of Adam-Troy Castro's stories where he takes a premise and exaggerates it, but usually he does it in a humorous way.

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    Replies
    1. He does a lot of experimental work. Some of it is very cool, but sometimes the experiment doesn't work.

      But, yeah, there's always at least one good laugh in them. :-)

      Delete
  2. I enjoyed his short story Example published in 2019 Nightmare Magazine quite a lot.

    Free online here - http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/example/

    ReplyDelete