Pseudopod 221: Lives

[iamafish]

It was such a BIG thing - it bothered me that it was only a momentary plot point in the story. Just another accident, la-de-da. My brain kept poking me over it: "Hey, shouldn't that segment have lasted longer?"

I think that was the point.

the narrator was getting so dull to the effects of his son's affliction that segments just became more and more mater-of-fact and undramatic, as though he wasn't all that surprised any more. Combining that with such a cataclysmic event at 9/11 made that even more effective.

I'm not sure I'm with people who say that it will never not be too soon. For a start WW2 is discussed in fiction a lot, as is the holocaust, yet no-one has such reservation any more. If fiction can't deal with the really important issues and events in our lives, what's the point? 9/11 is so important to the shape of world politics today that it seems unavoidable. Sure, there's a sensitivity issue here, but that shouldn't bar it from discussion at all.

[Scattercat]

I've never been bothered by 9/11 qua 9/11, though I have read some stories that tried to use it to whip up fervor for the story's particular grudge against Muslims, and that did offend me.

[Unblinking]

I'm not sure I'm with people who say that it will never not be too soon. For a start WW2 is discussed in fiction a lot, as is the holocaust, yet no-one has such reservation any more. If fiction can't deal with the really important issues and events in our lives, what's the point? 9/11 is so important to the shape of world politics today that it seems unavoidable. Sure, there's a sensitivity issue here, but that shouldn't bar it from discussion at all.

Like I said, I don't think that it's wrong to use it in a story.  I'm just unlikely to like that story and to recommend it to others.  I'm not sure I'm actually opposed to anyone using it, but in all the uses I've seen of it in fiction I have yet to see it used in a way that I thought was worth it.

[Sandra M. Odell]

A wonderful story!  I'm in the camp of Chris having nine lives, and being aware of his serial mortality if not the cause or a finite limit to events.  I also take the "I'm not the only one who survived" remark to mean that, whether aware of it or not, the father was never in any danger since he was somehow the one constant in Chris's life, ala "I can't control what happens, Dad, but I can somehow manage to make certain that you're not hurt."

I also enjoyed the narratiion, the somehow numb quality of resignation tinged with not-quite-dread.  In many ways the narrator has endured his child's death over and over again, and it's not until the car accident that kills both Marian and the girlfriend that he is so numb he no longer physically reacts to the news that Chris as somehow, yet again, managed to survive.

Kudos all around.


Sandra

[Zuishness]

I must admit, I groaned a little inside when 9/11 was wheeled out as an example of his indestructibilty. Not so much that I was offended. I just found it a bit obvious.

[Fenrix]

No one has quite brought up that the body count is horribly unreliable like the narrator. What yardstick is the father using to only count nine? How much does the son have to care about someone for it to count? They both seem to be a bit sociopathic. Or maybe the son is just coping in a sociopathic way and the father's a lawyer.

I also enjoyed that the end is ambiguous enough to imply that the father committing suicide is a possibility.

Or that this was the origin story for some sort of superhero. But as far as super powers go, being able to walk away from death is...well, useful for HIM. Not so useful to anyone else.

I was thinking of parallels to this and Unbreakable, with a bit of a curse rolled in as well.

[Millenium_King]

I thought this a really great story - but, unfortunately, was a really great story ruined by one scene: the part witn AIDS.  It felt radically out of step with the rest of the story.  It required a deliberateness of action that did not jive with the "disasters follow around this kid like a curse" theme.  Too bad, because sans that part this was one of the best stories in a long time.

[Marguerite]

Interestingly enough I found the narrator to be perfectly normal – not normal as in average or common place, but normal as in well within the realm of my experience.  The moment I realized the narrator was a lawyer, it all clicked into place for me.  If you’ve spent much time around large law firms I’ll bet good money you’ve met someone just like the narrator of this tale (I’ve worked at a big firm and I can think of 3 such people off the top of my head).  Honestly, part of what I found disturbing about the story was just how unremarkable I found the narrator.

Thank you, you just articulated one of the things that was getting under my skin about this story but I couldn't put into words.  Ditto - this could have been narrated by a slightly younger, slightly braver version of my boss (Big Wig at Big Law Firm).  The ironic thing being his son's a bit actor in bad horror movies...  Really bad, folks.  "Zombie Strippers" bad.

[DKT]

No one has quite brought up that the body count is horribly unreliable like the narrator. What yardstick is the father using to only count nine?

My understanding is that he was counting how many lives his son used - nine lives (the number of sections/chapters this story was broken into). Well, eight. He was going to make number nine happen when the story ended. Not the number of people he has outlived.

[Unblinking]

No one has quite brought up that the body count is horribly unreliable like the narrator. What yardstick is the father using to only count nine?

My understanding is that he was counting how many lives his son used - nine lives (the number of sections/chapters this story was broken into). Well, eight. He was going to make number nine happen when the story ended. Not the number of people he has outlived.

Really?  That makes way less sense to me.  Why would he assume that nine is the limit?  The boy's not a cat.  If I knew someone who could heal fatal burns I would assume that they were pretty much immortal, why pick an arbitrary counter for deaths when he's shown no sign that he is limited in such a way?

[DKT]

i'm not saying it actually makes sense. IMO, the dad's not the most sane person. But where else can the number nine come from? Nine sections of this story, each one with Chris "surviving" something.

[Scattercat]

I read it like DKT did, though I'm also with Unblinking that it seemed like an arbitrary number to pick and didn't really have much justification in the story.

In the story's defense, I don't think the father is actually thinking that nine lives is some kind of limit on the power itself; I think that's just both the number where he decides to end it and it just happens to be a slightly resonant number due to the saying about cats.

[realthog]

i'm not saying it actually makes sense. IMO, the dad's not the most sane person.

Bingo.

Christopher/Kit. Nine lives. It makes sense to Dad . . .

[Unblinking]

I read it like DKT did, though I'm also with Unblinking that it seemed like an arbitrary number to pick and didn't really have much justification in the story.

In the story's defense, I don't think the father is actually thinking that nine lives is some kind of limit on the power itself; I think that's just both the number where he decides to end it and it just happens to be a slightly resonant number due to the saying about cats.

Yeah, okay, that's fair enough.  I was thrown by him counting only to nine, considering the plane crashes and other body counts that were clearly higher.