Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on April 15, 2011, 08:21:12 AM
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EP288: Future Perfect (http://escapepod.org/2011/04/14/ep288-future-perfect/)
By LaShawn M. Wanak (http://tbonecafe.wordpress.com/)
Read by Dani Cutler (http://audioaddict.libsyn.com/)
Originally published in http://www.ideomancer.com (http://www.ideomancer.com/)
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I saw you at a party once. You stood by the bookshelf, reading a tattered volume on Proust. You wore an orange and yellow XTC shirt beneath brown flannel. I bumped your elbow by accident and you looked up, your eyes startling green.
I smiled and said, “Hi. I’m Nina.”
“Hi. Eric.”
I trailed behind you for the rest of the party. You introduced me to your friends and I laughed at their jokes. Twice, our sleeves brushed against each other.
Around two in the morning, you left with your friends. An hour later, I also left. I crossed the empty campus, humming under my breath, wondering if I’d ever see you again.
The watch on my arm beeped.
*
“This experiment will measure how small changes occurring before a certain event affect its outcome positively and negatively.”
The chair is her creation. She bought the frame on impulse at a medical supply shop. The conical helmet, perforated with slender tubes, fits on top. Whenever she maneuvers her head beneath it, she thinks of the hair dryers at her mother’s beauty salon. All those bulky astronaut bonnets lined in perfect rows, vibrating air molecules to a feverish pitch. She likes this scientific homage to her mother extracting time from thin air.
“Recording of the control event complete. Setting a change in a condition set slightly in the past. The goal of this first jump is to see if this will change the outcome of the event to a more positive circumstance.”
She types on the laptop built into the armrest, then glances at the elaborate flowchart tacked upon the far wall of the laboratory. Written in
her own hand, neat and precise, equations and sums branch and connect like a roadmap of a probability highway.
She wonders which formula will have his lips pressing against hers.
“Test #1. Begin.”
Rated R - language, adult situations
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP288_Future_Perfect.mp3)
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You will generally get no complaints from me whenever you run any kind of story that plays with time or time travel. Two weeks a row? Two weeks of happy listening for me. :)
This story kind of reminds me of the move Primer. Won't say how in case there's someone who hasn't seen it yet, but if you liked this story I think you'd enjoy Primer.
The only thing I'm not sure I really "got" in this story was the smashing of the watch at the end. The watch didn't really seem to be doing what it was supposed to for her anyway; she grew less and less grounded over the course of the story. Maybe destroying the watch was a symbolic way of showing that by the end, she'd truly gone over the deep end and completely given in to her obsession. That's how I interpret it, anyway...
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I enjoyed this one a lot. I, like Grishny, love me some time travel, and it reminded me of Primer, as well. (I pause while basking in the thought of another Primer fan on the forum.)
I liked how she came apart as time went on, trying more and more frantically to achieve an apparently impossible outcome. I took the watch-breaking at the end to mean that she was done with "grounded" and was going to allow herself to just go insane, imagining scenario after scenario.
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I was ridiculously anxious, listening to this. After all, it's by One Of Our Own, which brings up all the stuff about wearing a fixed smile while watching a trash school play. It also makes me hypercritical. Like watching the Beatles at what was the Royal Command Performance; they were brilliant but I couldn't enjoy it.
This I enjoyed. There's nothing about it that was out of place; nothing I would change. The poignancy of Nina's search for love with the man who was clearly not destined to be hers was palpable. The time travel element was handled simply and skillfully, and without obfuscating vocabulary. That would have detracted from the love story. Nina's disintegration (and possible psychosis) showed that she would be searching fruitlessly for the rest of her life, and I felt for her. Very, very nice work, LaShawn, m'girl!
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Well, I just loved this one. To be quite honest I'm a little over time-travel stuff as it's such a common trope in sci-fi -- I feel like it's been done to death, especially having just finished The Man Who Folded Himself, often feted as the last word in time-travel stories.
But this one I enjoyed, more so than last week's. For a start, the time-travel method was more dressed up -- good old pseudo-science in chairs and helmets and electrodes and equations! But more than that, I think the time-travel was a device to study obsession and the idea that "my life would be perfect if only I hadn't/had <insert action>...". This is a pervasive and seductive idea that people follow, living in regret rather than moving on. It's partially why people such as myself like computers and programming -- that's a world that's (broadly speaking) controllable. Effects always have traceable causes that can be put right. People, and life in general, are far from controllable hence the interest in programming. (As an aside, that's kind of ironic since much software development is more about people interaction than technical skill and technique).
Right now, I can think of only one event that, had I the power, I would go back and change. It was an awful, awful misunderstanding that destroyed a friendship. It's sobering to think that putting that one incident "to rights" may have done nothing. Maybe it would have helped. Maybe this misunderstanding would have broken out in another way. Maybe things would be even worse. Who knows? I can't know and I just have to live with it, repairing what I can, if I can.
I know I'm making broad-brush generalisations here but it's just to give you an idea of what I felt for the story.
I felt for the protag, even as she descended further into her obsession and was ultimately unable to pull herself out. It's a little like last week's story where the urge to rewrite your life was on display. However in Tabula Rasa there was a definite end -- the bottle eventually ran out. Here, the protag has no limiting factor. I fear for her.
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I'm sorry to say that I didn't like this one at all.
Ultimately, I believe that Future Perfect failed to hold together on a thematic level. The main character's many permutations - she was clearly altering every possible variable in her life, not just the small ones - showed that there was nothing essentially "her" about herself. I know it's true that I could be almost anyone if the circumstances of my life were changed, but really? Award winning physicist, crack whore, normal nice guy, serial rapist/murderer... these people are so incredibly varied that the changes she was making in each alternate universe were not small. Why were they even a woman and a man in each world? Why did he always have those same striking green eyes? Why weren't they lizard people? Why is the side of my head sticky? Anyway, the point I'm making is what was she hoping to find in these worlds? Given that she was willing to sacrifice everything about herself for this all-consuming "love," why did she think she would still be someone capable of appreciating it if she ever found it?
In other words, you can have determinism, a world in which she is who she is on some level, regardless of her circumstances, and so is he, or you can have free will. You can't have both.
My second beef with the story is more personal than thematic. I though that the character's interpretation of love was incredibly adolescent. I'm lucky enough to be in love with my fabulous wife, and I am confident in saying that love is not a moment of connection in a crowded party. Love is a choice I make day after day. I don't have a problem with a character who has a painfully adolescent idea of love, but if you're going to write a supposedly mature woman - a grad student - with such a teenage idea of love, you've got to tell me why. What's her damage? Why is she a grown woman who still loves like a twelve year old?
This brings me to my final problem with the story: ego dilution. The story spent so much of its time in alternate realities that we never got to know the main character for herself. That potentiated with her weird idea of love to create a deadly cocktail of disbelief that ultimately prevented me from enjoying the story.
Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I seem to dislike a lot of stories right now.
Anyway, I felt like there was a good story buried in here, somewhere, but the premise needed to be thought out a little more and the structure replaced with one that didn't leave me wondering quite so much as to the main character's motivation.
So, yeah. Better luck next time.
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I don't think you're supposed to think she has a really good grasp on love or the right way to handle it, frankly.
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I don't think you're supposed to think she has a really good grasp on love or the right way to handle it, frankly.
Obviously, but a grasp that bad demands an explanation.
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I don't think you're supposed to think she has a really good grasp on love or the right way to handle it, frankly.
Obviously, but a grasp that bad demands an explanation.
I dunno. Have you seen the divorce rate recently? Or listened to any celebrity gossip about marriage and love? I think not having that poor a grasp of love needs an explanation.
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Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I seem to dislike a lot of stories right now.
Yeah. I think that's it. For me, this one won on many levels.
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I didn't like this one for similar reasons to ElectricPaladin I think. Frankly, the guy was an idiot, and obviously he likes Muriel more- so give up! I could have enjoyed it a lot more if, for example, she had been trying to stop someone she loved from dying in an accident or something, or if there was a more compelling reason why their relationship could not work out than simply erm, he's just not that into you. I really liked the ideas behind it and the writing was good, but I couldn't get past the unromantic romance. Plus, sorry, but a universe where you have won a Nobel Prize is a negative outcome?
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Complaining that the romance here wasn't very True-Love-ish is kind of like complaining that Norman Bates was just too much of a Mama's boy to be a believable small business owner. Of course it wasn't romantic; it's not a romance story, but a story about a self-destructive spiral of obsession.
@EP's original point about the consistency in chaos
I think that's rather the heart of the story there. That is, the reason she always fails is precisely because she's so obsessed that she's willing to sacrifice everything she is to achieve this brass ring she's aimed herself at. She goes through a multiplicity, but always with the guiding intention of owning this man's love and devotion, and because she's coming at it from the wrong angle, she can't ever achieve it no matter how many times she tries. Her error is never in any of the branches she makes once she goes back in time; it's more fundamental than that. She's going off the rails back at the first binary, and none of the various endings she finds after that wrong turning will get her where she's going.
The similarity of the trappings (green eyes, gender, lack of lizardocity, etc.) is just for the convenience of the reader, I suspect, and should probably not be fretted over any more than the good-guys-wear-white-hats rule.
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Complaining that the romance here wasn't very True-Love-ish is kind of like complaining that Norman Bates was just too much of a Mama's boy to be a believable small business owner. Of course it wasn't romantic; it's not a romance story, but a story about a self-destructive spiral of obsession.
I agree with that, but if I'm going to read about an obsession I'd rather it was more interesting, that's all. This reminded me of listening to a boring friend banging on about the boy who obviously couldn't care less and analyzing every little detail. This romance is actually very True Love-ish in my eyes, i.e. unbelievable and immature!
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This reminded me of listening to a boring friend banging on about the boy who obviously couldn't care less and analyzing every little detail. This romance is actually very True Love-ish in my eyes, i.e. unbelievable and immature!
As the dude who always ended up being the 'friend' of these chicks, I can assure you that not only is that portrayal accurate, but where it lacks is in not going to the full depth of the psychosis, for which we should all be thankful.
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If the experience is so common (apparently to several people), why is it therefore unbelievable that this story's protagonist is the same way? I'd pretty much agree that this is the spec-fic extension of the person completely obsessed with an uninterested partner and all the neurotic analysis that goes into such a one-sided relationship, but to me that just means the story successfully did its job.
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Oh, I didn't mean that the portrayal of the protagonist was unbelievable, I meant that I can't believe in her love - because it does have that adolescent quality. SO all I'm saying is that, as a romance, I can't believe in it, because it is more like a teenage infatuation/obsession, but as a tale of obsession, I don't find it that interesting because the actual obsession is pretty mundane. If it was meant to be a love story, I would have liked it to have more depth and for the characters to be likeable, but if it was a tale of obsession, I would have liked it to be a more exciting obsession, not a timetravel variant on the neverending analysis you will hear in any teenage girls' changing room.
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...not a timetravel variant on the neverending analysis you will hear in any teenage girls' changing room.
well for those of us who have never frequented teenage girls' changing rooms... ;-)
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I see this story both succeeding and failing at the same time for me. The success is in the capturing the science fiction (not a fantasy bottle to grant time travel wishes like last week) and in writing a good variation on time travel. It is clear the character is slipping away from her supposed place at the beginning and spiralling into some 'bad' ending.
The failure is in the lack of creativity of all the elements. Time travel is widely done. All the potential worlds are almost the same (and the people in it also essentially the same, no lizards, no dead before the moment, no other worlds/alternate history, etc). The driver for the main character is (Romeo and Juliet style) love.
I guess it is a positive reflection on the writing that despite the passée ingredients the story itself comes out fine. On the flip side I think this could be improved by appealing more to the obsession/infatuation and the effects on the character. While these are there, the shifts are sudden (perhaps lacking foreshadowing). Examples:
1 - She is locked out of her lab and at that moment reveals she has it all in her head. A scene earlier of her dreaming about this, doodling equations during meals, anything to show how obsessed she was with the science of it would have led into this better.
2 - Her sudden violence towards the watch could have been foreshadowed by assaulting the door to her lab when locked out, or other violent behaviour towards things earlier.
Both of these just happened to carry the story/idea, they didn't develop. I suppose another approach would be to shorten the jumps in time as she becomes more desperate. At first she spends a night trying to win the man she obsesses over, later an hour, then a moment, obsessed that if she can just find that one second that is right it will all collapse to her dream state.
...not a timetravel variant on the neverending analysis you will hear in any teenage girls' changing room.
well for those of us who have never frequented teenage girls' changing rooms... ;-)
Now I'm off to a teenage girls' changing room - for research! (You guys will bail me out if I am arrested right?)
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I liked this story, certainly more than "A Taste of Time", because initially, there was a definite purpose for the time travel other than "I want to make my life 'right'." Unfortunately, by the end, it devolved into that, which got me thinking about time travel stories, and who writes them, and why.
In the last 6 episodes of EP, we've had three time travel stories. All three have dealt with women "fixing" their lives. All 3 have been written by women. I understand that society puts a lot of pressure on both men and women to have the "perfect" life, are women pressured more? I would initially say yes, because they are pressured more in so many ways,(just look at a magazine rack for evidence of this) and are generally presented with a more romantic, adored princess in the castle view of the perfect life. In "Future Perfect", the MC definitely states her idea of the perfect life, that is a happy marriage with Eric. In "A Taste of Time", the MC leads what most would consider a perfect life, and yet is still unsatisfied because she faces old age and the loss of her spouse. In "Grandfather Paradox", we assume that the third iteration is the "perfect" outcome for the MC, i.e. married and pregnant. I find it interesting that all three stories take a different paths, but are all aiming for that perfect life of husband and children.
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Congratulations, LaShawn! This is your Escape Artists debut, yes? That's great!
I think that's rather the heart of the story there. That is, the reason she always fails is precisely because she's so obsessed that she's willing to sacrifice everything she is to achieve this brass ring she's aimed herself at. She goes through a multiplicity, but always with the guiding intention of owning this man's love and devotion, and because she's coming at it from the wrong angle, she can't ever achieve it no matter how many times she tries. Her error is never in any of the branches she makes once she goes back in time; it's more fundamental than that. She's going off the rails back at the first binary, and none of the various endings she finds after that wrong turning will get her where she's going.
Scattercat summed it up well for me. Because she is obsessed with that particular goal at all costs, she is sabotaging her own attempts. She is approaching the problem with the goal of, as scattercat said, "owning this man's love and devotion". I believe she could have found a future where they ended up happy together if she hadn't taken this tactic with it, but by trying to force it, she has ruined the chance of that outcome, her obsession is coming through and destroying any chance they might have.
Also, in most of these worlds, the guy was not exactly a great guy with stable relationships. Serial killer, crooked cop, cheated on various wives. The best he is ever portrayed is strictly neutral, which only looks good in comparison to the bad versions. So the consistent trend to not end up with him might've been an aspect of this.
Anyway, if you couldn't tell, I thought this story was very good. It did come a little too closely on the heels of the last one, so I'm glad that Mur mentioned why. I can't knock that reasoning. I'm glad to have an Escape Pod this week, even if it was very similar to the last week's premise.
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I liked it. The only thing I wasn't sure about what had happened in the 'original time line' between the scientist and the guy. Did we ever find out why she was so fixated on him and searching for a timeline where they both had a perfect life in the first place? Maybe I missed it, or was it that she chose 'looking for a happy life for me and that guy over there' thinking it would be an easy thing to find and then her theoretical failure over-riding everything else?
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I liked it. The only thing I wasn't sure about what had happened in the 'original time line' between the scientist and the guy. Did we ever find out why she was so fixated on him and searching for a timeline where they both had a perfect life in the first place? Maybe I missed it, or was it that she chose 'looking for a happy life for me and that guy over there' thinking it would be an easy thing to find and then her theoretical failure over-riding everything else?
My own take on this is, she really did start this out as an experiment just to see if she could hook up with the guy. But as more and more outcomes happened she couldn't get past the question of "why not me?"
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I liked it. The only thing I wasn't sure about what had happened in the 'original time line' between the scientist and the guy. Did we ever find out why she was so fixated on him and searching for a timeline where they both had a perfect life in the first place? Maybe I missed it, or was it that she chose 'looking for a happy life for me and that guy over there' thinking it would be an easy thing to find and then her theoretical failure over-riding everything else?
My own take on this is, she really did start this out as an experiment just to see if she could hook up with the guy. But as more and more outcomes happened she couldn't get past the question of "why not me?"
That was how I read it too. She had just chosen that moment because it had had some passing significance to her, but as she relived it over and over, her obsession grew from the constant rejection.
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First, let me go on record as being firmly in the "I liked this" camp. Well done, LaShawn.
But, I am a bit confused by the discussion here. I didn't see this as a time travel story. My understanding was that all of these variations were happening in a petrie dish and that Nina was observing/living them through the microscope in some weird way.
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First, let me go on record as being firmly in the "I liked this" camp. Well done, LaShawn.
But, I am a bit confused by the discussion here. I didn't see this as a time travel story. My understanding was that all of these variations were happening in a petrie dish and that Nina was observing/living them through the microscope in some weird way.
I guess time travel's not the right term. Time viewing perhaps? Or alternate universe viewing?
It might've seemed more like time travel because of the premise's similarities to the week's before which was more certainly time travel.
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Wow! So sorry it took so long to respond, but it's been an eventful month. This got posted right after my 40th birthday, so I've been "celebrating" a lot more than I thought.
Thank you everyone for all your comments. This was the first science fiction story I ever wrote. I was surprised when it got picked up--I know how critical you guys get on the details. ;D I did get some help from my husband on the more technical aspects of the story.
This was indeed a story about obsession. I was vieing for an anthology that had a theme of stories based upon a song of one's choosing. The song I chose was "Circling Around the Moon" by John Mellencamp. It was also based on a thing I used to do back when I got my heart broken by a guy. I used to tell myself, "well, in an alternate universe, he and I would be happy and married with kids..." (the irony is, the last guy I tried with this I wound up marrying and just celebrated our 12th anniversary).
I am aware of the cookie cutterness of the worlds. It's a weakness I've recognized. The only way to stretch my creativity would be, uh, writing more stories. If only there was some magical elixir to speed it up... No? ::sigh::
Thank you, Mur, for buying it. I enjoyed the reading, and the great conversation that stemmed from it!
And now, for my next goal: ::sideeyes Podcastle and gives a long, slow smile::
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And now, for my next goal: ::sideeyes Podcastle and gives a long, slow smile::
Good luck! They tend to be very quick to respond, but they've got a tough gatekeeper.
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And now, for my next goal: ::sideeyes Podcastle and gives a long, slow smile::
Good luck! They tend to be very quick to respond, but they've got a tough gatekeeper.
Even worse: they have TWO tough gatekeepers.
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And now, for my next goal: ::sideeyes Podcastle and gives a long, slow smile::
Good luck! They tend to be very quick to respond, but they've got a tough gatekeeper.
Even worse: they have TWO tough gatekeepers.
You're referring to Schwind and Thompson? I was actually talking about Leckie, the gatekeeper to the other two. I've only ever gotten one story past her (which was then turned down by Swirsky). I'm sure the editors are tough too, but once you're to them you're past the gate and into the foyer.
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Just a small comment on what I saw as a failing in the protagonist's scientific reasoning that has doomed her to failure.
In an infinity of possible universe in which you are trying to find a very specific outcome, there will be a finite number of universes in which you have the desired, very specific outcome, but an infinite number of universes in which the desired outcome does not occur.
Without any sort of guiding principles on how changing variables actually effects possible outcomes, or even a decent hypothesis on what changes what, the protag is essentially doomed to entering the worst lottery odds ever (Odds are 1:∞ ? Sure, give me five tickets...)
Maybe an actual scientist has a different perspective on this?
Not really a criticism of the story, just an observation.
I wasn't wowed by this one overall, but it was solidly OK.
-Adam
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In an infinity of possible universe in which you are trying to find a very specific outcome, there will be a finite number of universes in which you have the desired, very specific outcome, but an infinite number of universes in which the desired outcome does not occur.
Wouldn't there also be infinite universes with the desired outcome? If you could compare infinities, it might be a less probable infinity, but it'd still be infinity.
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I thought about this after I posted... I think I'm just making myself more confused. I don't know how one "infinity" can be larger than another "infinity." By definition, any infinity would be uncountably large, right. And yet, some logical part of my brain thinks just that: that given an infinite number of possible outcomes, finding a specific outcome among them is so impossible as to be indistinguishable from zero possibility.
Am I making any sense? :)
-Adam
In an infinity of possible universe in which you are trying to find a very specific outcome, there will be a finite number of universes in which you have the desired, very specific outcome, but an infinite number of universes in which the desired outcome does not occur.
Wouldn't there also be infinite universes with the desired outcome? If you could compare infinities, it might be a less probable infinity, but it'd still be infinity.
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If it's any consolation, there can, in fact, be different sizes of infinity.
There is an infinity of numbers between 0 and 1, for example. (Decimal places don't ever end to the right. You can keep going forever.) However, there is also an infinity of numbers between 0 and 2. That infinity is a larger infinity because of complicated math that I don't understand. So your initial point was correct: she is looking for a particular infinity of options within an infinity of infinities of options. She isn't being very scientific. I disagree that this is somehow a flaw in the story, since the whole point is very much that she is Not Stable and has ulterior motives the size of Texas for her choice of "experiment."
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If it's any consolation, there can, in fact, be different sizes of infinity.
There is an infinity of numbers between 0 and 1, for example. (Decimal places don't ever end to the right. You can keep going forever.) However, there is also an infinity of numbers between 0 and 2. That infinity is a larger infinity because of complicated math that I don't understand. So your initial point was correct: she is looking for a particular infinity of options within an infinity of infinities of options. She isn't being very scientific. I disagree that this is somehow a flaw in the story, since the whole point is very much that she is Not Stable and has ulterior motives the size of Texas for her choice of "experiment."
What Scattercat said. I will arbitrarily call the numbers between 0 and 1 Infinity1, and the other Infinity2. Not only can you say that Infinity2 is larger than Infinity1, you can also say it's TWICE as large as Infinity1.
Consider the question: If you randomly choose a number within Infinity2, how likely is it that this number is also within Infinity1? The answer is 50% because of the relative infiniteness of the intervals.
This is similar to the question in the story. In this case Infinity1 is redefined as "futures where she ends up in a happy future with a guy" and Infinity2 is "all her possible futures from whatever branching point she's chosen". There are infinite outcomes in both of these sets.
The original question she was asking was "Given strategic selections from Infinity2, is the result within Infinity1"?
The question she ended up pursuing in the end was "How many damned random selections do I have to choose from Infinity2 to get JUST ONE result in Infinity1".
In the beginning she had a hypothesis and set out to prove it or disprove it, which is along the scientific method. In the end she had a particular goal in mind and wanted to find any way to force that result, which is not good use of the scientific method.
Anyway, which is to say, there was nothing wrong with her hypothesis. It's her shifting methods that are the problem.
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If it's any consolation, there can, in fact, be different sizes of infinity.
There is an infinity of numbers between 0 and 1, for example. (Decimal places don't ever end to the right. You can keep going forever.) However, there is also an infinity of numbers between 0 and 2. That infinity is a larger infinity because of complicated math that I don't understand. So your initial point was correct: she is looking for a particular infinity of options within an infinity of infinities of options. She isn't being very scientific. I disagree that this is somehow a flaw in the story, since the whole point is very much that she is Not Stable and has ulterior motives the size of Texas for her choice of "experiment."
What Scattercat said. I will arbitrarily call the numbers between 0 and 1 Infinity1, and the other Infinity2. Not only can you say that Infinity2 is larger than Infinity1, you can also say it's TWICE as large as Infinity1.
Consider the question: If you randomly choose a number within Infinity2, how likely is it that this number is also within Infinity1? The answer is 50% because of the relative infiniteness of the intervals.
This is similar to the question in the story. In this case Infinity1 is redefined as "futures where she ends up in a happy future with a guy" and Infinity2 is "all her possible futures from whatever branching point she's chosen". There are infinite outcomes in both of these sets.
The original question she was asking was "Given strategic selections from Infinity2, is the result within Infinity1"?
The question she ended up pursuing in the end was "How many damned random selections do I have to choose from Infinity2 to get JUST ONE result in Infinity1".
In the beginning she had a hypothesis and set out to prove it or disprove it, which is along the scientific method. In the end she had a particular goal in mind and wanted to find any way to force that result, which is not good use of the scientific method.
Anyway, which is to say, there was nothing wrong with her hypothesis. It's her shifting methods that are the problem.
::brain explodes::
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::brain explodes::
Which is surprisingly appropriate given this week's Escape Pod story "Tom the Universe". :D
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I also enjoyed the complete inverse of this story - the Escapepod (or was it another podcast?) about a woman sending a gigolo back in time to her college self in order to give her more self-confidence.
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this is why i dropped maths
fun story though, I liked how she steadily disintegrated into insanity, obsessing over this one random guy. As someone who has a habit of obsessing over women in this way and wondering 'what if', i can sympathise (that's not to say that i obsess quite to the same extend as this person, but I've always idealised the 'random meeting with a stranger that turns into love' scenario, even if it's a terrible way of finding a compatible partner).
I thought the woman he was with near the end was actually an alternative reality her and the watch beeping at the end would reveal some weird brainfuck where she's not even in her reality anymore or something, but clearly not...
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I liked this a bit better than 'Taste Of Time', mostly because the obsessive behaviour was pretty well observed. Still, I didn't love it. Quite some of the things I didn't like so much about that one came back here like the fragmented style that prevented any real insight into the main character beyond that specific obsession. Another thing that has been pointed out was how unscientific she seemed, and instead of fine-tuning the details completely changing the set-up every time. Also not sure what you can take away from a story like that, there was no real rational reason why it never turned out well (or is the lesson that relations always end badly) which made me suspect that this was just a way for the author to enforce the moral on the character, and in the end, on the reader.
On a side note, about the math discussion above: Infinities can indeed be of different magnitude but the number of real numbers between 0 and 1 is actually the same as that between 0 and 2. You can see this since there is a mapping between every number between 0 and 1 to every number between 0 and 2 (x -> 2x). On the other hand, the number of real numbers between 0 and 1 IS larger than the number of positive integers (another infinity), because there is no way you can map the positive integers to the former set without missing (you guessed it) an infinite number of numbers. Just my finite number of cents.
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I also enjoyed the complete inverse of this story - the Escapepod (or was it another podcast?) about a woman sending a gigolo back in time to her college self in order to give her more self-confidence.
I believe you're referring to Escape Pod 61 "I Look Forward to Remembering You", written by Mur herself before she was EP's editor. That is a very good story.
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Wow, I really liked this story! I loved how the alternate realities started out quite close to the original scenario, and slowly got crazier and crazier as her obsession got stronger and stronger. For me the icing on the cake would have been if we could have gotten to know the MC a little better, especially if we could have seen her slowly "losing her grip" in between the flashes of alternate realities. However, even without that there was enough information presented that it's fun to go back and analyze her from different viewpoints. :)
::brain explodes::
Which is surprisingly appropriate given this week's Escape Pod story "Tom the Universe". :D
I giggled :D
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Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I seem to dislike a lot of stories right now.
Me too.
I think the biggest problem I had with this one was the switching between, what was it, first and third person POVs? I ended up skipping to the next episode after 10 minutes and never finished the story. Perhaps it would have worked better for me in print.
It did remind me somewhat of The Lathe of Heaven, with the constant tweaking to try to "fix" reality.
Well, I just loved this one. To be quite honest I'm a little over time-travel stuff as it's such a common trope in sci-fi -- I feel like it's been done to death, especially having just finished The Man Who Folded Himself, often feted as the last word in time-travel stories.
I think it might be more correct to say that it has been attempted to death, and the overwhelming majority of attempts are either failures, or else the story had very little to do with time travel. Most authors simply force whatever ending they wanted in the first place, rather than the ending that could plausibly happen, and the reader is cheated yet again.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_xXVbcmGg_dg/SbvpP0A5NmI/AAAAAAAAD1g/M2_AjsJ71H0/s320/CharlieBrownLucyFootball.jpg)
So far, only Time Master by Robert L. Forward is on my list of "time travel done well" stories, but I will try to check out The Man Who Folded Himself.