★★★☆☆ Honorable Mention
(Dystopia) Cassie takes her hallucinating uncle and a needy animatronic dinosaur head on a road trip through the suburbs of a decaying city. (8,096 words; Time: 26m)
"Dave's Head," by Suzanne Palmer [bio] (edited by Neil Clarke), appeared in Clarkesworld issue 156, published on September 1, 2019.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.502 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: The strength of this story is the characters. Cassie, Dave, and even Uncle Marty. The dialog between Cassie and Dave is almost enough to recommend the story all by itself.
There are plenty of laughs here. My favorite is
Con: The story doesn’t go anywhere. It introduces us to some characters and to the setting, but that’s about it. We never even find out what’s in the mysterious package.
And the setting is a slightly ridiculous dystopia where everything is falling apart except for the most advanced technology (all of which works just fine). Just as the setting is a kind of cardboard villain, Ted, Cassie’s dad, is a real cardboard villain. And it’s kind of silly that people are running around doing the bidding of a dinosaur head.
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Pro: The strength of this story is the characters. Cassie, Dave, and even Uncle Marty. The dialog between Cassie and Dave is almost enough to recommend the story all by itself.
There are plenty of laughs here. My favorite is
“Awesomesauce!” Dave answers, which, really, is a weird thing to hear from a giant detached theme-park dinosaur head, but at some point you just let the weirdness own you and go with it.
Con: The story doesn’t go anywhere. It introduces us to some characters and to the setting, but that’s about it. We never even find out what’s in the mysterious package.
And the setting is a slightly ridiculous dystopia where everything is falling apart except for the most advanced technology (all of which works just fine). Just as the setting is a kind of cardboard villain, Ted, Cassie’s dad, is a real cardboard villain. And it’s kind of silly that people are running around doing the bidding of a dinosaur head.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Suzanne Palmer Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
We deleted a comment that violated our guidelines. (It was uncivil.)
ReplyDeleteIt did identify an error in the review: I somehow wrote "boss" instead of "dad." Ted was Cassie's dad, not her boss.
This was very fun. The package contains some sort of nanotech. No clue beyond that. Would love to see more adventures of Dave and Cassie.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it seems to set us up for their adventures without actually taking us on a significant one.
DeleteI don't know, keeping Mom's nanobots from mobster Dad seems like it could be significant. Particularly since Mom was apparantly killed for whatever she was trying to do. Definitely seems like there's more story to tell.
DeleteI loved this story; It was fun, interesting and well written..... I loved that one of the comments criticized the element of the mysterious package not being revealed, cmon, that sort of element adds to a short story like this! Great read, thanks Suzanne Palmer!
ReplyDelete