I only heard the name and a few quotes. Decided to give it a read to day, but found out that it’s like 15 pages long. Was kinda disappointed. But then I happened to have a discussion about it with a friend. They praised it and said it made them scared. But to me it is already too late to be scared when the story picks up. The characters have already lost their morals, the main character has already realized what their only escape option is. It’s a final of a story that we read through. End of the journey.
Unfortunately it was a hill my friend reinforced with nuclear weapons, so I quickly learned how horrid of a human being I am for recommending against reading this story.
But I am still curious what everyone else thinks of the story. Could it really have benefited from a few dozen more pages or is it perfect as is?
And I hope it’s not too short of a story to be discussed on this sub.
by _Weyland_
2 Comments
My gripe with it is that the strongest image and emotional beat is spoiled in the title X.X but I like it as a striking example of a fate worse than death, and an early example of our technology betraying us and acting with conscious cruelty. Tone-wise, it’s not so much horror as it is despair with a bit of hope and defiance sprinkled in the middle.
My only change would be to the title, and maybe making it clearer that they were still regular humans on an earth taken over by computer hardware. My modern brain first assumed they were digitized, but that was maybe hard to fathom in the era when it was written.
My takeaway was Ellison writes some f*ed up stuff. I didn’t think about it any deeper than that. I know it’s supposed to be an early warning about AI but honestly I found myself enjoying a lot of PKDs work more than Ellison.