Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on January 25, 2014, 03:05:04 PM
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EP432: Inappropriate Behavior (http://escapepod.org/2014/01/25/ep432-inappropriate-behavior/)
by Pat Murphy (http://www.brazenhussies.net/)
Read by MJ Cogburn (https://twitter.com/MJCogburn)
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The Mechano:
There was a man asleep on the sand.
He should not be here. It was my island. I had just returned to my mechano and it was time for me to go to work. He should not be here.
I studied the man through the eyes of my mechano. They were good eyes. They worked very well beneath the water, at depths down to fifteen hundred meters. I had adjusted them for maximum acuity at distances ranging from two inches to five feet. Beyond that, the world was a blur of tropical sunshine and brilliant color. I liked it that way.
There had been a big storm the night before. One of the coconut palms had blown down, and the beach was littered with driftwood, coconuts, and palm fronds.
The man didn’t look good. He had a bloody scrape on his cheek, other scrapes on his arms and legs, a smear of blood in his short brown hair. His right leg was marked with bruises colored deep purple and green. He wore an orange life vest, a t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and canvas boat shoes.
He stirred in his sleep, sighing softly. Startled, I sent the mechano scuttling backward. I stopped a few feet away from him.
My mechano had a speaker. I tested it and it made a staticky sound. I wondered what I should say to this man.
The man moved, lifting a hand to rub his eyes. Slowly, he rolled over.
“Bonjour,” I said through the mechano’s speakers. Maybe he had come from one of the islands of French Polynesia.
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The Man:
A sound awakened him—a sort of mechanical squawking.
Evan Collins could feel the tropical sun beating down on his face, the warm beach sand beneath his hands. His head ached and his mouth was dry. His right leg throbbed with a dull, persistent pain.
Evan raised a hand to rub his eyes and winced when he brushed against a sand-encrusted scrape on his cheek. When he rolled over onto his back, the throbbing in his leg became a sudden, stabbing pain.
Wiping away the tears that blurred his vision, he lifted his head and blinked down at his leg. His calf was marked with bloody coral scrapes. Beneath the scrapes were vivid bruises: dark purple telling of injuries beneath the surface of the skin. When he tried to move his leg again, he gasped as the stabbing pain returned.
He heard the sound again: a mechanical rasping like a radio tuned to static. He turned in the direction of the sound, head aching, eyes dazzled by the sun. A gigantic cockroach was examining him with multifaceted eyes.
The creature was at least three feet long, with nasty looking mandibles. Its carapace glittered in the sunlight as it stood motionless, staring in his direction.
Again, the mechanical squawk, coming from the cockroach. This time, the sound was followed by a scratchy voice. “Bonjour,” the cockroach said.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP432_InappropriateBehavior.mp3)
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The first few minutes I thought the flat tone of the narration would make it hard to get through. But then the world-building had me hooked, and the tone of the narration seemed to fit well with the voice of the main character.
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Wow. There are stories I've come across in my life that I didn't like, but this is the first time in my 44 years on this planet that I've actually hated one. What an angry, bitter tale dealing with a man who almost dies because a spoiled, sheltered little girl selfishly wants to to be told stories and collect rocks. The fact that he is finally rescued in a rush towards the end where everything is quickly and neatly wrapped up (in sharp contrast to the slow, dull plodding of the other 95% of the story) doesn't make up for how aggravating this piece is, or how it is in no way make more bearable by the narrator who's performance is just as slow, dull, and plodding. There are those who may argue that the narration is indicative of the main character's persona, and that would be a valid argument except that ALL the characters are read in the same, slow, almost halting manor (is English a second language to the reader? She repeats herself at least once, as if nervously reading a speech in front of a room full of people. Not what I expect from any of the Escape Artist shows). Finally, with all due respect to Mr. Stuart, I think he gives this fiction WAY too much credit, finding nuances and layers that just aren't there. Overall very disappointing...very disappointing indeed.
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I cannot disagree with seekerpilgrim more and I can only suspect that he or she has very limited experience with people who fall onto the autistic spectrum. This was a fascinating exploration into how someone who isn't neurotypical might perceive the world.
It is a shameful condemnation of our society that there are people who judge those unable to meet their definition of appropriate behavior due to these conditions.
Do we mock the paraplegic for not being able to walk? If we don't, then how can we look down at someone who is autistic for not being able to follow the same social cues and empathy we are expected to?
Here's a question, though... was the moral of this story that an autistic child could overcome significant barriers to save the man? Or was her victory a result of her 'not being autistic' long enough to get it done? If the latter, then there's a missed opportunity here.
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The first few minutes I thought the flat tone of the narration would make it hard to get through. But then the world-building had me hooked, and the tone of the narration seemed to fit well with the voice of the main character.
Me too, but then the narration seemed to so exactly fit the character of Annie that I began to wonder if the voice was simulated. Whatever, it was a superb match.
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I cannot disagree with seekerpilgrim more and I can only suspect that he or she has very limited experience with people who fall onto the autistic spectrum. This was a fascinating exploration into how someone who isn't neurotypical might perceive the world.
It is a shameful condemnation of our society that there are people who judge those unable to meet their definition of appropriate behavior due to these conditions.
Do we mock the paraplegic for not being able to walk? If we don't, then how can we look down at someone who is autistic for not being able to follow the same social cues and empathy we are expected to?
Here's a question, though... was the moral of this story that an autistic child could overcome significant barriers to save the man? Or was her victory a result of her 'not being autistic' long enough to get it done? If the latter, then there's a missed opportunity here.
Yes indeed. While the repetitive labeling was a bit irksome (to me anyway - I'd made the leap pretty soon, being a psychologist) it's clear that it was necessary and, in fact, might even have been inadequate, given that earlier response. Of course we should tolerate/understand/make allowances for the likes of Annie, but seekerpilgrim shows that for the most part, we're not there yet. I could find no fault at all in the representation of the autistic spectrum in this story; nothing about it felt lacking in authenticity or genuineness. If that kind of situation arises for someone whose perspective on life is filtered by ASD, then that is how it will pan out. Add to that a pretty good story about the use of sensorially depleted environments and remote inhabiting of ASD-friendly 'bodies' and I think it hit a sweet spot.
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I cannot disagree with seekerpilgrim more and I can only suspect that he or she has very limited experience with people who fall onto the autistic spectrum. This was a fascinating exploration into how someone who isn't neurotypical might perceive the world.
I agree that seekerpilgrim was missing the point. Like, every point. I don't see any evidence she was spoiled or selfish? How many times did she state explicitly that she was trying to be helpful? What part of selfishness is spending hours getting coconuts and the like for the man? A 12 year old may not understand the same things about priorities that an adult does, again even before the issue of her very clearly described non-neurotypical mental situation. But also there is a question of power - How one could blame a 12 year old in girl for not immediately forcing people to hear her voice in a hierarchical organization made up of professional adults in a mining company and a medical hierarchy, and run by that doctor who doesn't respect her voice or pay attention to what she says?
For me that was one of the well-written parts of the story - her worldview and mental processes while interesting and relevant, ultimately are only a part of the explanation for why she doesn't get heard.
I was a little distracted by the narrator's stumbling on the reading, though - although I agree about her vocal affect contributing to the feel, I did get a bit impatient with the hesitations and misreadings. I suppose that could be considered part of the atmosphere too..
and I like Thunderscreech's question! I thought the author was addressing that in the use of fairytales. The way Annie responded to the fairytales did suggest to me that if our society treated non-NT people as whole people with their own priorities worth respecting it might radically reshape our social relationships and expectations.
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I eventually quite liked the story (though I'm deeply skeptical it hangs together on further consideration; among other things, the mechanoid's cameras and other logs could presumably be accessed by the doctor who's so upset to have lost video surveillance; modern sailing ships have distress beacons,and the sailing ships of a world with direct neural interfaces should have more; and the idea that the autistic child should, without being asked to do so, find and recover gold-bearing rocks not found by previous, dedicated survey efforts seems unlikely).
But, like most people here, my main reactions were to the reader. I'm sympathetic to the argument that the reader's halting, oddly emphasized, and frequently mispronounced delivery were in some way deeply appropriate to the autism of the main character and narrator. But even giving this argument all the credit I can muster, the style was just too enormously off-putting for far too long before any possible pay-off from this sort of characterization can be realized, and (as noted above) the same vocal quirks were in evidence when the reader was performing other, neurotypical characters, not merely when the reader was portraying the little girl. I don't think the selection of the reader or the decisions of the reader, whichever it was, were a good choice.
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This was a very sweet story: a coming-of-age story of an autistic girl, which I thought was a surprising and original idea, with good execution. I'm not the hugest fan of explicit POV changes (though paradoxically I enjoy epistolary novels/stories), but it's a choice I can respect.
The only disclaimer I would make is that I'm concerned about appropriation -- I don't have a sliver of expertise in autistic spectrum disorders and therefore would take any criticism of people with first or second-hand experience over my enjoyment.
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I found this story painfully slow to. Not in the narration, but in how hard it was for Evan Collins to get rescued.
I think Alisdair got it wrong in the closing. The doctor was not a dumbass. If Uncle Mars had not been petty and stayed away from the island, the doctor would not have assumed it was a tech.
Evan never realized that what saved his life were the two fairy tales be told. Cinderella followed all the rules and got punished by a life unsuitable for the narrator. Trying to tell the doctor about Evan went nowhere and even got the cold scolded. Trying to follow the rules didn't work out. Jack, did evening he wasn't supposed to do in his fairy tale and was rewarded in the end. I think the girl from these lessons and applied them to herself. She broke the rules by leaving her job, talking loud and getting the nurses attention. It saved a man's life and got her a job she liked.. All in all, a very happy ending for a little girl. I think she finally learned how not to be a square peg in a round hole.
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Did Uncle Mars pull strings to get the program dissolved so he could have access to Annie? I mean Dr. Rhodes had ignored some of her explicit request, but I bet he could have gotten away with only a slap on the wrist if it was just left up to the academic hierarchy.
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I'm having conflicting feelings toward Dr. Rhodes.
On one hand he's probably spent the last 32 days talking to Annie. A girl who is by definition not good at communicating. He's gotten practiced at extrapolating from clues she gives him. How is he supposed to be able to tell that when she's raising her voice and repeating something that this time it's important?
On the other hand, Dr. Rhodes is supposed to be an expert at dealing with autism spectrum disorder and has personally taken charge of Annie because he has assured her parents he can work with her. So my sympathy for him stops there.
I guess what makes me worried is that I'm not a trained professional, but I do have people in my life who are neural atypical. Most of the time we communicate well but what if one day they try to communicate something important to me and I don't pick up on it?
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Dr. Rhodes seems to be heavily focused on getting Annie to conform to "NT" standards of social interaction. I'm curious about how the program was intended to work, and how long it was to last. Was she eventually supposed to stop spending most of her time in the sensory deprivation chamber, or was the intention all along to have her continue operating the Mechano for the rest of her life? This would seem counterproductive, since Dr. Rhodes and probably her parents seemed to hope she could learn the "unspoken rules" of socializing and somehow integrate into society. And at the end Uncle Mars apparently has to do some persuading and string-pulling to allow her to continue.
On a different note, I thought it was interesting how, when people failed to understand her, Annie's first thought was that they must not be able to hear her over the sound of the lights and air conditioner, so she raised her voice and repeated herself. Whereas for Rhodes and Kari (sp?), the problem, eventually overcome, was that Annie couldn't know how she needed to phrase things to make them understand. Most of what she told Dr. Rhodes was "there is a man and he needs HELP", which, yes, he should have paid more attention to, but it's a lot easier to ignore than "there is a man and he needs MEDICAL ATTENTION".
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In response to Thunderscreech: it's true I don't have any experience with autistic people, but that is, to be blunt, irrelevant. I didn't like ANY of the characters. I found them all to be frustrating and annoying. I didn't enjoy the story...period. A tale I don't care for doesn't get a pass because one of the characters has a disability or is different. Am I going to get criticized for not liking a story that happens to have a homosexual or transgender character?
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In response to troubler: I didn't miss the point of the story. I understand it was mostly (though not entirely) told from Annie's point of view, but when she (repeatedly) doesn't want to answer any more questions and instead wants to be told a story or collect more rocks (i.e. pouts because an adult is asking her to do something she doesn't want to), then she is acting spoiled and selfish, just like any other 12 year old acting the same way. Also, I stand by my dislike of the narration. The same monotonous style was used for all characters, so the argument that speech pattern was character flavor (which would have worked very well IF the other characters were read differently) fails.
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In response to Dem: I'm not sure how you make the leap from I didn't like this story to I have no tolerance for autistic people. That sounds very politically correct and rather simple. I didn't like the characters (notice plural) or the narration...period.
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all I thought when I finished this story was how very NT the ending was.
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In response to Dem: I'm not sure how you make the leap from I didn't like this story to I have no tolerance for autistic people. That sounds very politically correct and rather simple. I didn't like the characters (notice plural) or the narration...period.
I didn't say that, I was making the point that we have a long way to go before most people, as opposed to just people in their immediate circles, will understand or appreciate the way autism works. Liking the person or not doesn't really come into it and in a work of fiction, maybe especially not, but having an idea of what drives them is quite important. Annie is driven by rigid internal cognitive structures, empathy is impossible, and she is learning social behavior by numbers so that the unexpected throws her and she retreats. It's a very authentic portrayal of what can be an extremely disabling condition.
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I understand it was mostly (though not entirely) told from Annie's point of view, but when she (repeatedly) doesn't want to answer any more questions and instead wants to be told a story or collect more rocks (i.e. pouts because an adult is asking her to do something she doesn't want to), then she is acting spoiled and selfish, just like any other 12 year old acting the same way.
I think this is where the problem lies in understanding Annie's character - she isn't selfish in the sense of cynical manipulation of other people, she is doing her best using the abilities she has, which are actually pretty smart given her age. Social behaviour is as difficult for people with autism as distinguishing colour is for people who are colour blind, which means it's possible to generate rules as templates but not to build in flexibility or generalisability - the top traffic light is almost always red but not all apples are so you might do pretty well on the roads but not so well finding red fruit.
Actually, the people I found most uni-dimensional were the neurotypicals: the thoroughly patronising and self-interested doctor and the greed-driven mine owner - both of them exploiting this naive child for their own purposes but without much character development to give them depth; the nurse who was stereotypically 'nice' and handily the niece (?) of the owner so she could intervene, and the man on the beach was rather thin as a character when a few words about why he was there might have helped. As a tight focus piece about how someone like Annie might react in an emergency situation, I thought it did a fine job (I didn't hear a pout or I'd have been yelling about inconsistency - where was that?) but the supporting characters I felt were rather weak.
Let's be careful though not to make this about whether or not you 'get' autism and blaming people who don't. If you get it, like you might 'get' someone who constantly sabotages relationships or strives to be the centre of attention at the expense of everyone else, then you can infer more about why things are happening. If you don't then it might make less or different sense to you, and that's just a people thing.
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It was very hard for me to sperate this story from the narration - especially since I'm used to the very high standards that escape artists has. I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume something happened to cause this to be used in a rush.
I struggled to make it through the story. The pacing seemed very slow and the characters one dimensional. It appeared to be written mainly to educate about autism - and it does a good job doing that. I dunno - maybe with different narration it would have done better for me. The stumbling over words disrupted the flow of the story and pulled me out from being immersed.
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In response to Dem: I'm not sure how you make the leap from I didn't like this story to I have no tolerance for autistic people. That sounds very politically correct and rather simple. I didn't like the characters (notice plural) or the narration...period.
It's hardly a leap, your stated and repeated contention about "...a spoiled, sheltered little girl selfishly wants…" shows either an active bitterness toward people with autism or a very base-level lack of understanding about how autism works. You might as well be preaching the philosophy of the flat-earthers who thinks gay people should just decide to change their sexual orientation or poor people should just decide to be wealthy.
Nobody has to like all of the stories. It's virtually impossible that everyone will. There are stories I don't care for very much and I'm one of the most open-minded people I know when it comes to storytelling. But when you come in to express a strong negative tone and then mix in either bigotry or ignorance (even benign ignorance), you have to expect blowback.
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a spoiled, sheltered little girl
You know who else really grinds my gears? Parapalegics! I mean, they're obviously lazy. Why don't they JUST WALK?! "Oooh, look at me in my wheelchair. I like to cut in line and park close to stores!" Sell it somewhere else, drama queen, we're not buying it.
And what's the deal with males? They can't even get pregnant?! OH COME ON, you will do just ANYTHING to get out of childbirth! How selfish can you be?
END SIMULATION
Seekerpilgrim: Neither of the above examples would pass a smell-test because we know enough about injuries and primary sex characteristics to understand that the expected behaviors aren't reasonable because reasons. I think you may just not understand that autism isn't a 'mood' or choice. As a society, we've got a long way to go to get to the point where all the neurotypicals figure out that folks with these unique mental structures aren't "just spoiled assholes", they're people who see the world and process social situations and expectations differently from us. For some of them, they can find a niche in our NT-centric society. For others, they're doomed to be a gear without a chain, a puzzle piece that doesn't fit, someone who can never find that 'fit' the rest of us do so casually.
When we can all understand that, we might have a better chance at helping them either find those spots or at least not get in their way for finding them on their own. I thank you for posting in this thread because this is an opportunity to improve the status quo. Echo chambers never show a net gain on anything, so I hope you can take this as an opportunity to find out more about autism.
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Hi guys,
This seems a good time for a reminder of the forum's One Rule (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=3289.0) - being respectful of other posters (and the author, and the editors, etc). It'd be great if we could steer the conversation back to the story itself.
If you'd like to continue an in-depth conversation about misunderstandings regarding autism and related conditions, feel free to start a new board on Gallimaufry (but please do it in a more general vein, not in a "I'm going to continue to take issue with this poster in a new thread" sort of way :P).
Thanks so much. :)
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(Sigh)...I give up. Everyone seems to be missing the point of what I'm saying, so I'll just repeat that I didn't like the story, the characters, or the narration, which is simply my opinion, and move on...
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My wife recommended I listen to this story because it's titled Inappropriate Behavior, and that's pretty much my catch phrase at work (I'm a special ed teacher in a school for kids with severe emotional and behavioral disorders--like autism). I definitely need to give the story another listen, because I was multitasking the first time I sat through it, but I gathered the basic gist of Annie's behavioral therapy to try to act more like an NT and the frustration that pops up on both sides when NT folks and people on the autism spectrum are trying to communicate. The fact that in this case Annie has something genuinely important to tell the doctor just drives the point home.
I'll agree with most other people that I thought the narration wasn't the best, but that was mostly because of the few miscues in the reading that I noticed; a few minor edits to the audio track probably could have fixed those without too much trouble. The narrator's choice of voice didn't bother me, though I do agree that it wasn't a good fit for the voice of the NT characters. Still, glancing over the reader's bio I noted that she's a special ed teacher, so recording is probably a hobby of hers, so it might be better to cut her some slack.
As for the plodding pace wrapped around the central communication problem... yeah, that's totally accurate. In this story it's because the doctor's kind of oblivious to the fact that Annie may have something truly important to say, social rules be damned, but it should be noted that these kinds of frustrations are two way. Almost daily I have an exchange with one of my autistic students where I have to remind him multiple times that class is nearly over and he needs to get ready to transition. It wears on my patience, because the information I'm trying to give him is important, but I have to remind myself that there's a difference in communication style. Just telling him is usually not enough to get confirmation that he understands; he responds better with a light touch on the shoulder. At the same time I get frustrated with what's necessary to help deliver information to him, I can see that he gets frustrated by interactions with others because he just doesn't understand the social cues. My school does a lot to try to help him and our other students learn those behavioral skills that they need to be able to navigate NT society, but we know that for our autistic students, their experience of the world is not the same as ours (or even as each other's), and they will never develop an intuitive grasp of those social cues that we take for granted.
So yeah, there are probably some legitimate complaints about the pacing and structure of the story; I need to give it another closer listen before I could offer any input on those questions. As a purely didactic exercise to explore the experience of a person with autism, I think it's pretty good. Of course, I know that some folks just want a good story over a lesson about socially non-dominant perspectives, and that's fine. The educator in me just wants to squee that someone went to the trouble of trying to write a story about a group that I work with.
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I found the narration extremely effective. The frustration of Evan, who is trying to save his life by slowing it down to inches of frustrating communication - the doctor, who assumes Annie is simple and reducible to rules of propriety - and Annie herself who struggles to understand and be helpful while living in the world as Kafka's cockroach.
Each of these people, had they been able to figure out a simple thing, obvious in retrospect, could have gotten Evan rescued a bit faster. Since this isn't a Kafka story, Evan didn't die and Annie experienced some personal growth in the hands of someone who stopped long enough to listen. The tension towards the end was palpable and real.
One of my friends has a very young child who is autistic. She listens to him very carefully, trying to understand his world so she can be there when he needs a translator and advocate. I thought of her while the tension built up until Annie chose self-agency in a small way.
As for the narration, I enjoyed it. I thought I wouldn't, but her voice grew on me. I would listen to her again.
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I enjoyed this story very much. As someone who is just neurotypical enough, I had not trouble understanding Annie's POV and honestly envied her her island retreat. I want a mechano. Sometimes. Kudos to the author for treading that fine line between preaching and storytelling and landing on the storytelling side of things.
As far as Dr. Rhodes is concerned, I think he served as a fine example of when NTs are incapable of the same sort of analysis of situations that they accuse the atypicals of. Terrible sentence structure, but you know what I mean, I hope. Basically, he "forgot" about the fluorescent lights and then completely perseverated with his own agenda even when it was clear that it wasn't' working that day. He didn't read the cues either.
The "successful" characters stepped outside their own social milieu long enough to effect changes that while uncomfortable in the short term, were greatly beneficial in the long term. Annie got the man off of her island after resorting to inappropriate behavior and Uncle Mars got Annie after having to create a series of arrangements that would otherwise seem nonsensical to an outsider.
Yes, it was an NT ending of a sort, but since our main characters liked fairy tales so much, I don't feel that did a disservice to her atypical character.
As for the narration: I think the narrator has an interesting voice that was fairly well suited to the material at hand. But, it seemed she perhaps needed to read the material a few more times to help with some of the stumbles and then a more fine-toothed editing. There were instances when I heard the editing "clicks" so I know the piece was edited somewhat, but a more thorough job was needed to catch the stumbles so it read more fluently. If it was me doing the reading I probably would have read the whole thing over again instead of resorting to the painstaking editing. I am speaking from experience here.
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I loved this story. I think it was really effective at conveying Annie's and Evan's frustration and their similar-yet-different approaches to solving the problem.
A few people have talked about the story having an "NT ending". It didn't seem that way to me. An NT ending would have her hugging Evan and/or becoming friends with at least one person her own age, not dropping out of school at 12 years old to live in a tank and avoid all human interaction except for a few sessions with a therapist each week.
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At first I thought this story was going to be too similar to Elizabeth Bear's Tideline (It took me a while to realize that it was actually a human-run drone instead of an AI-bot -- I thought that Evan was wrong about that, right until Annie woke up in her tank.). But despite the initial similarities of shipwreck, beach, and robot searching for objects, I thought the story was interesting anyway, and it soon became revealed as its own individual thing.
There were a few repetitive elements within the story, but I thought that style fit well with the theme of fairy tales, which also often use repetitive elements.
The narration didn't bother me as it did some people. I was doing chores at the time, so I noticed only one actual stumble, and I thought there was enough difference to cue me when POV shifted.
It was such a breakthrough when Annie realized she had to try something else, and managed to communicate the problem to someone who listened! And yeah, the nurse's rich owner-uncle was a bit convenient, but again, fairy tale, and I was quite satisfied with the happy ending.
I do wonder whether Evan deliberately chose Jack and the Beanstalk to encourage Annie to break rules -- if so, that was very clever. I also wonder more about his background. However, I'm fine with those questions being left to speculation rather than answered in the story.
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This story took a little bit of time to grab my attention, but it did. I found this to be one of the most rich and complex stories offered here. I was totally impressed with the narrative techniques used. There are so many things that I hope we talk about, aside from the recreation of a first person narrative told from someone on the autism spectrum.
Here are a couple of elements that really intrigued me:
First was the parallel dynamic between Dr. Rhodes and Annie then Evan and Annie. Of course we get alternative outlooks on the differences between appropriate and inappropriate behavior, but I liked how the author used the Rhodes/Annie relationship to emphasize a very paternalistic and subjugating interaction in which Dr. Rhodes, under the guise of trying to help, forced Annie into a confined role of the autistic child, the object of a professional gaze. It prevented him from hearing what she was saying because he assumed to know what she meant. The Evan/Annie relationship is interesting because it seems to reverse the Rhodes/Annie relationship. Here, Evan is beset by his environment, having difficulty communicating and understand the norms and appropriate behavior to engage Annie. The affectless visage of the mech makes it more difficult still because Evan cannot read information from facial expressions or other cues that NT folks might rely upon. I don't care how you slice it ... that's plain cool story telling.
Second is how the fairy tales are used as allegories of normal and appropriate behavior. Cinderella was a great choice to contrast with Jack and the Beanstalk. It gave me a chuckle when Annie noted how often people went to balls and parties in stories like Cinderella. Isn't that true? The same holds true for our modern versions of allegorical tales of normalcy and fantasy: cartoons. Ever notice how many cartoons (especially for girls ... my children restrict my sampling to these data) involve people holding parties and having fashion shows? Anyway, what I liked was how Annie dissected the Cinderella fable to show the absurd caricature of normal and appropriate behavior that it presents. Then, her analytic comparison to Jack and the Beanstalk uncovered wonderful issues of normalcy and appropriateness in a context where character actions feel more realistic for their moral ambiguity (setting aside the fact that there is nothing normal about giants and giant beanstalks). I loved Annie's observation at the end that Evan was Cinderella and she was the Fairy Godmother and that there was a hint of sadness and remorse in her observation that by calling Uncle Mars to the island that she sent Evan to the ball.
Third, I was really intrigued by the idea of using the mech as a theraputic tool. It says something about where my mind has been lately, but the whole technique seems to reflect thinking of Soviet Psychology in the the mid 20th century, that individual development, the development of self is inextricably connected to the environment and culture. Theraputic interventions might include developing mediating devices that help a patient achieve beyond his/her abilities on the expectation that those mediating interventions eventually become internalized as guides or rules of thumb or habits. The environmental controls of the mech, I imagine were perhaps ideal in that they allowed Annie to adjust stimuli that bothered her. Mediation by learning to control the stimuli themselves. When Dr. Rhodes met with Annie, he commented on the buzzing and flickering of the lights and it appeared to me that he was trying to see if Annie had internalized the ability to exert control over external stimuli by noting that she could turn off the light. Fascinating stuff.
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I have to say I'm on Seekerpilgrim's side on this one. The story seemed like it was written by someone writing their first work of fiction, and the narration seemed like it was done by someone just learning to read. I confess I quit during the Cinderella story, at which point I was nearly in tears of frustration.
The second point has been covered -- maybe this was a rush job, with no time for the narrator to read the story once through before recording or was aiming for a particular effect. Either way, it really didn't work for me.
As to the first point, there was just so much telling rather than showing. For example, we learn the girl is in a sensory isolation tank to operate her mechano, kind of like in the movie Pandora. But then we learn about the precise constituents of the broth she's floating in. Then we get this detailed explanation of NT and non-NT reactions to Cinderella. Good grief, I felt like I was being read to out of a textbook by a third grader. Some of the commenters seem to be suggesting that this impression was precisely the point. Maybe that would have worked better with a shorter story.
Count me in the China Mieville camp: tell me what the characters are doing, but don't explain every little thing about how they're doing it. The example he gave once, I think, is that in a non-SF story, the author might just say a character called someone. In an SF story, the author so often feels compelled to explain how a telephone works. This story seemed an extreme version of that latter impulse, and frankly it drove me up the wall.
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I loved this story! It is complex and tangly and hard to explain to my friends (which I have tried on multiple occasions since my first listen). I found myself rooting for Annie and her bravery.
I applaud, but disagree with the brave voices that didn't like the story. I wonder if some of them/you aren't suffering from a lack of experience with people who are autism or asperger's, or other neurological problems. RATHER they do have that experience and didn't realize it. You might have met someone and just think they are a jerk (can I say A-hole). Its hard to tell the difference but it is an important one. These folks aren't hard to communicate with because they chose to be. They can find societal interaction to be extremely challenging. That's why I find Annie so awesome. Even if she was just a selfish little girl (like a Francis Burnett Hodges character) she breaks through her problem to save a man's life. That's pretty heroic.
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Danthelawyer - this is an official moderator warning. Your substantive criticisms of the story and the reading, as contained in your second paragraph onwards, are fine. Your disparaging remarks about the author and narrator in the first paragraph are not. Especially in a thread where a moderator already reminded everyone of the rules of conduct. By all means keep being critical but please keep the gratuitous snark aimed at individuals out of future posts.
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I have to say, I loved this story. Like so many good SF stories it highlighted a social problem using a near future technology situation. I did have some concerns about the audio quality, but not so much it destroyed my enjoyment of the story.
I loved it because it explained to us "NeuroTypicals" how someone effected by autism or a neurologically atypical person might see things, how their goals and motivations might be different and how their communication may be hampered by a lack of understanding regarding social rules and overwhelming social distractions. I wondered if such a virtual reality environment might facilitate communication with someone in this situation, and whether this might be a viable treatment. After all, we see that Evan the anthropologist, who did not take assumptions as to what was proper behavior (as this was his training, to understand different greeting rituals) was able to communicate more clearly.
I liked how it started out with the Meccano, and a question in my mind as to whether this was an AI or an alien or a human, which underlined the differences between the child and the NTs who surrounded her.
The fairytales, which are usually meant/used to teach social norms, were also a point in contrast which provoked a lot of thought. We see the stepmother and stepsisters "punished" and Cinderella rewarded for her long suffering, but does this really teach the right lesson, that women should just take punishments that are handed out. similarly If we are supposed to follow the rules, why then is Jack rewarded for his foolishness and theft? Is it because the giant was bigger? Sure the giant tried to eat jack, but only when Jack invaded his home. In some parts of this country the castle doctrine would have ruled the giant the tragic hero.
To me the "lesson" if there is one is to listen to others and try and communicate, and the story was an enjoyable illustration of the same.
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I apologize. And I mean that sincerely. My own behavior was clearly inappropriate. I'm afraid if I say more it will sound like a non-apology apology, and I don't want that, but at the same time I don't want to seem brusque. I look forward to engaging more constructively with this group.
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I was very excited to hear "Inappropriate Behavior." I am a long time educator who has used SF to help pre-service teachers better understand the challenges of teaching when I worked at university. I have experience working with children/students who have a variety of different learning abilities. I found the description of Annie (despite Alasdair [sic] repeatedly calling her "Mary" at the story's end) to be extremely insightful. The challenges to communication by all characters in the story are a daily experience for me and learners I am guiding. The seeming buffoonery of Dr. Rhodes vividly captures the challenges of communicating with an autistic learner. The desire to help the learner sometimes causes even the best intentioned to over simplify or too specifically focus an interaction. Before writing him off as a well meaning fool, I feel he should be credited with getting Annie into an environment where she blossomed. As so many have already mentioned, I too admire the courage and determination of the coming-of-age Annie. I was particularly fond of how she seemed at ease in the meccano and so ill at ease in her own skin (meat suit). I continue to ponder how strongly Annie identified as a non-NT and how determined she was not to become NT. My experiences with autistic learners are that some are very eager to communicate with NTs and others seem disinterested in things beyond their rich inner worlds. Some are very helpful and master social conventions well while others seem completely uninterested in any social conventions. Annie's desire to be alone and cut off from sensory overload seems more a NT coping mechanism (say of an extreme introvert) than an autistic learner trait. Some have mentioned Annie is selfish in their analysis but I see her more as someone trying to cope with the situation around them. Filtering and making sense of input is an isolated exercise for most of us. It behooves us to recall making sense of the world is a very selfish process for all of us. The irony is that all our perceptions are actually social constructs.
Finally, I would like to know where I can get the text of the story. I may have occasion to use it as part of a philosophy/psychology of education course. I have used the story "Billy's Bunter" in the past and want to expand using SF stories to help communicate challenging information. As Annie says, "Tell me a story" seems a better approach than the traditional Socratic method.
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I was walking along a quiet street when I suddenly felt like cheering at the top of my voice. Hearing Annie tell Kiri about the problem felt like a winning goal just before the end of a game. The bravery and personal growth exhibited brought a tear to my eye.
I'd love to know if the author has any personal experience with an autism-like condition. I have some little experience as a teacher but this came across as very realistically yet sensitively handled.
I thought the fairy tales viewed through Annie's perspective were fascinating and added to my understanding of her.
The moral grey area was thought provoking. She is clearly content with her mecha form. But using her interests for profit making? Hmmm.
I hated Dr Rhodes. Hated. I know arrogant doctors have a basis in reality, but it was the combination of self satisfied smugness combined with his position of power than made him such an effective (and unknowing) antagonist.
This was one of the best stories I've heard on Escape pod for ages.
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Finally, I would like to know where I can get the text of the story. I may have occasion to use it as part of a philosophy/psychology of education course. I have used the story "Billy's Bunter" in the past and want to expand using SF stories to help communicate challenging information. As Annie says, "Tell me a story" seems a better approach than the traditional Socratic method.
We almost always post the text of the story with the episode postings on the website. You can get this one here: http://escapepod.org/2014/01/25/ep432-inappropriate-behavior/ (http://escapepod.org/2014/01/25/ep432-inappropriate-behavior/)
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Fascinating discussion for a fascinating story. :)
I really appreciated the story's portrayal of what felt like an authentically autistic mind. An obvious connection, but it put me strongly in mind of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon. One thing that I was really curious about though was Annie's ridiculously frequent use of the term NT and her fixation on whether others were or were not NT. Is that something that would be on her mind so often? For me it came off as forced and sort of pushed the story over the line from an effective narrative into "now I will teach you a lesson about autism" territory. Which is really sad, because I think it's great to see more stories from that perspective.
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Fascinating discussion for a fascinating story. :)
I really appreciated the story's portrayal of what felt like an authentically autistic mind. An obvious connection, but it put me strongly in mind of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon. One thing that I was really curious about though was Annie's ridiculously frequent use of the term NT and her fixation on whether others were or were not NT. Is that something that would be on her mind so often? For me it came off as forced and sort of pushed the story over the line from an effective narrative into "now I will teach you a lesson about autism" territory. Which is really sad, because I think it's great to see more stories from that perspective.
My experience of people with an autistic condition is that, if something is in their mind, it's in their mind and that's that!
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Fascinating discussion for a fascinating story. :)
I really appreciated the story's portrayal of what felt like an authentically autistic mind. An obvious connection, but it put me strongly in mind of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon. One thing that I was really curious about though was Annie's ridiculously frequent use of the term NT and her fixation on whether others were or were not NT. Is that something that would be on her mind so often? For me it came off as forced and sort of pushed the story over the line from an effective narrative into "now I will teach you a lesson about autism" territory. Which is really sad, because I think it's great to see more stories from that perspective.
My experience of people with an autistic condition is that, if something is in their mind, it's in their mind and that's that!
Haha, excellent point! I guess my question is better phrased as wondering whether that is a concept that is frequently taught to autistic children/pre-teens, and if so what is the goal in doing so? To help them understand that they are different? To help them evaluate how others are responding to them? I love that people who work in special ed have participated in the thread and find it valuable as a learning experience.
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I don't come here to post often, but I loved this story so much I just had to come and say so.
I was totally sucked into the story and totally emotionally tied up into wondering/worrying that the poor man on the island wouldn't survive. I was quite happy to get the happy ending for everyone involved even if it did seem a bit too perfect.
I loved how it really highlighted the different parts of communication and how so many things we take for granted can really change how things work out when they aren't available.
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Fascinating discussion for a fascinating story. :)
I really appreciated the story's portrayal of what felt like an authentically autistic mind. An obvious connection, but it put me strongly in mind of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon. One thing that I was really curious about though was Annie's ridiculously frequent use of the term NT and her fixation on whether others were or were not NT. Is that something that would be on her mind so often? For me it came off as forced and sort of pushed the story over the line from an effective narrative into "now I will teach you a lesson about autism" territory. Which is really sad, because I think it's great to see more stories from that perspective.
My experience of people with an autistic condition is that, if something is in their mind, it's in their mind and that's that!
Haha, excellent point! I guess my question is better phrased as wondering whether that is a concept that is frequently taught to autistic children/pre-teens, and if so what is the goal in doing so? To help them understand that they are different? To help them evaluate how others are responding to them? I love that people who work in special ed have participated in the thread and find it valuable as a learning experience.
I don't hear the NT thing much in the UK but elsewhere it seems almost to have become a way of saying 'if you're going to label us, we're going to label you'. This is quite affirming for many who want to own and value their autistic characteristics - the ways of thinking that make them unique - while at the same time managing to make being neurotypical somewhat of a ho-hum state to be in. Vive la difference, I say!
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I thoroughly enjoyed this story, although there was a point when I wanted to take that stupid, idiotic doctor and throttle him with my bare hands. I've had some small experience being around teenagers with autism since I have friends who have children on the autism spectrum (one very high and one slightly farther down). It felt quite realistic to me, and I sent the link to the story text to my friends, even though they're not used to reading science fiction.
I didn't notice any major issues with the narration. Judging by what has been said, I must have been sucked into the story enough that I just didn't notice whatever problems there were.
I also really enjoyed the breakdown of the fairy tales. :)
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After hearing this story, I felt as though this was an excellent writing exercise that turned into a sale. Trying to write in the another person's voice is always difficult, and while I only have casual knowledge of people with mental disabilities (my wife used to work with high school students of this nature), I think the writer did a very good job. However, I think it is fair to say that while the story was true to the character it was not entertaining (to me).
I very much disliked the narration. Once I realized that Annie was autistic, I thought it was a clever device, but the same halting, difficult tone was used for all the characters. Although the story started of in 1st person, it did not always stay there, so there is no logic for this. Given the long list of credits of the narrator and her background (Special Education English teacher), I surmize that she made a conscious choice. Unfortunately, I didn't like it.
I think Seekerpilgrim was given short shrift. He never even came close to saying something nasty about autistic people. He commented on a character in a Fictional story. He didn't run out and steal candy from an kid with Asperger's Syndrome nor knock over a paraplegic in a wheelchair.
"...a spoiled, sheltered little girl selfishly wants…" Annie said it herself - she didn't want to answer questions, so she changed the topic (sounds kinda selfish). She may not have grasped the seriousness of the man's situation, but she still just didn't want to do what he wanted.
Autistic people can be selfish too, and I believe, by definition, autistic people have to be sheltered - they have serious trouble coping otherwise. And spolied ;-) She has her own Mecha - totally spoiled! But seriously, people with autism are People - flaws and strengths both - when she told Kira that was huge for her, when she didn't want to answer Evan's questions anymore, not so much.
I liked Asomatous' comments.
In the same vein as this story - check out the movie Gabrielle (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3106846/) Canada's submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars (the main character is played by a woman with mental disabilities).
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This story worked extremely well for me. I think one of the best things about stories is that they allow you to see the world from another point of view, and I thought this one did that in spades. I've dealt with people on the autism spectrum, and I thought that it rang very true in terms of the types of reactions both by and to them. I also thought the narrator did an excellent job with the character.
I thought Alasdair was a little hard on the doctor in outro, though. I think it was expecting an awful lot from him to decipher what the child was driving at, especially when he had a perfectly good reason to believe he understood what the problem was. I'm also not quite as impressed with the uncle. As others had pointed out, if he'd simply done his job and fixed the cameras instead of "refusing on general principles," others would have immediately been able to understand about the shipwreck survivor. I think they both exhibited some pretty common human flaws.
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I though Alasdair was a little hard on the doctor in outro, though. I think it was expecting an awful lot from him to decipher what the child was driving at, especially when he had a perfectly good reason to believe he understood what the problem was.
I think you're right. The doctor did as he was surely trained to do - his profession consolidates the power to make diagnoses and lay out treatment plans in its practitioners. So it is no surprise to me that he acted paternalistically. That's kind of his job. Could he have listened a bit more, I'm sure he could have, but I think we should keep in mind that it's easy to dislike the doctor in this story because our narrative vantage point allows us to see where the miscommunication lays.
The reason our castaway has some luck talking with Annie has more to do with the nature of his situation and his relationship to Annie. He has to listen because he has no lever of persuasion like the doctor has.
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It took me a little while to warm up to the story. It helped once I got to know her nature a little more--the first section with Evan seemed to drag on some. And then I didn't really love it until I was sure that her POV felt pretty authentic to autism as I understand it. The pacing was a little slow, and frustrating at times, but just think how slow and frustrating it must've been for Evan. So it worked for me.
The narration was a bit difficult at times. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, since the narration was the same for all the POV characters. The main thing that tripped me up, though, was that I didn't catch the POV transitions for the first 1/3 of the story or so because my ear didn't catch the character name in the header as being formatting rather than speech.
The fairy tales made a good framing device for her understanding--I liked that a lot. I really wanted to slap the doctor at several times during the story. And I understand that dealing with Annie has to be incredibly frustrating for anyone. But he's the one who's supposed to be helping her, he has the responsibility to at least listen to what she has to say. The first conversation I could understand to some degree--she didn't manage to say a great deal. But in the second conversation she said a man needed help. That phrase means a variety of things, and he should've taken the time to ask what kind of help instead of just dismissing it out of hand. Even if it were just a technician. if the man needed help she was relaying useful information.
I don't understand what people are saying when they say that the ending is NT. What's NT about it? If it were NT it wouldn't end with her being exploited by a Uncle Mars the corporate man. But from her POV it is a happy ending because she gets her mechano and gets to do what she was doing with it before anyway--collecting rocks and being helpful. Is uncle Mars exploiting her? Yes. But he's also allowing her to do what she wants to do, and he is the only one who can allow this. He is an interesting character in that he acts in the most possible selfish way, which also happens to be the most selfless way from her POV.
From Annie's point of view, the thing that spoke to me the most was the part about eye contact. I have always had trouble figuring out eye contact. I am missing the wiring that everyone else seems to have which tells me what the appropriate proportion of time to look at somebody while conversing with them. So I either end up staring, or end up avoiding their gaze, either thing makes many people uncomfortable. And if I'm fatigued, my eyes start twitching uncontrollably the more that I focus on trying to control them. Sometimes, especially in situations that make me nervous anyway, trying to manage this ends up taking up so much of my focus that I'm barely able to pay attention to the words being exchanged so that I seem distant and uninterested when I'm really just trying desperately to seem normal enough so that the other person won't just walk away. It has crossed my mind before that I might be in serious trouble if I ever am taken into a police station for questioning--I've heard on cop shows at least that they can tell if a person is lying by watching their eyes for too much or too little eye contact. I hope I have a rock-solid alibi if that ever happens.
Autism is often referred to as a spectrum. I think that NeuroTypical comes with a spectrum too, and though I'm socially functional in most respects, I'm off-center towards the less NT end. I think my level of NT is not unusual in my career as engineer, as we tend to get more leeway on the social norms than many other people because it can be channeled toward rigorous scientific work with good benefit to all--science has rules that are written down and easy to understand.
I've learned a lot about autism from Temple Grandin (including the movie), who really has a great story for how she managed to not only function in the world, but has managed to turn her atypical manner of thinking to make positive changes--such as redesigning cattle chutes so that the animals don't become terrified at the sight of them.
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NT is nothing term really because it's just the so-called normal end of the same scale as autism. If you have enough of the characteristics associated with autism, the diagnosis is likely to be made (especially if this is causing you problems) but further back along the scale, with fewer and fewer of these, you might be described as NT. It's no more a useful label than Emotionally Typical might be if you don't have a bipolar disorder but, as I said somewhere way back when (up there), it's used increasingly by people with autism who want to own their characteristics and also have a bit of a dig at everyone else. So with all of us being on the same scale, there's a point at which not quite autistic becomes not quite not autistic and away you go.
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After reading the reviews, I may have to give this another chance, but after the first ten minutes, I turned it off due to the narration and story pacing. I actually agreed with SeekerPilgrim and DerangedMind, that this might have been rushed or an afterthought as an episode.
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I started off hating the story, and gradually warmed up to it, until I was sold at the end. I think part of what made the story very hard to digest is that the narrator tripped up several times during the first 30 minutes of the reading, sounding more like a substitute high school teacher trying to pronounce a long list of foreign names than a professional narrator giving a reading of a story. I am fairly sure this was unintentional, as the narration seemed to pick up pace and the characters even sounded colorful after that. The halted reading, together with the narrator's accent and mispronouncement of word ("KAR-apace" and what I think was "pervasiveness"), plus poor audio quality (at times), made for a hard listen.
Once I got past that part, though, the story itself was decent. The characters were a bit one-dimensional, but I enjoyed the view through the eyes of Annie (even if Alistair did keep on calling her Mary at the end). The plot was simplistic, and to be honest, quite full of holes, but it performed its purpose, as the story wasn't really about what was happening as much as it was a vehicle to talk about autism.
Slight nit-picks:
* Evan was a complete idiot to be sailing alone, and apparently without any sort of radio contact, gps beacon, or trip plan. Who the hell does something like this? If he wasn't lucky enough to have happened to wash up on an island where an autistic kid happened to be playing, he would have been a bleached skeleton in the sand long before anyone found him.
* The doctor was also an idiot. I"m not a psychiatrist, but I can't imagine any responsible doctor thinking that it's a good idea to let an autistic person just roam around on an island completely unsupervised, even if there was zero chance that she could have actually hurt herself. From the sound of it, the Mechano was a very expensive piece of equipment. You'd think with all those millions of dollars invested in being able to remotely control a mining robot from half way around the world, they could have spared a monitoring/recording system that could see what Annie was doing (similar to cockpit recordings of military UAV's). I realize that having the doctors rely on secondary cameras was a plot device, but it was a very poor and contrived one.
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You'd think with all those millions of dollars invested in being able to remotely control a mining robot from half way around the world, they could have spared a monitoring/recording system that could see what Annie was doing (similar to cockpit recordings of military UAV's). I realize that having the doctors rely on secondary cameras was a plot device, but it was a very poor and contrived one.
That's a really good point. You'd think that if they give something that expensive to miners they'd want to monitor what the miners are doing with them, so that a miner can't just go rogue and sell his suit to another company. So you'd think that would be built in already.
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You'd think with all those millions of dollars invested in being able to remotely control a mining robot from half way around the world, they could have spared a monitoring/recording system that could see what Annie was doing (similar to cockpit recordings of military UAV's). I realize that having the doctors rely on secondary cameras was a plot device, but it was a very poor and contrived one.
That's a really good point. You'd think that if they give something that expensive to miners they'd want to monitor what the miners are doing with them, so that a miner can't just go rogue and sell his suit to another company. So you'd think that would be built in already.
It's been a while, so I may not be recalling right, but I had the impression that the mining companies basically donated the robot to the therapy center as a tax write-off when they got their new equipment, so the doctor/hospital was getting it second hand and may appreciate the therapeutic applications of giving an autistic person a toy and some tasks to see how they perform, but didn't necessarily know all of the ins and outs of using the device since it wasn't actually built for their purposes.
I guess I would assume that if the mining company was giving something like that to the hospital, it would have come with certain perimeters like only being able to operate within a certain range of the island. It's also entirely possible that the mining company made the donation in something of a "Last Starfighter" scenario… "We don't really have the money to keep operating in this area, but we suspect something might be there, so we'll give the system to somebody that will keep it moving daily, we'll get the tax write-off, and we'll monitor passively so that if they discover something, we can swoop in and make the operator a superstar and earn a ton of money in the process."
I have an imagination that fills in a lot of gaps, so I don't always need to be told as much. Of course, it also means I do a lot of reaching that can stray far afield of the author's intent. :P
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I, too, found the reading to be very drawn out. Whether that was intended or not, I am not sure. Certainly, it is a plus for the plot that it was engaging enough to keep me listening.
In terms of themes, I really liked the idea of exploring communication problems. Annie's NT issues provided the mechanism through which Dr. Rose could not understand her. But I took the point more broadly that it is very easy to sometimes not comprehend what you are hearing because of what you expect to hear based on your expectations of the speaker, the situation, etc.
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Oh, and thanks to all in this thread for helping me come to a better understanding of autism and spectrum behaviors generally. I appreciated the insights.
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It's also entirely possible that the mining company made the donation in something of a "Last Starfighter" scenario… "We don't really have the money to keep operating in this area, but we suspect something might be there, so we'll give the system to somebody that will keep it moving daily, we'll get the tax write-off, and we'll monitor passively so that if they discover something, we can swoop in and make the operator a superstar and earn a ton of money in the process."
I think that if that were the case, then Uncle Mars would've made the minimal effort required to keep cameras running so he could be more likely to hear about discoveries. He seemed very surprised by the discovery, having thought the area thoroughly tapped.
I have an imagination that fills in a lot of gaps, so I don't always need to be told as much. Of course, it also means I do a lot of reaching that can stray far afield of the author's intent. :P
Overinterpreting tangents of a story is one of my favorite pastimes! Sometimes I like unsupported speculations better than the story. ;D
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It's also entirely possible that the mining company made the donation in something of a "Last Starfighter" scenario… "We don't really have the money to keep operating in this area, but we suspect something might be there, so we'll give the system to somebody that will keep it moving daily, we'll get the tax write-off, and we'll monitor passively so that if they discover something, we can swoop in and make the operator a superstar and earn a ton of money in the process."
I think that if that were the case, then Uncle Mars would've made the minimal effort required to keep cameras running so he could be more likely to hear about discoveries. He seemed very surprised by the discovery, having thought the area thoroughly tapped.
Yes and no. Most security cameras only ever get viewed on recordings after a crime is concerned. Similarly, it would be totally in line with how business operates to leave a low-cost PR project to run with no oversight other than a 6 month review or as needed. This could be a case of the "as needed" coming up before the 6 month review. It's typical in business, and in the world. We just heard about Voyager leaving our solar system -- when did you last hear a report about it before that?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's not so atypical to strain credibility in the least. And really, it's the kind of detail you would mention in a longer story, but that could be cut in a short since it's not integral to the plot.
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It's also entirely possible that the mining company made the donation in something of a "Last Starfighter" scenario… "We don't really have the money to keep operating in this area, but we suspect something might be there, so we'll give the system to somebody that will keep it moving daily, we'll get the tax write-off, and we'll monitor passively so that if they discover something, we can swoop in and make the operator a superstar and earn a ton of money in the process."
I think that if that were the case, then Uncle Mars would've made the minimal effort required to keep cameras running so he could be more likely to hear about discoveries. He seemed very surprised by the discovery, having thought the area thoroughly tapped.
Yes and no. Most security cameras only ever get viewed on recordings after a crime is concerned. Similarly, it would be totally in line with how business operates to leave a low-cost PR project to run with no oversight other than a 6 month review or as needed. This could be a case of the "as needed" coming up before the 6 month review. It's typical in business, and in the world. We just heard about Voyager leaving our solar system -- when did you last hear a report about it before that?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's not so atypical to strain credibility in the least. And really, it's the kind of detail you would mention in a longer story, but that could be cut in a short since it's not integral to the plot.
I might agree with you if Uncle Mars hadn't gone out of his way to avoid getting the cameras fixed. He avoided it not because it was expensive or undesirable, but on the general principal that he didn't want to do things people asked him to do. Uncle Mars seems like a pragmatic guy when it comes to personal gain, so I don't think he's be so obstinate to avoid fixing the cameras if he had a specific gain in mind for himself from having the cameras running.
Not that you have to agree with me, of course. :)
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Yes and no. Most security cameras only ever get viewed on recordings after a crime is concerned. Similarly, it would be totally in line with how business operates to leave a low-cost PR project to run with no oversight other than a 6 month review or as needed. This could be a case of the "as needed" coming up before the 6 month review. It's typical in business, and in the world. We just heard about Voyager leaving our solar system -- when did you last hear a report about it before that?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's not so atypical to strain credibility in the least. And really, it's the kind of detail you would mention in a longer story, but that could be cut in a short since it's not integral to the plot.
Just for the record, they are continuously monitoring Voyager and have been doing so since it launched. I've heard many reports on its progress over the past few years, but that's because I listen to five podcasts that are exclusively dedicated to reporting on science news. Not hearing any reports is more an indication of what a person's preferred news outlets are covering than it is an indication of whether things are being monitored.
That said, your points about various security camera feeds in general are well-taken and I think more relevant to this particular story.
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Yes and no. Most security cameras only ever get viewed on recordings after a crime is concerned. Similarly, it would be totally in line with how business operates to leave a low-cost PR project to run with no oversight other than a 6 month review or as needed. This could be a case of the "as needed" coming up before the 6 month review. It's typical in business, and in the world. We just heard about Voyager leaving our solar system -- when did you last hear a report about it before that?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's not so atypical to strain credibility in the least. And really, it's the kind of detail you would mention in a longer story, but that could be cut in a short since it's not integral to the plot.
Just for the record, they are continuously monitoring Voyager and have been doing so since it launched. I've heard many reports on its progress over the past few years, but that's because I listen to five podcasts that are exclusively dedicated to reporting on science news. Not hearing any reports is more an indication of what a person's preferred news outlets are covering than it is an indication of whether things are being monitored.
That said, your points about various security camera feeds in general are well-taken and I think more relevant to this particular story.
That was part sarcasm/more a comment on the reporters whose jobs it is to cover NASA. I hope NASA's friggin' monitoring that thing every day, it cost more money to put up there than 2,500 average Americans have earned in all the time since it launched. It's got a long way to go to get us to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
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Yes and no. Most security cameras only ever get viewed on recordings after a crime is concerned. Similarly, it would be totally in line with how business operates to leave a low-cost PR project to run with no oversight other than a 6 month review or as needed. This could be a case of the "as needed" coming up before the 6 month review. It's typical in business, and in the world. We just heard about Voyager leaving our solar system -- when did you last hear a report about it before that?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it's not so atypical to strain credibility in the least. And really, it's the kind of detail you would mention in a longer story, but that could be cut in a short since it's not integral to the plot.
Just for the record, they are continuously monitoring Voyager and have been doing so since it launched. I've heard many reports on its progress over the past few years, but that's because I listen to five podcasts that are exclusively dedicated to reporting on science news. Not hearing any reports is more an indication of what a person's preferred news outlets are covering than it is an indication of whether things are being monitored.
That said, your points about various security camera feeds in general are well-taken and I think more relevant to this particular story.
That was part sarcasm/more a comment on the reporters whose jobs it is to cover NASA. I hope NASA's friggin' monitoring that thing every day, it cost more money to put up there than 2,500 average Americans have earned in all the time since it launched. It's got a long way to go to get us to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
LOL, ain't that the truth! :D
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By the way, there are no coconut milk inside coconuts.
;D
It is coconut water.
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By the way, there are no coconut milk inside coconuts.
;D
It is coconut water.
That's true but I for one have always called it coconut milk. Could be variations by local custom, maybe.
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By the way, there are no coconut milk inside coconuts.
;D
It is coconut water.
That's true but I for one have always called it coconut milk. Could be variations by local custom, maybe.
Yes, I've always heard it called coconut milk too. Not a flaw in the story, it's a flaw in the world!
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That was part sarcasm/more a comment on the reporters whose jobs it is to cover NASA. I hope NASA's friggin' monitoring that thing every day, it cost more money to put up there than 2,500 average Americans have earned in all the time since it launched. It's got a long way to go to get us to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Or Star Trek: The Motionless Picture as my brother lovingly calls it. :)
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I enjoyed this story. In fact, parts of it absolultely broke my heart.
My son (now 19) has ASD. Like Annie, we were variously told it was autism, Aspergers, PDD-NOS. The particular label was unimportant. What did matter is that he couldn't emapthize with other people. He couldn't hold a normal conversation. He perseverated on things to the point of forgetting to eat. On his bad days, my son was exactly like Annie - distracted by the sounds of air conditioning and unable to remember important things he was supposed to do or say. I was aching for Annie when she had to concentrate on making appropriate eye contact and not rocking and all those details and so she couldn't remember to tell Dr. Rhodes about Evan. And then, of course when she did, she was ignored. How many times was I tired and frustrated from working with my son and I brushed off his latest enthusiasm and asked him about unimportant details of his day? Luckily, no one's life actually hung in the balance in our conversations, and in the long run, our hard work made it possible for him to at least mimic NT behavior enough to graduate from high school and go on to college, even if he still doesn't quite understand the nuances of human behavior.
I found Annie very sympathetic, and Evan as well. However, I could have done with a bit less backstory in Uncle Mars's section of the story. The tension was wound very tight at that point. Will Evan be rescued? If he isn't, will Annie be blamed? Will Annie learn to care about a human being, maybe trust someone? But, let's take some time out to explain why everyone is in their various positions and talk about the politics of running the mining company. Really? Right there?
Also, I have problems with the ending - and really the whole therapy plan in general. Was the idea to study autism in isolation? Because I can't see how any of it was designed to help Annie in any real way. And sure, she might have been happy to wander the ocean floor in her mechano and gather rocks, but she's still 12. I have a serious problem with exploiting a child's neurological differences for profit. She may be content to do that for now, but is that the answer for her best future? To spend her life living through a robot alone on an island? To me that wasn't a happy ending. It was exploitative and wrong and should never have been allowed.
To be clear, I don't have a problem believing that the people in this story think of this as a good solution. I do think it's consistant and in character, I just have a problem as a reader thinking of this as any kind of "happy" ending, or feeling that Uncle Mars has in any way done a good thing.
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Also, I have problems with the ending - and really the whole therapy plan in general. Was the idea to study autism in isolation? Because I can't see how any of it was designed to help Annie in any real way. And sure, she might have been happy to wander the ocean floor in her mechano and gather rocks, but she's still 12. I have a serious problem with exploiting a child's neurological differences for profit. She may be content to do that for now, but is that the answer for her best future? To spend her life living through a robot alone on an island? To me that wasn't a happy ending. It was exploitative and wrong and should never have been allowed.
To be clear, I don't have a problem believing that the people in this story think of this as a good solution. I do think it's consistant and in character, I just have a problem as a reader thinking of this as any kind of "happy" ending, or feeling that Uncle Mars has in any way done a good thing.
I think that the ending was meant to be mixed at best. Uncle Mars is no hero. He wants the gold, and to him Annie is a resource to get gold. Happy ending for Uncle Mars because he's greedy.
But, as Annie's choice of fairy tales goes, she wants an ending that she thinks is happy not an ending that you think is happy. She wants her mechano. She gets her mechano. So she sees it as a happy ending.
One of the things I liked about the story is that it gives the nuance of having an ending the protagonist considers happy but which the reader may not.
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Well, I've been behind on my podcast listening and missed out on the lively discussion for this one. But I had to come in and comment because it isn't often that we have a story that launches itself into my personal Escape-Pod-All-Time-Top-10 company (I guess about 1 in 40 stories, strictly speaking). This one did. It did the thing that the very best SF does for me--put me in the mind of someone different from myself and made me care sooo much about their struggles. Struggles that wouldn't be my struggles but that I empathize with anyway. Excellent, excellent work. Of course, in this case the mind different from mine isn't an alien one, it's a very human one. People who are more similar to Annie than they are to me will read the story, which adds another layer of interest/excitement.
Just to reply a bit to some discussions on the threads above, I am not in any way personally or professionally involved with ASD, but having read things written by those that are, I think the neurotypical label is very important and not just a "you label us so we'll label you" sort of thing (though surely some of that exists--which is fair!). First off, it avoids the term "normal" which is crucial for all kinds of value reasons--thinking differently from neurotypical people creates a lot of challenges in the world we live in but it doesn't make people less intelligent or capable, as this story indicates. Second, my understanding is that people with the various autism spectrum disorders--even those with the same diagnosis--often think as differently from each other as any of them do from neurotypical people. So, in a way, neurotypical is a much more accurate label than autism is, for example. My (again, not super-well informed) understanding is that neurotypical describes a particular kind of thinking and ASD is a catch-all for those that aren't neurotypical.
One thing that I thought was interesting that I don't think was definitively answered is that the guy on the beach repeatedly thinks that the voice in the mechano is robotic because of the nature of the technology. I'm assuming it was in some way distorted by the transmission, but I wonder if what he's interpreting as technological flat affect was in fact Annie's actual way of talking, and that if you put a gregarious guy like Uncle Mars in the mechano, something different would happen. We never learn for sure, but it's a nice bit.
And finally, on the nitpicks about why they can't/don't monitor the island through the mecchano--I think this story is a great example of how to handle that kind of "fridge logic" (the logical inconsistencies that people mostly don't notice while reading the story but think of later when looking in their fridge). The real reason, of course, is because the central conflict of the story is Annie's efforts to convey important information. If there was a technological way to convey that information, we wouldn't have a story. This story has a good way to sort of misdirect that nitpick while you're reading--the whole sound and fury about the cameras. It's a sleight-of-hand, but it tells you "look, reader, I've anticipated the question of why they don't have a visual feed and answered it." Sure, later when you pick it apart, it doesn't necessarily hold together. But that's not important (except for the fun of nitpicking--which I totally get!) because by then the story has already delivered its emotional payload. Without the cameras stuff, we might be spending time during the story thinking about why this all depends on an autistic girl in the first place and not get the punch of the story. I suppose I could copy-paste this paragraph to the nitpicky aspects of a lot of EP threads, but I thought it was particularly worth noting here because I thought this story did a good job of handling the fact that it is a bit tricky to contrive up the occasion for the story it wanted to tell.
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Sorry I'm way behind on my podcasts I tend to binge listen between audiobooks, but I had to comment on this one.
This story is why I love scifi! Here we have a story of a hypothetical future that says something very clearly to my everyday life. I work with adults with developmental disabilities (a catch all even bigger than autism's spectum), though none that I work with have AS all of them have some communication barriers. This story reminds me in a big way to slow down and listen, try, fail, and keep trying to understand what these people have to say. It probably won't be life or death information like in this story but if I care about them (and I really do) I want to care about what is important to them.
Which brings me to the other part I loved: Uncle Mars' reaction to Annie. Through out the story Annie tries to be helpful but everyone in her life (teachers, parents, Dr. Rhodes) see her as a problem to be fixed, finally Uncle Mars actually wants her help, he VALUES her just the way she is. I know he is exploiting her but a least she is a resource not a liability in his view. Granted she is only 12 and has a lot of developing and growing to do but if her new therapist is a bit of a better advocate for her this might be possible in this environment.
As far as the sound quality goes I was listening on headphones with lots of ambient noise and didn't notice any problems, and the narrator seemed fine to me.
Editors take note: I have finally made the decision to become a subscriber because of this story. I waffled and felt guilty when you put out the big plea last year but if you can bring stories like this to a wider audience you have my vote and a few bucks a month.
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I enjoyed this story alot, but I confess that because this was so long I skipped listening right away and heard the feedback on the story which explained what was going on. So I might have found the beginning slow and confusing had I not understood from the get go that Annie was not NT and that she would have lots of trouble communicating the man's need for help to Doctor Rhodes.
I enjoyed this story a lot; although, that fairy tale ending did wrap up a tad too neatly.
That said **this** was the story where the reader struggled through the reading. Some of the words were read as individual words instead of sentences and that makes it a bit hard to understand. I never got the impression this was an affect for Annie, I got the impression that this reader struggled especially with some of the techy details of the mech. It was a problem, but I don't think it really impact my enjoyment of the story since I was so into it.
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I tried to read through the entire thread, but it's so looong! I did try to get at least the general gist of every post.
I agreed, at first, with the naysayers. The story was slow, the narration was off, there were too many of the wrong kinds of details.... but I persevered, and I'm glad I did. During the Dr. Rhodes POV of the first session with Annie I kept asking myself about the weirdness of how it was told from his point of view. It just seemed.... off. Perhaps as if a child had written it. Or someone who doesn't how understand how other people think. This was reinforced during the Mars POV sections. That's when I firmly decided. This is the story as told by Annie herself.
Her POV parts are perfect, and the other POVs were exactly as if an autism person had told them. It reminded me of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime.
The narration was perfect for such a story, and it all fit together nicely. I'm glad I stuck it out for the whole thing.
I have nothing else new to add, except to agree with how powerful the story was, and to throw my hat in with those that say it wasn't an NT ending.
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I absolutely loved this story. One of the best I've ever heard on this podcast. Of course I was annoyed at first with the main protagonist, but part of dealing with autism-spectrum folks is being annoyed with them at some point. We want people to act in predictable ways, and when they don't we get annoyed. That was Dr. Rhodes' main flaw, and why he makes the perfect shill in this story: He's SUPPOSED to be patient with her. Instead, he's just a self-serving prick. In the end, a life is saved, the shill gets his comeuppance, and the heroes are all happy, after the heroine's defiant bravery conquers all. It was fun, and while moments were painful, it was certainly not a tragedy. Not that I mind a little tragedy here and there, but I love a good redemptive tale.
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Finally registered, just so I could comment on this story.
Awesome!!!
Best story ever.
That is all.
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Tons of comments here and I am way too late, but I just joined. two small comments
1) Coconut milk and coconut water are two different products. Coco milk comes from grating the meat of the coconut, coconut water is the liquid inside. The coconut water is what Evan was drinking. It was a mistake, just like when I opened my first coconut and drank the not-so-good tasting water expecting milk.
2) Everyone is calling the Dr. an idiot, but he had the idea that led to Annie's breakthrough. His plan with the mechano actually worked, but he interpeted the data wrong. I found it less than believable that he would show such out-of-the-box thinking in experimental design, but remain inside the box on his data interpretation... Therefore, he was only a half idiot ;)
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Still catching up slowly with my backlog.
I am amazed at how the comments on this story are so polarized. That's why I have to register my solid "it was okay". The autism POV was interesting, but I didn't really love it. Having some peripheral experience with ASD, I feel this story didn't address the "autism is a *very* broad spectrum" aspect well enough for my tastes. To me, it seemed like the story was trying to catch all the autism traits and stuff them into one main character, when that isn't very realistic.
On the other hand, the story addressed the empathy aspect of the MC very well. Many people assume autists don't feel much empathy, which is just not true. I have seen autistic children be extremely empathic. The thing is that their expressions of empathy aren't always appropriate, and their applications of this empathy aren't very consistent from an NT point of view. You can see this in the story when Annie brings Evan supplies, obviously wanting to help, but not being able to help Evan by answering his questions. So I feel the story handled this aspect of autism very realistically.
So, running against the grain of love/hated it comments on the thread, I am ambivalent about this story. But I did enjoy listening to it, which is always a win.
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I really liked this story, in spite of thinking that we are reaching some kind of saturation point for stories with narrators in the autism/asperger spectrum. Oftern I think that it is a bit too easy way to make a character interesting. But this one did it so well that I was completely won over. I was especially impressed with the first scene with the doctor, where the sensory overload killed her attempts of communication. Also, the way the fairytales were used and interpreted from Annies POV was excellent. Sure, towards the end the plot might have hinged on one too many convenient coincidences, but by then I was ready to go with that. The narration bothered me a bit in the beginning (not so much the voice as the audio quality) but ten minutes in I had adapted.
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However, I could have done with a bit less backstory in Uncle Mars's section of the story. The tension was wound very tight at that point. Will Evan be rescued? If he isn't, will Annie be blamed? Will Annie learn to care about a human being, maybe trust someone? But, let's take some time out to explain why everyone is in their various positions and talk about the politics of running the mining company. Really? Right there?
Yes, indeed. While I found the general pacing too slow and the narration annoyingly poor and the NT characters too unidimensional and all the other things people have complained about, it was this point, a very long way into the story (I mean, I'd finished my walk and eaten my lunch and run out of lunch time by then), that I finally gave up on it.
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Just for the record, they are continuously monitoring Voyager and have been doing so since it launched. I've heard many reports on its progress over the past few years, but that's because I listen to five podcasts that are exclusively dedicated to reporting on science news.
[/quote]
What are those five podcasts??? I'd like to check them out.
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I too am way behind on episodes (almost read this on a beach) but like PotatoKnight and others I absolutely loved this story – in part because it was so frustrating at first but then paid off.
At the outset I absolutely hated the narration and was confused/furious at the mechano operator character. Like others, I couldn’t tell if it was an AI or a human. And then when it became clear it was a human I couldn’t figure out why it was acting so weird. And then slowly the author revealed the answer. Very well done.
It would have been nice to have a different narrator do the other characters, but I understand that full cast episodes are much harder to do and more expensive. To that end, I was actually hoping that at the end it would turn out that the main character was reading from a story that someone wrote later. I agree with Max e Pi that it seemed as though the whole thing was written by Annie.
On the narration, I would probably not want to hear another story by the same narrator unless she was purposefully reading flat here and has broader range.
One criticism I have is that the author only explained once was “NT” was and then used it a million times. In print I could just flip back to see what it meant but here I was left wondering.
And lastly I’ll suggest once more that EP develop a standard audio sound to be inserted to signal changes of POV.
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I agree that multiple narrators would have been cool, but the changes didn't throw me off personally. I actually really enjoyed this story a lot.
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Just for the record, they are continuously monitoring Voyager and have been doing so since it launched. I've heard many reports on its progress over the past few years, but that's because I listen to five podcasts that are exclusively dedicated to reporting on science news.
What are those five podcasts??? I'd like to check them out.
The Naked Scientists, Naked Scientists Special Editions, Science Friday, Nature Podcast, Scientific American's 60-second science. The only drawback to this lineup is you might hear 5 different reports on the same study in a one week period... ::)
The Naked Scientists are a particular favorite and they have several off-shoot podcasts (genetics, astronomy) that are also worth a listen.