Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on March 24, 2009, 05:09:40 PM
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EP Flash: Beachcomber (http://escapepod.org/2009/03/23/escape-pod-flash-beachcomber/)
By Mike Resnick (http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/farmer/2/).
Read by Elie Hirschman (http://eliehirschman.com/)
Arlo didn’t look much like a man. (Not all robots do, you know.) The problem was that he didn’t act all that much like a robot.
Rated PG. Contains hopes that will never be fulfilled.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this EP Flash! (http://media.rawvoice.com/escapepod/media.libsyn.com/media/escapepod/EPFlash_Beachcomber.mp3)
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When I listened to this yesterday, I was hopeful, a Resnick story. It was a great premise, but the execution fell flat.
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This was fun. OK, a fairly old trope, but entertaining, and made its point well enough.
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For a relatively short story, it's amazing how it was too long. I mean, it managed to include a coda that re-iterated the ending that it immediately followed.
That said, it was a good story. It just took to making its point with all the subtlety of a jackhammer.
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Enjoyed this very much, though the narrator seemed unusually clueless.
The audio was a bit quiet, though.
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meh
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Not bad--the image of a hulking robot sitting on a beach trying to get sand between it's toes was a good image to start out the morning.
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ResnickPod strikes again.
The story had an interesting premise, but Resnick's interpretation of robots never really struck me as something I could get behind.
This was a relatively-well-told tale until the ending, which is as someone said a little overdone.
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I liked this, it had a old fashioned sci fi feel to it. Particularly liked the fact that the robot was not "humanoid" but still could impact on at least one of the humans around it
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For those who are curious:
This is the only story I ever wrote that was inspired by a dream. I had a dream
about a robot stuck in the sand -- I had no idea why it was there -- but I plotted
it out when I woke up and wrote the story that evening. That was literally 30
years ago. It has been re-sold 8 times in the US since its initial appearance,
as well as in Japan, Poland, and Russia -- and it was a radio play in Latvia. Been
waiting since 1979 for another dream I could turn into a story.
-- Mike Resnick
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Been waiting since 1979 for another dream I could turn into a story.
That's a long wait. And thanks for dropping into to give the story origins. These types of details interest me.
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I thought it was well-written and enjoyable, but the denouement was a letdown for me, assuming that the last line was what that was supposed to be. (Sorry, Mike. :-[ )
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Just for the record, this was one of my three favorite pieces from the batch of EP flash. (The other two were the Kress and the Kling.)
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I tend to enjoy stories where the artiificials are more human than the humans, and this was no exception. I really felt for the poor bot!