Saturday, March 9, 2019

When Home, No Need to Cry, by Erin K. Wagner

[Clarkesworld]
★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended

(SF Adventure) A terminally ill astronaut begs everyone she can think of to give her a chance at one last mission so she can die in space. (3,614 words; Time: 12m)


"," by (edited by Neil Clarke), appeared in issue 150, published on .

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

Review: 2019.154 (A Word for Authors)

Pro: It’s easy to imagine that some people in the future might spend so much time in space that they’d be uncomfortable on Earth and even prefer to die in space.

Con: The people telling her not to do this are right. She's wrong for being so insistent.

There is no way someone could stow away on a space launch, not even a commercial one.

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8 comments (may contain spoilers):

  1. What did you make of the alien abduction stuff?

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    1. Do you think that was more than just a dream?

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    2. We're made to think that. Both astronauts had the same "dream" which means it probably was something that really happened to them.

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    3. Hmmm. Somehow that slipped past me. So I guess the answer is that I rejected it so completely that I didn't even see it! :-)

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    4. Haha, yeah it's subtle, but seemed kind of important. It's an unresolved part of the story that I wasn't sure what to make of.

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    5. Well, Karen had a dream of gray-headed aliens, and she and Terry both had a dream of alarms going off--a dream that seems to have unsettled him so much he never wanted to go back. But I'm still not seeing where there were real aliens or an abduction. Can you quote the exact text you're looking at?

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    6. That spot you're looking at is the only mention of it that I recall. If they weren't really abducted and just had a shared dream, it would be weird. If they were really abducted and had their memories wiped (which is standard fare in abduction stories), then it would make sense that it would be something that nagged at her afterwards because of its ambiguity. But I don't know if that affects her desire to go back to space. I suppose the aliens could be a metaphor for something. I read it a little more literally than that, though.

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    7. I think it's easiest to attribute it to an error. Maybe the author originally meant to do more with it, changed her mind, and then never deleted these scenes.

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