Hey guys,
Usually my analyses of stories on EP are based on dissection, I enjoy taking apart the cogs and looking at the screws, but in the case of this story MadSimonj and Slic have already covered everything about the structure I would like to say... So I'm going to talk about how I responded to it emotionally.
I strongly disliked this piece, really reacted to it on a gut level... Something about the tone went straight to my insides and started chewing them up... Part of it might have been that I am am a relatively experienced traveller myself, and therefore found this twee rather than revelatory. This week itself I happened to be in Knossos on Crete, visiting friends, and ended up taking a guided tour with a friend of a friend who has a masters degree in Physics but still makes his living giving guided tours of Knossos because real work is no-where to be found. Crete is not the third world (although my professional experience in Archaeology and Geology mean I've spent quite a lot of time in these sorts of places thinking about these sorts of issues) but I think it illustrates that yes Mike is getting at something valid here.
The problem is that when a story such as this is a morality play as this one is, it needs some level of deeper insight and characterisation in order for it to hold any water, whereas in this piece I felt the characterisation was really pretty third rate. I didn't empathise with these people, they didn't have enough backstory to empathise with (the only moment the story began to take flight with the blind "saviour" it dies off almost immediately back to the mundane themes)... And while there are many tourists like those mentioned here, I think it doesn't do justice to the story to use tourists this idiotic here.
I think part of it may be that I disagree with the politics so strongly. This piece is preachy, and is designed as such, but doesn't hold any deeper insight. These are complex issues, with complex solutions, and I want to talk a bit about Guilt, as already touched upon by Slic. There is a very very strong theme amongst the western world's middle classes at the moment to feel something akin to puritan guilt about the failings of the economic process be they economic, environmental or political. There have been a number of Escape Pod stories which to me have hinged on this Political Guilt - Blood Of Virgins, Smooth Talking, and Nano Comes To Clifford Falls. I think that the key feature when it comes to enjoying these stories is whether feeling political guilt makes you feel virtuous, or kicks off your libertarian (as I have) instinct of "This is a problem, but it is not *my* fault". The audience for this story is the SF market, who are predominantly western and middle class, meaning that the villain in this story is universally similar to the neighbour down the reader/listerners street that they don't respect very much. The target audience are the very people being demonised, so I will very heavily say that this story is about guilt and whether you find it satisfying to feel guilty.
Thinking about this I am near certain that it is this emotional reaction that put me off the story so strongly, and I'm rather glad I have written this post and got to the bottom of it. In a story with these themes, I need something a little more than "the failings of western tourism as allegory" to get any enjoyment out of it. There is no deeper insight here, no solutions offered here, and no real hope - it's an arrow pointed straight at middle class guilt, and I find that really distasteful.
As always much respect to Mr Resnick for taking on us naysayers in the comments thread.