I'm trying very hard to form some sort of opinion of this story, but it's difficult. It's not that the writing is bad (it's not) nor the reading (also good) it's just that, well, nothing really happens. The entire plot of the story is contained in the first and last paragraph, with nothing happening between. I don't dislike it as such, in the same way I don't hate blank paper, there's just nothing there to hate.
I feel that the writer has come up with an idea that's definitely very interesting, but had no idea of how to actually explore it, this would have been far better if it were shorter still, or possibly even a non-fiction article talking about possibilities for the future.
A writer friend of mine said that a story needs 3 things to succeed: concepts, style and incident. This story has the first 2, but not the third, what we need is a storyling with which to bring the ideas through.
I never got much of a feeling for what the story was actually 'about' while listening, the strongest theme present is possibly that of redemption, though this is never explored in any depth.
There's also far too much 'tell' and not 'show' going on with the way it related the back story of the protagonist, we find out he killed his wife, and are presented with paragraph after paragraph of him agonising over it, but no detail about it, or his motivations. In fact we never find out anything about him at all, as such.
The denouement is rather sprang on us as well, it would have been nice to show the protagonists entire character arc that lead up to this descision, aside from agonising over his past actions, we get very little said of his state of mind while he's actually doing his 'community service'. It perhaps would have been interesting to folllow his first mission, and show him adapting to his new body.
On the introduction: this new videocast sounds awesome! I'm gonna have to check it out sometime soon!
Simon Painter
Shropshire, UK