Author Topic: Pseudopod 332: Willow Tests Well  (Read 17201 times)

Bdoomed

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on: May 04, 2013, 04:31:28 AM
Pseudopod 332: Willow Tests Well

by Nick Mamatas

“Willow Tests Well” was first published in the anthology PSYCHOS: SERIAL KILLERS, DEPRAVED MADMEN, AND THE CRIMINALLY INSANE, edited by John Skipp, which was published in September 2012.

NICK MAMATAS is the author of several novels, including BULLETTIME and the forthcoming noir novel LOVE IS THE LAW. Recent short stories have appeared in the anthologies BLACK WINGS II, FUTURE LOVECRAFT, and FUNGI, and the new UK-based magazine the “Imperial Youth Review”. He is also published by Wildside Press - whose website is here. Check them out!

Your reader this week - Julie Hoverson - plies her audio trade as the main creative force behind award winning audio drama anthology series 19 NOCTURNE BOULEVARD. (In particular, check out their interesting dramatization of Lovecraft’s THE DUNWICH HORROR!)



“Tenth birthday: greeting cards from the CIA and NSA. Willow had scored ridiculously well on the Race to the Top tests, and even discovered the instructions for and answered the questions in the secret test integrated into the exam. Questions like

What does the old saying “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” mean?”

a. birds are unpleasant because they need to be cared for

b. it’s better to own something than risk what you have for a potential reward

c. if you have a bird in your hand, you can squeeze it, you can kill it…

d. possession is nine-tenths of the law”




PLEASE HELP PSEUDOPOD AND ANSWER A VERY SHORT DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY AT THIS LINK. IT WILL HELP US IMMEASURABLY! and thank you!

SURVEY



The Flash Fiction Contest is in the Final Round!



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2013, 09:01:32 AM by Bdoomed »

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


adrianh

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Reply #1 on: May 04, 2013, 09:17:08 AM
I liked this.

Especially the way it took you from not being sure whether the tests were real or just in Willow's head to the world of weaponized sociopathy. The relationship between Willow and her minder was nicely done too.

(On the survey: Being neither married, single, divorced, separated or widowed - I cannot answer truthfully so declined to participate. Sorry ;-)



Just Jeff

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Reply #2 on: May 05, 2013, 04:53:50 AM
Meh. It started out interesting, but by the midpoint I'd started to suspect it wasn't going anywhere worth my time. It didn't.



zoanon

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Reply #3 on: May 06, 2013, 12:13:21 AM
meh. maybe I just didn't get it but the motivation seemed pretty lame, and Willow's big idea seemed kinda stupid.



lowky

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Reply #4 on: May 06, 2013, 12:23:15 AM
interesting little story.  Not totally my cup of tea, but interesting.


Scumpup

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Reply #5 on: May 06, 2013, 01:48:13 PM
Psychopathic secret agents aren't one of my favorite tropes, though such big names as Stephen King and Dean Koontz have made use of them.  I listened through to the end but the story didn't take me anywhere I hadn't seen before.



flintknapper

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Reply #6 on: May 06, 2013, 03:14:55 PM
I thought the story was decent. However, there appeared to be a lot of shock for the sake of shock. It seemed to transition rather abruptly from psychological horror to gore and then back again. Also, as others have said, the ending didnt do it for me. I guess without giving away parts of the story, it felt like we were going on a journey and at the end, it still felt we were on that journey as opposed to some sort of conclusion per se.

I will say though that the writing was great. The story was easy to follow. Also the narration was clear and articulate.



adrianh

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Reply #7 on: May 06, 2013, 03:31:25 PM
@Scumpup - interesting. I didn't read Willow as the standard psychopathic secret agent. Indeed - I didn't see her as a secret agent at all.

I read Willow (and her chums) as weapons - in the same way the a-bomb or an aircraft carrier is a weapon. They weren't being collected and groomed to perform "useful" tasks - but out of fear that "they" would produce better psychopaths than "us".

(Meta: What's the etiquette on spoilers in these threads. As a newbie poster (but long time listener) I assumed that we were allowed spoilers here - but flintknapper's comment on not giving away parts of the story seems to indicate otherwise?)



Bdoomed

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Reply #8 on: May 06, 2013, 03:57:56 PM
Spoil away, anyone in this thread should have listened first, or at least be prepared for spoilers.  :)

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


Red Dog 344

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Reply #9 on: May 06, 2013, 04:34:24 PM
I liked this.

Especially the way it took you from not being sure whether the tests were real or just in Willow's head to the world of weaponized sociopathy. The relationship between Willow and her minder was nicely done too.

(On the survey: Being neither married, single, divorced, separated or widowed - I cannot answer truthfully so declined to participate. Sorry ;-)

Clearly you failed to detect, and answer, the secret test inside the Pseudopod survey.



adrianh

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Reply #10 on: May 06, 2013, 04:51:39 PM
Clearly you failed to detect, and answer, the secret test inside the Pseudopod survey.

Clearly you failed to detect my answer to the secret test inside the Pseudopod survey ;-)



eytanz

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Reply #11 on: May 07, 2013, 05:43:57 PM
This one didn't work for me. Secret government conspiracies always feel to me like wishful thinking, and this is no exception. Knowing that all the horrible stuff going in the world isn't just random but there by design means that there's a reason, and that it's definable. If there was really an agency grooming people like Willow and employing them to do evil, and - as the story posits - they're responsible for *everything* wrong with the world, then I don't have to worry about the consequences of my actions anymore - I'm not an agent, I'm not a sociopath, therefore I'm not part of the problem.

So the core premise of the story didn't work for me, which left me just with a story about a horrible person getting horrible things done to her and doing horrible things to other in return. Which isn't much to be left with, as far as stories go.



Sgarre1

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Reply #12 on: May 07, 2013, 06:14:47 PM
It might be worth mentioning that I bought this because I felt it was a great piece of wry, pitch-black horror comedy - everyone seems to be analyzing it so much I worry that perhaps my sense of humor meters might need recalibrating, or perhaps it's just the tone whiplash effect that tends to occur from week to week?



Scumpup

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Reply #13 on: May 07, 2013, 06:35:34 PM
As I listened, I did get the impression that the author was trying to be funny.  I, personally, wasn't amused.  
One of the reasons the "super-secret agency full of vicious psychopaths" schtick has never appealed to me (no matter who was using it) is that such stories, like this one, heavily depend on the S-SAFOVP continuously getting away with the most heinous acts.  I don't find that idea or the descriptions of the acts themselves even blackly amusing.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2013, 03:56:15 PM by Scumpup »



eytanz

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Reply #14 on: May 07, 2013, 06:53:34 PM
It might be worth mentioning that I bought this because I felt it was a great piece of wry, pitch-black horror comedy - everyone seems to be analyzing it so much I worry that perhaps my sense of humor meters might need recalibrating, or perhaps it's just the tone whiplash effect that tends to occur from week to week?

It didn't strike me as very comedic, but I'm wondering if that's partially the narrator's choice - there were definitely places in the story (especially the very beginning) where I felt she was deliberately playing down ironic statements. When I read the excerpt that at's the beginning of this thread it struck me as somewhat humorous, but the reading of it did not.

(This is not a criticism, by the way, I think this was a perfectly valid choice. I just think that that may be part of the explanation for the difference in tone between how you saw it and how it was perceived).



Loren Eaton

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Reply #15 on: May 08, 2013, 02:02:31 PM
Man, I wanted to love this one. Beautifully written in a visceral way, but I thought the whole thing fell apart with the final scene. Okay, psychopaths are being used by the shadow government to torment third-world kids because ... why exactly? The motivations didn't seem clear. Neither did Willow's (presumably) tongue-in-cheek suggestion at the end, although the reference to the cat poster helped a little. Started with a bang, finished with a whimper.

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benjaminjb

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Reply #16 on: May 09, 2013, 06:45:24 PM
It might be worth mentioning that I bought this because I felt it was a great piece of wry, pitch-black horror comedy [...]

I found "Willow Tests Well" funny in a way, but perhaps because I'd been primed by the Philip K. Dick story "Null-O," where Dick has fun with Van Vogt's notion of superior slans and unempathic logic: a bunch of psychopaths are recruited by the government (or the government within the government) and go ahead with their plan to return the universe to its true state of undifferentiated matter.

Although the Dick story presents the young super-genius as the main character, doing impressive things, Dick never lets us forget that these are terrible things. In a way, it reminds me of Norman Spinrad's "What if Hitler had become an sf writer?" novel, The Iron Dream, where Spinrad shows how ubermensch fascism runs through Nazism and some Golden-Age sf; in Dick's story, we've got the super-bright kid, fighting against the mediocrity of the normal people--and he's a fucking monster. Since it's Dick, in "Null-O" the good guys turn out to be the small people--janitors, bus drivers, waiters, fry cooks, etc.

Nick Mamatas is playing a different game in "Willow Tests Well," with (as the outro pointed out) no victory conditions: this is a terrible conspiracy where even the revelation of that conspiracy would only make things more terrible. Willow can bend all she wants in the face of this storm, but surviving isn't the same as thriving. As for the revelation that most horror is human-derived, I agree with eytanz that conspiracy thinking tends towards the comforting: it's someone else's fault, there's a reason for everything. But there's the counter-argument in this story that the terrible things are being done for a reason in our name. This is, yay!, an other opportunity to bring up my favorite Foucault quote: "People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does."

Dick could have the average people as saviors in a minor way; Mamatas points an accusing finger at the average person (us). Hey, I no longer find this story that funny!



Balu

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Reply #17 on: May 09, 2013, 10:37:38 PM
The writing and the narration were both so good I found myself really swept along by this one. It was great horror, in that it hit exactly the right emotional keys in a darkly delicious way.

I kept thinking about it in the days afterwards, too. Why didn't she rebel against the conspiracy that ruined her life? Is that what she was doing at the end? Or did they pick her because she had a predisposition to accept abuse from the strong and take revenge on the week?

Good stuff.



Kat_Rocha

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Reply #18 on: May 09, 2013, 11:11:47 PM
I really enjoyed this one. Sociopaths are an interesting breed. Their competitiveness and urge to be on top I find fascinating on a psychological level. Has anybody seen the extremely short lived TV series "Profit" from the 90's. It's about a sociopath who is climbing the corporate latter and will do anything to get to the top.

One thing I really like about this story is that I found myself wondering how much of what I was hearing was real and how much was in her head. How much was her "seeing" the world as if it revolved around her.

-Kat



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #19 on: May 10, 2013, 04:42:55 PM
I never got into stories like this. I don't know why. The sociopath-as-compelling-antihero trope has always fallen flat for me. It's a pathetic, broken creature in human skin. Some of its pitiful flailing happens to resemble brilliance. However, its insights will always be flawed - and, ultimately, useless - because it doesn't understand humans. It might be goot at manipulating people in the short term, but in the long term the only reason it seems so smart is that it's repurposed the parts of its freakishly huge human brain that are supposed to help us grok other people. So, its brain fails at what it's for.

I just don't understand the fascination. Teach the safe ones how to deal with people, put the dangerous ones away until we know how to fix them. They aren't cool, they aren't compelling, and they aren't useful. They're sad and broken and (sometimes) dangerous. End of story.

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Cutter McKay

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Reply #20 on: May 10, 2013, 05:42:15 PM
This story gets a great big "Meh" from me. I enjoyed the quasi-mystery of whether or not Willow was imagining the government connections. However, once it became clear that it was all real, the story slowly deflated for me. Like ElectricPaladin, I'm not real big on sociopath protagonists/anti-heroes much for the same reasons that E.P. already covered. It was very well written, just not my thing.

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ElectricPaladin

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Reply #21 on: May 10, 2013, 07:11:58 PM
This story gets a great big "Meh" from me. I enjoyed the quasi-mystery of whether or not Willow was imagining the government connections. However, once it became clear that it was all real, the story slowly deflated for me. Like ElectricPaladin, I'm not real big on sociopath protagonists/anti-heroes much for the same reasons that E.P. already covered. It was very well written, just not my thing.

I did neglect to mention that the story was remarkably well written and well paced. Kudos for that, at least.

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Balu

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Reply #22 on: May 10, 2013, 11:24:59 PM
The sociopath-as-compelling-antihero trope has always fallen flat for me. It's a pathetic, broken creature in human skin. Some of its pitiful flailing happens to resemble brilliance. However, its insights will always be flawed - and, ultimately, useless - because it doesn't understand humans.

Unless, of course, our solipsism blinds us to the fact that they understand humans much better than we do.




Red Dog 344

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Reply #23 on: May 12, 2013, 04:01:16 AM
It might be worth mentioning that I bought this because I felt it was a great piece of wry, pitch-black horror comedy - everyone seems to be analyzing it so much I worry that perhaps my sense of humor meters might need recalibrating, or perhaps it's just the tone whiplash effect that tends to occur from week to week?

FWIW, that's exactly how I read it too.  Anything about secret agents that you write these days has got to be a bit "meta" or postmodern or ironic.  Though maybe I think this because my stepchildren made me watch SpyKids 2 about a million times.



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #24 on: May 12, 2013, 06:23:14 AM
The sociopath-as-compelling-antihero trope has always fallen flat for me. It's a pathetic, broken creature in human skin. Some of its pitiful flailing happens to resemble brilliance. However, its insights will always be flawed - and, ultimately, useless - because it doesn't understand humans.

Unless, of course, our solipsism blinds us to the fact that they understand humans much better than we do.

That's not my impression of the situation, but my understanding could be incomplete. Care to elaborate?

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