Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on May 20, 2011, 10:19:02 AM
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EP293: A Small Matter, Really (http://escapepod.org/2011/05/19/ep293-a-small-matter-really/)
By Monte Cook (http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?splash/)
Read by Mur Lafferty
An Escape Pod original!
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Only the Catholic Church of Osirus would have enough money to afford not one, but two black holes. Standing within the majestic narthex, Maria McNaki imagined the vibration of complex machinery under her feet, despite the fact that the nanosensors laced into her flesh revealed nothing other than the passing of the people in the crowd and the chanting coming from deeper within the cathedral.
The stone walls of the chamber slowly flowed with a liquid relief of gothic circuitry and religious hieroglyphic animations. The glyph depicting Setan as he tore the crucified Osirus-Christ into tiny fragments malfunctioned and remained static. Just as well. The petitioners around her made carefully devout hand signs over their hearts as they faced the ankh crucifix over the door into the sanctuary.
Religion was back in fashion this season.
Rated PG for violence
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP293_ASmallMatterReally.mp3)
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If someone could check it out, none of the download links work and the RSS feed just gets me a 2kb file this morning. Thanks.
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I was just going to post a note to the same effect - I put up the episode thread because it came up on the blog and I will be at a conference all day and unable to do it later, but at the moment the episode is not available to download. I'm hoping Bill and Mur will be able to deal with that promptly.
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Sorry guys, when uploading a file to Libsyn it sometimes says the file isn't available yet (which I don't understand at all). Yesterday it never came available. I reuploaded this morning and it works now. Apologies for the hiccup.
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First off, I enjoyed Mur L's reading as always.
I'm sorry to say that this one really didn't do it for me. My main gripe was the writing, which sounded overly wordy. I couldn't believe that the characters all spoke that way (even if the author does speak that way). Also, the majority of nerdy/hackery/sciencey people do a poor job explaining things to laymen, but here they explained things like they were writing a "science for the public" article.
The other issue I had was with the story. It left me wondering, what's the point (other than to make a jokey last line)? Nothing here made me think.
I'm the first poster on this one so I hope I'm not the only negative reviewer!
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The other issue I had was with the story. It left me wondering, what's the point (other than to make a jokey last line)? Nothing here made me think.
It did feel rather like a shaggy dog story with that last line.
I'm the first poster on this one so I hope I'm not the only negative reviewer!
Don't worry about that! There's plenty of negative reviews all over the forums. That's never a problem unless it becomes a personal attack or something.
For myself, I'm a little bit over time-travel/time-paradox stories at the moment. There sure has been a lot lately.
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For myself, I'm a little bit over time-travel/time-paradox stories at the moment. There sure has been a lot lately.
I think time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers. There have been some AMAZING stories about time travel, such as "A Sound of Thunder" by Bradbury, but the story really needs to cut deeper than just "wouldn't it be cool if." Personally, I've never really been inspired to write in the time-travel vein, but maybe I just tend to think within within more plausible, formal physics constructs.
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I wanted to ask, less as a complaint and more of a curiosity, why Monte Cook's work in the RPG industry wasn't also mentioned in his bio. Was it a point of relevance, a desire for brevity?
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First off, I enjoyed Mur L's reading as always.
I'm sorry to say that this one really didn't do it for me. My main gripe was the writing, which sounded overly wordy. I couldn't believe that the characters all spoke that way (even if the author does speak that way). Also, the majority of nerdy/hackery/sciencey people do a poor job explaining things to laymen, but here they explained things like they were writing a "science for the public" article.
The other issue I had was with the story. It left me wondering, what's the point (other than to make a jokey last line)? Nothing here made me think.
I'm the first poster on this one so I hope I'm not the only negative reviewer!
You're not alone - I agree entirely. I was disappointed with the direction of the story line, the religious context, and contrived ending. Most of all, I wanted to know a lot more about Stout-of-Heart and that extraordinary relationship, how the Bramagians construed madness, and what made them think humans were gods.
By the way; in my (albeit local) world, the couple of people I know who are called 'Piotr', pronounce it 'Peter'.
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This was an ok listen. However, it made me daydream more about Mur's Heaven series than pay attention to the story. The ending came crashing in like running off a cliff, and "Oh hey, I should make a joke here before I plow into the ground." sort of way. The concept was intriguing, and the paradox was certainly handled differently, but I questioned her reaction. In the end, I even stopped caring about Stout-Of-Heart. He goes off and kills himself and I felt, "Well that sucks. HE was actually starting to grow on me."
I kind of wished that the time hackers suffered more. I mean, why not, everyone else in the story did?
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The concept of the aliens, I felt, was wasted on us having a way to kill off the main character when she went insane. A story about them would be much more interesting -- rather like Buckell's "Anakoinosis" was. I also felt a bit cheated by the lack of reveal as to what the Church was doing. It seemed like they were there just as a way for the author to make a point about religion (the money angle), or as a set-piece. A gun on the mantelpiece that was never fired.
I loved the way the jumping-between-consciousnesses/memories drove Maria insane at the end. But the science that led to it -- because she ordered the change, she's immune to forgetting it? -- was a little woolly. I understand the scientists being protected because they're in the isolation chamber or whatever, but she was out there, experiencing the ripples of whatever the scientists changed. Unless everyone else in the world was experiencing the same thing.
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I actually really enjoyed the "religion" part of it, and the nod to potential predecessors to our Christianity. I thought that might be a nod to the possible motives of the church having the time-line altering technology. Let's have more about that. Ditto the gun on the mantelpiece.
I kept wincing every time I heard the name "Piotr," though. Maybe this is a pronunciation I'm just not familiar with, I'm pretty sure it's pronounced "PYO-ter" (like Peter or Pieter).
Thanks!
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I really liked this piece made me think. Time paradox's are always interesting when people think of it. However I felt it ended to quickly, though I suppose that is the test of a good story when the reader listener is left wanting more.
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I didn't get this one. Total WTF reaction. ???
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This one started off very strong for me. I enjoy characters who are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve deeply, passionately held goals. In other words, I love it when people do dumb things for love, be it love of a nation, an ideal, a false memory, or a man. I am intrigued by the idea of alternate realities, and passing between them, or choosing which one to make real.
However, this story fell apart in two ways:
Firstly, the magical technology didn't gel for me. In the end, it wasn't the "consciousness exists on another level, so people who know about the transition aren't changed" thing. That makes about as much sense as anything else. It was the fact that they would still have the money. Why would they still have the money? Money is either an idea held in electronic storage (not a consciousness, therefore subject to the change), an idea held in the minds of many people (who were not a part of the transition, therefore subject to the change), or a physical object (and therefore as much subject to the change as the molecules of the POV character's dead husband's body). In none of these cases would the reality hackers still have the money after the transition. This is a plot hole big enough to drive Kirk's Enterprise through.
Secondly, I'm a fan of the "be careful what you wish for" (BCWYWF, or "buckywif") subgenre of fiction. This story violated the single most important principle of the form: the main character must get something like his just deserts. In BCWYWF, the character must screw up somehow. Perhaps she ignores a warning and forges ahead with a dangerous course of action. Perhaps the sacrifices she makes to achieve her goals reveal some significant moral failing. Whatever it is, BCWYWF stories require that the character end up with something like justice, or at the very least, that there is some rhyme or reason to her ultimate failure.
Not so in this story. The main character failed and died... because she did. Thanks to a totally random, completely inconsequential mechanical glitch. There's no poetic (in)justice to this - just random chance. It's leaf in the wind all over again.
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and switch over to the version of reality where the ending of A Small Matter, Really didn't let me down. Seeya later, suckers!
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Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and switch over to the version of reality where the ending of A Small Matter, Really didn't let me down. Seeya later, suckers!
You can do that?? Can I come with??
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Why would they still have the money?
IIRC, there was something thrown out about since they're so close to the singularities or since they're the ones making the change, they're in some sort of reality or causality "bubble" that allows them to hold onto the money. I think?
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I wanted to like this story, but something in it just didn't work for me. It felt like the story was trying too hard to be futuristic for the sake of being futuristic; too many future-y things were thrown out in too short of a story. It also felt a lot like it was taking place in the old Shadowrun novel universe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I did like the localized time-shifting at the end, but it seemed to end all too abruptly. I know that the story established that insanity is a fate worse than death, but it still felt rushed.
I would like to take issue with the amount of crap people give "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". I made a point of watching the first three films in a row the day before seeing it, and I still found it to be a very enjoyable film. It's not perfect by any means, but it's not the abomination people seem to want to make it.
It's not so much an issue that people don't like Crystal Skull (everyone has their own tastes) for me as it is an issue that people seem to give "Live Free or Die Hard" a pass. Now that was a horrible sequel that never should have been made.
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... In none of these cases would the reality hackers still have the money after the transition. This is a plot hole big enough to drive Kirk's Enterprise through.
Shit, you could fly both of Picard's Enterprises through that hole side-by-side!
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It's not so much an issue that people don't like Crystal Skull (everyone has their own tastes) for me as it is an issue that people seem to give "Live Free or Die Hard" a pass. Now that was a horrible sequel that never should have been made.
My personal continuum has only Die Hard and Die Hard with a Vengeance.
(Live Free... is currently in a state of quantum flux; I will have to watch it once to collapse its waveform into existence or non-existence.)
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I enjoyed the world-building here, all the technology ascribed to the church really interested me, as did the aliens. Indeed the title/ending was too heavy-handed, and I do think the setup was more rewarding than the actual plot, but I did enjoy it overall.
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Why would they still have the money?
IIRC, there was something thrown out about since they're so close to the singularities or since they're the ones making the change, they're in some sort of reality or causality "bubble" that allows them to hold onto the money. I think?
This. I don't think that's a plot hole, I felt that was covered by the tech people's explanations.
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Interesting idea. I particularly liked the servant/master relationship between the protagonist and the alien, that was extremely interesting and I'd be interested in seeing other stories with that race of aliens in them.
The ending with the split awareness of time followed by the murder-suicide was clever, one I hadn't seen coming, but I wish it had left off there. That would've been a pretty good ending, but it had to go further, and return to the lab, which tacked on an extra POV that wasn't really necessary, and didn't really add anything.
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Overall, I did not really like this one very much. I was far more interested in what was going on with the church of Osiris than with the protagnoist who seemed to have more money than sense. Also, it was mostly a story that depended on a really rotten piece of luck - it was clear from the coda (which, I agree, was pretty unnecessary) that what happened to her was not only not the normal, but quite unusual.
I did like the human/alien relationship a lot; in general, this seemed to be a case where the setting was far more interesting than the story set in it.
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Why would they still have the money?
IIRC, there was something thrown out about since they're so close to the singularities or since they're the ones making the change, they're in some sort of reality or causality "bubble" that allows them to hold onto the money. I think?
But the money isn't there. Money is a societal construct - it exists in the minds of people who aren't in the bubble. It exists in electronic records across their universe.
All it would have taken would be for the author to mention that the POV character had brought hard currency rather than electronics. A quantity of gold, or unobtanium, or whatever. That is all it would have taken to render the story utterly believable for me.
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Why would they still have the money?
IIRC, there was something thrown out about since they're so close to the singularities or since they're the ones making the change, they're in some sort of reality or causality "bubble" that allows them to hold onto the money. I think?
But the money isn't there. Money is a societal construct - it exists in the minds of people who aren't in the bubble. It exists in electronic records across their universe.
All it would have taken would be for the author to mention that the POV character had brought hard currency rather than electronics. A quantity of gold, or unobtanium, or whatever. That is all it would have taken to render the story utterly believable for me.
I donno, I thought it was encoded in this data chip or whatever. Perhaps the technology allowed the money to just exist on the data chip..? I don't even know if that makes sense. I guess I was assuming the chip was self-sufficient. Well, actually, she probably still had all that money four years previously, so even if it was just tied into her bank account, it would still be valid if it just acted like an ATM card of sorts, wouldn't it? It maybe wouldn't work if during that four years she'd gone bankrupt or something...
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For myself, I'm a little bit over time-travel/time-paradox stories at the moment. There sure has been a lot lately.
I think time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
I think time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers...
Yes.
Or maybe it's just me. I dunno, I've been sick of time travel stories for a long time now. Either a lot of thought and space has to be devoted to working out the logic kinks and negating certain uses of the technology, or a lantern has to be hung on how it doesn't make any sense. Both feel kinda unsatisfying, IMO.
And what ground can be covered by the time-travel tale at this point? I'm not sure what Cook was going for. Cautionary tale? Be satisfied with what you have type of thing? That's been done to death. Some of the setting details were interesting, but they're relegated to stage dressing.
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For myself, I'm a little bit over time-travel/time-paradox stories at the moment. There sure has been a lot lately.
I think time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
I think time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers than it is to readers.
time travel stuff is much more attractive to writers...
Yes.
I think the appeal is in the story's almost unavoidable imperfection. Readers experience an imperfect story and go "well, that was disappointing" and then go back to their lives. Writers go "but... but... if only..." and then spend the next six months trying to write their own version, which invariably (at least in some readers) inspires the same reaction.
The circle of life...
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FWIW, I'm a writer, and I hate time travel stories pretty much universally. When I like them, it's in spite of the time travel, not because of it.
This story... was a little too amused by its own title and ended up with the main plot being overshadowed by the setting flavor. (Which is a lot like many RPGs I've owned, whenever they tried to feature metaplot, so I guess that's kind of apropos.) I, like many other commenters, would rather have read a story about Stout-of-Heart instead of this story, which is both good and bad for the author. That's the risk of putting cool setting details in, I suppose.
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This one started off good, I like the world, the idea of "hacking time", and even the characters. I was even willing to overlook the plot holes. Then it devolved into a mellow dramatic lost love story. Having the main character die at the hands of her wookie was too much. Wait, it wasn't a wookie side kick, was it?
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And what ground can be covered by the time-travel tale at this point? I'm not sure what Cook was going for. Cautionary tale? Be satisfied with what you have type of thing? That's been done to death. Some of the setting details were interesting, but they're relegated to stage dressing.
For me, the part I bolded was the real issue here. The time-travel stuff was just window-dressing. In other words, I don't think that the problems this story had had much to do with the fact that it was a time-travel story (though I concede that it's an overused trope and therefore a problem in its own right). The main problem is that this story wasn't interesting enough to stand on its own, and didn't have a coherent enough take-home message to act as a cautionary tale.
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My triumphant return to the boards begins...
This story: eh.
It isn't clever. Its prose is so-so. Its shyamalans the ending.
To nitpick: people have been talking about how the techs would keep the money. This reaaallllly misses the point. Why on earth would people who can control the flow of frickin' causality need money? I mean really. And they just operate out of a church basement? With one easily bribed guard?
Add this to the never explained, ridiculous 'consciousness outlives causality' bit, and this whole story feels like the clumsy first draft of a story.
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Moderator's note: I split off the discussion about interesting and unintentional adjectives and verbs used by posters in discussing this story here (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=4946.0).
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The horrendous consequences of this reminded me of a bad acid trip I had. So much so that I kept looking for it in the Pseudopod forum.
So well done, I suppose (shudder)
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I thought I kinda liked this episode, until I read the comments here, which then activated a closed timelike loop in my brain and made me realize it wasn't as enjoyable as I thought.
As a reader (and not a writer) I do quite like time travel stories when they are done well and/or have a nice twist and I liked the twist at the end here because I think it is always fishy when a time travel tale has the protagonist remembering both realities or there's a shimmering wave that ripples out in time and slowly things modify themselves.
Maybe some of the people we think are crazy out there really just learned the hard way what happens when you really try to time travel.
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Maybe some of the people we think are crazy out there really just learned the hard way what happens when you really try to time travel.
Now you're a writer! See - that's how it starts ...
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I thought I kinda liked this episode, until I read the comments here, which then activated a closed timelike loop in my brain and made me realize it wasn't as enjoyable as I thought.
That is exactly why I read the forums sparingly. It's like watching political commentary on tv -- it's exciting to have your beliefs challenged and discussed, but when the discussion starts to detract from your enjoyment of life, it's time to take a walk and live to chat another day.
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I thought that this story had so much potential, so many awesome moments that it was sad that it didn't really seem to take advantage of them. For example, the MC's ability to communicate inaudibly with her alien and her disdain that the scientists weren't doing the same was really cool, but never referred to again. Also, I thought her anticipation of her husband's imminent return was nicely done, and the horror of flashing back and forth was pretty well written, but then the story was very abruptly over. I personally wasn't interested in learning more about the church of Osiris, but again, why use up that many words to half explain it and then never utilize it in the story? Not to mention the plot holes that blueeyeddevil pointed out above...
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I enjoyed the setup more than the payoff. I liked the IDEAS of the story more than the story itself. Using singularities to hack time, cool. Dual realities existing in someone's mind, cool. Mini-wookie aliens that think humans are gods, very cool. Data fields that are accessed telepathically, VERY cool. The rest of the story seemed like carrier for the tech and world, like so much proverbial celery for proverbial ranch dip.
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The rest of the story seemed like carrier for the tech and world, like so much proverbial celery for proverbial ranch dip.
Mmmmm, proverbial ranch dip.
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I agree with whoever said this was interesting until it devolved into a love story.
I wanted the husband's undying to be the "small matter" that actually ends up bringing down the church and catching the time-fiddling techs in some clever way. Sigh. Maybe I'll go join ElectricPaladin and get this in an alternate reality.
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My biggest objection - problem?- with this story was unclarity with the ending. Is she screaming because she remembers both realities, or because she's still existing in both realities? The latter was what I had thought. But then if her alien devotee kills her, doesn't the her that only remembers the changed reality live on? But "where" does she live on?
Or maybe I'm just a thick monkey.
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My biggest objection - problem?- with this story was unclarity with the ending. Is she screaming because she remembers both realities, or because she's still existing in both realities? The latter was what I had thought. But then if her alien devotee kills her, doesn't the her that only remembers the changed reality live on? But "where" does she live on?
Or maybe I'm just a thick monkey.
I was wondering that too. When one of the two versions died I thought "Oh good, problem solved! Now she only has one reality again.". But I don't think that's what was intended. I suppose that would depend on whether there were an afterlife and whether the shared consciousness could extend beyond biological life.
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Well, if you have two waves that are interfering with each other, and you shut down one wave...
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Well, if you have two waves that are interfering with each other, and you shut down one wave...
Wait..so she did live? At least the her with her husband? Then why didn't it say soooooo? ::thumps head on desk in confusion::
I echo everyone else in that this story feels like it had all these great ideas and mashed them together into a patchwork story that fell short. Pick out any of the threads and focus on a single one, and I think it would have gotten a much stronger story. Plus, I found it too wordy for the pretty much simple plot. Did we really have to hear the long drawn out specifics of time travel when there was going to be an odd flux happening out of luck anyway?
To be fair, I did love the whole paradox of the MC being aware in both timelines. I wanted to explore that more since that rarely gets explored, but was very annoyed when the deus ex alien machina stops it. Then he oh-so-conveniently kills himself. (Hmm...I guess I didn't like the alien bodyguard as much. I did feel his whole purpose was to simply kill his mistress at the end.)
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Well, if you have two waves that are interfering with each other, and you shut down one wave...
Wait..so she did live? At least the her with her husband? Then why didn't it say soooooo? ::thumps head on desk in confusion::
I think that her living on with her husband would've made sense, given the rest of the details, but I don't think it was supported by the text. The fact that the end of her narrative is her death, with no hints of continuation makes me believe that she's actually supposed to be dead.
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I was waiting for the bit where we would find out that the Catholic Church of Osiris was the big, complicated project the time-hackers were working on, and that the protagonist coming in to ask them to resurrect her husband was part of the alteration of reality they'd engineered in order to lead to their desired end-state.
When the story bogged down in the long introspection before the husband's return, I suspected I wasn't going to get that story. By then it felt clear that something was going to go wrong with his return, and all those preliminary paragraphs were there to delay it and therefore build tension (which it failed to do for me).
I agree that lots of the throwaway aspects of the setting were more interesting to me than the actual story was.