★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended
(Generation Ship) Whenever the captain dies, the new captain inherits his/her memories back to the start of the mission, but only the good ones; the sin eater gets the bad ones. (5,642 words; Time: 18m)
"The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power," by Karen Osborne [bio] (edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas), appeared in Uncanny Magazine issue 27, published on March 5, 2019.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.174 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: The effect of the bombing at the start of the story is that a very young captain and a very young sin eater have a chance to work together to change things, and the more the story goes on, the more you realize how much things need to change.
There was a chilling logic to the idea that the captain of a generation ship would choose to hold on to power rather than allow the new planet to be colonized, and it's chilling once it's clear that's what happened here.
Con: I couldn’t see the point of having a sin eater, and that undermined the whole story for me.
Overall, the story is needlessly confusing, particularly at the start, and that made it unpleasant to read.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Karen Osborne Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: The effect of the bombing at the start of the story is that a very young captain and a very young sin eater have a chance to work together to change things, and the more the story goes on, the more you realize how much things need to change.
There was a chilling logic to the idea that the captain of a generation ship would choose to hold on to power rather than allow the new planet to be colonized, and it's chilling once it's clear that's what happened here.
Con: I couldn’t see the point of having a sin eater, and that undermined the whole story for me.
Overall, the story is needlessly confusing, particularly at the start, and that made it unpleasant to read.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Karen Osborne Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
I give it 3-stars but there were bits in it that make it confusing or complicated to follow.
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