The other side of reincarnation

Science fiction | Possibility - A SUM inspired story | Edgar Million

Once in a while, you stumble upon a story that has a concept that is mind-bendingly grand, that makes you rethink everything.

And when this is packed with good writing and a simple but solid storyline into a tiny bundle of wow, there is only one thing that can make it even better.

It's free on smashwords.

Here's the intro: What happens after you die? Instead of nothing, or heaven, you discover a world where every possible you who ever lived exists in a world made entirely of you.

Don't mess with little old ladies

Science Fiction | To Find a Thief | EL Russell

What a little gem of a story! 😁

A purse snatcher picks on the same little old lady once too often.


Wish fulfilment at its most satisfying, and the story manages to get a couple of sneaky digs into TV reporters and insensitive policemen, too.

Want to read?
To Find a Thief (free)

Machine intelligence brings down humanity, but how?

Science Fiction | The Wipeboard (Terminator Flash Fiction) | Ray Daley
Science Fiction | The Parable of the Paperclip Maximiser | Yonatan Zunger

The Wipeboard is a technically well-written piece of flash fiction, rather cleverly done. A quick two-minute read. However, it didn't add anything to the Terminator world, and it was unsatisfyingly implausible, as I shall go deeper into in this review that is, ironically, longer than the reviewed story.

It's going to be difficult to write this without spoilers, but you already know the Terminator world. Humans are fighting the machines, which want to wipe out humanity. In the movies, the humans win, just barely.

The movies have this incoherent understanding of machine intelligence which is rather pervasive in Hollywood and other fast-food entertainment: machines suddenly 'come alive' or 'wake up' and behave like badly brought up brats with deadly weapons and invincible armour. Their 'intelligence' is like nothing so much as a human movie villain's, one that wants destruction for the sake of destruction. There are often stupid and paranoia-creating conversations between machine (I am invincible, you cannot win) and humans (fuck you, machine, take that, and that). Why would that ever happen if the machines were as 'humanly' clever as that? Any machine control is that much faster than humans. If the 'alive' machines 'decided' to wipe out humanity, it would not be all that difficult. Nobody is going to beat an automated gun to the draw.

But really, no, that's never going to happen. Because that's not how machine intelligence works. As Isaac Asimov once pithily put it, machines are developed to do things humans find difficult or boring.

You do, however, have humans who are so clever that they want to test the limits of their own cleverness by making machines that mimic humans more closely. Yet, unless you code in evil intent, the machines will never be evil, no matter how 'intelligent' they get.

You can, most certainly, come to grief much more subtly, as The Parable of the Paper Clip Maximiser by Yonatan Zunger brings out with such bland black humour. This story is in two layers. A parable on AI and a parable on capitalism.

But if, somehow, some too-clever-for-their-own good human does indeed invent Skynet the evil humanity-killing machine, I assure you that the subsequent destruction by nuclear explosions would not leave in place anywhere near the necessary human intellectual capital, equipment or layers upon layers of highly specialised learning that could create machine intelligence in the first place. Nope, if you make Skynet and let it loose, forget humanity ever coming back.

Which is why Ray Daley's sharp little flash fiction set in the Terminator world left me shaking my head sadly, despite its writing virtuosity.

Want to read?
The Parable of the Paperclip Maximizer (free)
The Wipeboard (free)

Dark humour / funny horror

Science fiction | Killin Machine | JT Pearson

At first, it didn't read like a sci fi story at all. At all. We have this weird loner guy. And then we have a kitten. Then he has kittens, in the British sense of the term. And slowly the sci fi part emerges. And the horror part. Except that it's at least as funny as it's horrible.

I'm pretty sure I'm glad I live half a planet away from the story's location, given how it ended. But it was funny as anything.

If Stephen King wrote funny stuff, and was as funny as he does horror, he might aspire to write something like this.

You can read this for free on Smashwords till 31 July 2017.

Video games and time travel

Science fiction | Manhunt How Long Can You Run
By Colin D Grimes

I can't explain exactly what about this story I found chilling, but that's the word for a one-word review.

Rich kids use time travel to be hunted in the past. Justin has the current record, but he wants to break it. Again and again. Yes, certainly sounds like a spoilt brat playing yet another immersive video game.

Except that this time travel game can get you killed. So does he survive? And for how long? What happens at 'game over'?

The description is remarkably tongue-in-cheek, once you've read the story. ;)

Recommended for a quick read. A couple of grammar errors need to be fixed, but let's not cavil too much.

This short story is free on smashwords till 31 July 2017. 

Possessed by the ghosts of academia

Possession | AS Byatt

I was greatly impressed by her deep knowledge of a highly inbred part of academia, but the unsympathetic characters' tedious lives bored me to tears.

I still haven't finished the book, more than 10 years after someone gifted it to me. I think I'm at chapter 2, but am unlikely to ever go back and verify that.