Author Topic: EP243: I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno  (Read 24974 times)

contra

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Reply #25 on: June 04, 2010, 11:40:42 PM
Ok.  First,  I liked the story.  Also good to see more sci fi out there doing things, especially with many podcasts and mags going dark. 

The story had it's issues.  I also think they threw in too many science terms for the sake of throwing it in.  But I can overlook it.  I see what they were trying to do.
It's an interesting relationship, and it's good to see that carried out over the ages, to see where it could go.
As others pointed out,  Voices of a Distant Star goes in a similar direction; but a fundimentally different one.

Spoilers for below.


The relationship in VoaD prett much destroys both of them.  Her because of how she acts, and how it leaves her atthe end; just wanting.

And him how he wants to move on, but can't; as he knows for a fact that the girl he loves is still out there, as she was when they were in love.  He can't move on, because she can't.


end of spoilers

While this story is about them not needing the idea of each other, but just ending up together, over and over.  Each time taking them to a different place they don't understand, that becomes home for them.  Everytime they meet the change each other in ways they don't understand. 

Or at least she changes.  He doesn't get that much development as a character in that respect.  He did maybe 3 things to move along, and one of them was make an emergancy plan.

---
Mike---Glasgow.  Scotland.-->


CryptoMe

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Reply #26 on: June 06, 2010, 02:59:48 AM
Yet, even though they don't connect, they still love each other, and that love endures. 

This is what confounds me. Our society's obsession of seeing hurtful, painful relationships in some romantic light as "love". When you love someone, you don't neglect them or purposefully do things to hurt them. You support them and talk to them, about every little thing (and certainly something as big as taking a decades-long light speed trip). When you love someone, you let them go and move on if that is the best thing for them. You definitely don't come back and impose yourself on them, because it's what *you* want. I do not see what these characters had as love - I see it as selfish, self-centered, and very unhealthy.




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Reply #27 on: June 06, 2010, 03:18:58 AM
Yet, even though they don't connect, they still love each other, and that love endures. 

This is what confounds me. Our society's obsession of seeing hurtful, painful relationships in some romantic light as "love". When you love someone, you don't neglect them or purposefully do things to hurt them. You support them and talk to them, about every little thing (and certainly something as big as taking a decades-long light speed trip). When you love someone, you let them go and move on if that is the best thing for them. You definitely don't come back and impose yourself on them, because it's what *you* want. I do not see what these characters had as love - I see it as selfish, self-centered, and very unhealthy.



Which is why it's important to have Reno; Reno (the Singularity) is standing in for them both achieving the maturity to engage with each other on an emotional level with an intensity that matches their physical attraction and mental obsession.  The story is very familiar; we all go through it.  It just took these two an unusually long time to achieve that emotional maturity.



SanguineV

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Reply #28 on: June 07, 2010, 08:49:56 AM
I thought this story was a good popcorn piece; just trust that the characters are reasonable, the end will be good and don't think about the details. The romantics can dream that the two lovers will inevitably meet up in Reno/singularity and live happily ever after.

Unfortunately (as many above have pointed out) if you dig a bit deeper it starts to unravel. The physics wasn't well used at times and it can be hard to stay focused when the metaphor is false. The relationship was borderline abusive at times. The 25 years of happy marriage and kids is just blinked away, makes the main character sound like a wierd obsessive compulsive (I might run away at relativstic velocities too if someone like that was after me).

Overall it was fine to listen to the first time (while distracted) and a decent piece of light writing, but doesn't hold up to relistening or scrutiny.



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Reply #29 on: June 08, 2010, 04:55:47 PM
The unconventional relationship was more interesting to me than the relativistic romance trope, though it's not actually one that I see a whole lot so I enjoyed being able to note it's existence rather than feeling like "not this again!". Something being a trope doesn't automatically make it a cliche, if that makes any sense at all.




CryptoMe

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Reply #30 on: June 09, 2010, 01:45:31 AM
Which is why it's important to have Reno; Reno (the Singularity) is standing in for them both achieving the maturity to engage with each other on an emotional level with an intensity that matches their physical attraction and mental obsession.  The story is very familiar; we all go through it.  It just took these two an unusually long time to achieve that emotional maturity.

Yeah, I don't see that. For one, I think that in these people's case, emotional maturity means finding their happiness away from each other. So the singularity is yet another time and place where they will continue to hurt each other.

Also, I am not sure that we do all go through it. Some lucky people (yes I have met a few) have never had a bad relationship, ever. Most people I know have bad relationships that are brief, learned from, and not returned to if the opportunity presents itself.



El Barto

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Reply #31 on: June 10, 2010, 12:29:34 AM
I was thrilled to hear about the new zine but I didn't like the story at all.  The way it was written made me be the guy in the relationship and I wasn't interested in her at all.  So they had hot makeup sex after fighting?  Who cares?  Not me.  And the sci-fi felt tacked on to me - this could just have been a guy going to sea in the 1600's.  Oh well, can't love em all and I'm glad the story did resonate with some of my fells fans.



Kaa

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Reply #32 on: June 10, 2010, 02:26:08 PM
This was one of those stories that, to me at least, was more enjoyable in print than in audio presentation. The frequent breaks with the asides...didn't translate well.

I went to the site and read it and got much more out of it than in the listening.

But at least it DID interest me enough to not only listen to it, but read it. So it must have been good. :)

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Katie

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Reply #33 on: June 18, 2010, 02:35:50 PM
I liked this one a lot. I thought the use of Physics as both metaphor and reality worked really well for talking about love. I'm also often annoyed by the delayed f*** trope in a lot of stories, but time dilation is an actual good reason for people to not be able to be together. I also liked it that it was a romance between two people who, as I read it, weren't ever going to be good for each other, really, which takes away some of the Nora Ephron issues from it.



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Reply #34 on: June 18, 2010, 04:54:09 PM
@ Katie
Quote
...which takes away some of the Nora Ephron issues from it.

Can you clarify? Which issues did you mean? Romantic comedies, failed marriages, man hating, or talented writers? She is associated with all three. Three Oscar nominations too.



Dem

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Reply #35 on: June 20, 2010, 12:34:38 PM
I thought this was one of the best I have heard on EP. Subtle, intricate and driven by the core of humanity - needful of loving relationships - that one hopes is never lost, no matter our technological capabilities. Beautifully read by Mur too as her voice carries a soulful timbre that underpinned and lit the mood. I am less concerned that the time dilation tale has been 'done' before, what matters to me is how it's done and this version had depth and texture due to being driven by the characters and not the SF wizardry.

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.


mbrennan

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Reply #36 on: June 23, 2010, 08:55:18 PM
In order for me to really enjoy this story, I would have needed more in the way of characterization for both the narrator and the character she was addressing.  This is a case where I feel the style -- though well-executed in its own right -- undermined the tale; the first-person perspective, second-person address meant there was little way to fill in either one as a character (since they already know each other, it would have felt weird and artificial), and the decision to cover the entire arc of their relationship meant the narration never dwelt on any event long enough for me to care about it.  I could, however, imagine the same events being recast in the context of a single, well-detailed encounter between the two, with all their past informing the moment they come face-to-face, and in that hypothetical version, a lot of my objections to their behavior might have melted away.

Which is very much a "not my cup of tea, but obviously someone else's" response.  I think the story was well-written, but I was not its target audience at all.



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Reply #37 on: June 25, 2010, 04:14:47 AM
This just fit.  I was sitting in a parking lot, waiting to meet an old friend whom I hadn't seen in years as I listened to this.  Felt kinda perfect.



mwsmedia

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Reply #38 on: June 25, 2010, 03:19:56 PM
I loved this one.  In fact, it may be among my favorite romantic Escape Pod stories... right up there with Tim Pratt's "Impossible Dreams" (and no, I'm not biased) but for different reasons.

The folks who complained about the protag's apparent dismissal of her first husband might be forgetting two things:

1) This story is about the protag and her lifelong love, not about the twenty five years (a tiny, tiny fraction of her life) she spent with Gunther.

2) This story is told from the POV of a transcended, post-human being who has a much larger perspective.

There were choices in the writing -- compressions -- that may have made the protag's actions seem cavalier.  It all worked for me, though.  Relationships are complicated, especially life-long relationships.  Motivations shift and twist and send you back and forth and toward and away from each other over the stretch of years and decades.  I'm lucky that my life is made interesting by the presence of more than one woman I will cherish forever, even though our intimate phases may wax and wane and we'll probably never be together forever.  Until the Singularity, that is.

This story warmed my heart.

Matthew Wayne Selznick
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Planish

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Reply #39 on: July 04, 2010, 04:08:19 AM
First: I rather liked it. That it did not have a 100% original premise didn't bother me.

Second: I'm surprised that nobody had mentioned Joe Haldeman's The Forever War.

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Reply #40 on: July 15, 2010, 05:47:48 PM
As it is, there were too many ingredients in here for such a short story, plus some fairly daring or ill-advised choices made in pursuit of a 'wise' and experienced voice. A few issues:
-You will always seriously threaten the narrator's credibility when you have them write off their spouse and/or children as unimportant. The idea that after twenty-five years of apparently happy marriage and two children a character would be ready to go back to mooning over a f***ed-up dysfuctional relationship from when she was twenty-something takes me straight out of the narrative.
-As already implied, this was a f***ed-up dysfuctional relationship. This is a story about people who were so cavalier about each other's feelings and concerns that they regularly chose to visit different star systems without really consuling one another. Hard for me to root for love when it sounds a lot more like unhealthy obsession.
-Post-humanism is still being hashed out in the zeitgeist, having the solution to the story be 'Don't worry, we'll be together again when both our consciousnesses are downloaded into the great computer' does not resolve anything as far as I'm concerned.

You pretty much nailed it as far as my feelings and thoughts about this story goes. The whole marriage and kids thing got to me, too. After she mentions all this it's like it was such a non-event you may as well have been talking about a bathroom break. I wasn't in love with the story before, but after that whole mess, it really just went downhill.



eytanz

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Reply #41 on: February 22, 2011, 04:41:25 PM
Congratulations to Vylar for the nebula nomination!



Dem

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Reply #42 on: February 22, 2011, 05:34:44 PM
Congratulations to Vylar for the nebula nomination!
Well done Vylar - and thanks; finally, there's evidence I have taste!

I thought this was one of the best I have heard on EP. Subtle, intricate and driven by the core of humanity - needful of loving relationships - that one hopes is never lost, no matter our technological capabilities. Beautifully read by Mur too as her voice carries a soulful timbre that underpinned and lit the mood. I am less concerned that the time dilation tale has been 'done' before, what matters to me is how it's done and this version had depth and texture due to being driven by the characters and not the SF wizardry.

 

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.