I’m sure that I’m not smart enough to fully understand this one. I might need some help. If you’ve read this story and would like to chime in, please leave comments.Here is my take. The main character is named Matthias. Matthias has the qualities of a god, or creator. There is mention of a bookshelf with several universes shelved in a row. The one that Matthias is looking through and concerned with in this story contains a young girl and her stuffed bear.
This girl’s parents are fighting in the kitchen. The fight escalates into domestic abuse. Matthias can’t take it and has to reach out to her through her bear. The bear speaks. She asks, “Are you God?”
From here the story becomes elusive for me. The reader is taken into Matthias’ world where he is experimenting, trying to create something important. However, it would seem that an elder or parent (the relationship is unclear, perhaps that is just the way it is among godlings) disapproves.
A question is raised, would this girl be better off dead? The other answer is for Matthias to meddle. And it would seem that getting involved has never turned out well for anyone and just disappoints Matthias. To find out what happens to the girl, you will have to read the story.
One of the interesting things about “The House Beyond Your Sky” is that I get the impression that Matthias is just a user of an existing program. Oh, he is a hacker working on network performance and always looking to upgrade, but still an end-user of an existing platform. It brings to mind the many types of SIM-universes that are at our disposal. As end-users we can create and manipulate small words of digital people. We can give those people lives, we can take them away. Is morality involved at all?
Anyway, this is a bizarre find, a good read, a hard read, a mind stretching read, a good story that bring the word art to mind.
Rosenbaum, Benjamin. “The House Beyond Your Sky.” Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007. Ed. Rich Horton. New York: Cosmos, 2007. p. 367 - 383
2 comments:
Hey, thanks for the great review! Glad you liked it, even if it was a bit mysterious. :-)
Thank you for stopping by.
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