Things ain't what they used to be

[undyingking]

Interesting story from Peter Watts, looking at an SF classic (short story and film) from an alternative perspective. It's not really very good writing (he said politely), but it's good SF in the sense of making you think about things slightly differently.

"That was how these empty skins moved of their own volition, why I'd found no other network to integrate. There it was: not distributed throughout the body but balled up into itself, dark and dense and encysted.  I had found the ghost in these machines."

[Poll #1507038]

Comments

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

I agree, the writing's not the best - kind of purple and murky. But I love alien-perspective stories, and villain-perspective stories, and SF about consciousness, so generally WIN.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

It's pretty good, though over-wordy.

I suspect it works best if you're familiar with the original story (which I'm not)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

No poll option suitable.

It was better than "Meh!", but nowhere near "Excellent!". Competently executed, but longer than it needed to be and repeated itself too much. Text quality didn't bother me particularly, but then I've read enough SF to have low expectations in that department!