From the anthology: SELECTIONS FROM BRAVE NEW WORLDS
edited by John Joseph Adams
Here is another happy find from the Baen Free Library, a section of the Baen site where a good number of books is offered for free download, as a way to sample authors and their works. Selections from Brave New Worlds is a sampler from a larger collection of short stories, this time with a dystopian theme. Not all of them were concerned with ruin and destruction changing society, as is often the case, but they were all quite intriguing in their very different outlook.
OF A SWEET SLOW DANCE IN THE WAKE OF TEMPORARY DOGS
This is one of the hardest reads I encountered in my journey through short stories, so that even taking into account the fact that it’s part of a dystopian anthology and that some harshness was to be expected, there were moments when the horror became too much to bear. But I guess that was the intention of the author…
Enysbourg is an actual island but also a virtual island of carefree happiness and delight in a world that’s become too set in its way, too dedicated to work, duty and productivity; a gray, dreary world that sucks all joy from people, who come to places like Enysbourg to taste something they sorely miss in their lives. The island’s dwellers are welcoming, sunny people and it’s so very easy for tourists to be swept away by their hosts’ delight in living and having fun, to the point that some of them choose to abandon their former lives and take residence on Enysbourg, never to return.
Where’s the problem, then, one might ask. Well there is, and it’s a big one: the revelries don’t go on forever, but only for nine days – on the tenth something dreadful happens, war breaks out in the most bloody and vicious declination one might imagine, and the citizens of Enysbourg are savagely brutalized within an inch of their lives, without ever dying no matter how deadly the injuries. No explanation is given about the sudden shift from idyllic setting to war zone, as no explanation is given, on the morning of the new day when the nine-day cycle begins again, about the return to health and integrity of the former victims. The description of that one single, terrible day of death and destruction is given through the eyes of Robert, an occasional tourist who decides to stay for the love of a woman he met, and he voices the question any reader of this story would ask: how is it possible to accept even one day of appalling carnage, of lingering pain unrelieved by death, in exchange for nine perfect days of joys unknown to the rest of the world? And how does one deal with the aftermath of such suffering, even in the midst of pure happiness?
It would not be an easy answer, if there is indeed one. Still, this story made an indelible impression on me, and despite its brutal change of pace it was indeed the most memorable of the whole anthology, worth indeed the effort of looking for this book.
My Rating:
I would think that people would eventually go insane, or leave.
That is a very intriguing concept for a story.
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I would have liked to see this concept expanded, if not on a full-length novel, at least in a novella: there are still so many unanswered questions….
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You made me very interested! I’m going to read it 🙂 thanks for sharing.
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Happy to help! I hope you enjoy the story 🙂
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Whoa, that’s an awesome concept. I mean, how bad must real life be for people who stay there, to put up with a day or horror and endless pain and anguish in exchange for nine days of bliss perfection. I imagine on some level they get used to it after a while, and when you survive something once, you know you can do it again…but still. This blows my mind.
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Exactly! I wondered if the awareness of what happens on Day 10 made the fun and joy of the preceding 9 days all the more poignant, but still that one day made every description of the deepest hell look like a picnic in the park!
I would like to sit down with the author and ask him a thousand questions… 🙂
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The story reminds me of Westworld in more than one way. An interesting concept, even if the story didn’t work for me 😉
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I did not think about that parallel, but it does indeed resonate in some way with the Westworld main theme now that you mention it! 🙂
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Wow indeed – I’m not a short story reader really, as you know, but I am intrigued – but then also a little bit distracted by the ‘horror’ aspect.
Lynn 😀
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Fair warning: the descriptions of Day Ten are not for the faint of heart, and I felt psychologically drained when I reached the end, so it’s better to know that beforehand…
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