★★★☆☆
(Alien SF) The first alien to become an Earth citizen is lonely, and the personal ads just aren’t working out. (4,516 words; Time: 15m)
"Entangled," by Beston Barnett [bio] (edited by Neil Clarke), appeared in Clarkesworld issue 155, published on August 1, 2019.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.434 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: This is the story of how the narrator found companionship. It’s an interesting concept: having a member of a different species raised here so as to make a bridge between cultures. But it definitely seems guaranteed to make that person lonely—to become someone who can never fit into either world.
Con: I didn’t feel that anything was really resolved by the end of the story. The loneliness and isolation haven’t changed just by viewing the isolation capsule.
Too much information is delivered via infodump.
A small point (since it’s part of the what-if) but the instantaneous information transmission scheme described can’t work as described. At intergalactic distances, the motion of the Earth around the sun would be enough by itself to cause time slips of a century or more each way during the course of a year.
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Beston Barnett Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: This is the story of how the narrator found companionship. It’s an interesting concept: having a member of a different species raised here so as to make a bridge between cultures. But it definitely seems guaranteed to make that person lonely—to become someone who can never fit into either world.
Con: I didn’t feel that anything was really resolved by the end of the story. The loneliness and isolation haven’t changed just by viewing the isolation capsule.
Too much information is delivered via infodump.
A small point (since it’s part of the what-if) but the instantaneous information transmission scheme described can’t work as described. At intergalactic distances, the motion of the Earth around the sun would be enough by itself to cause time slips of a century or more each way during the course of a year.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Beston Barnett Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
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