Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion
War Stories from the Future
>
"A Stopped Clock" by Madeline Ashby
date
newest »
newest »
The story looks at future warfare in cyberspace as an attack on infrastructure in future Korea, a totally wired society, computer-driven cars, trains, escalators, public safety, pretty much everything. Suppose the connectivity went away...
People seem to have forgotten how to cope with technological failure. Are there no trains running? But, if there was something wrong with the trains, there be an alert message, wouldn't there? The trains and the newsfeeds wouldn't all go down at the same time. And so the want-to-be passengers just continue to stand on line as the stations fill with people, no one believing that a train will never come. (And one day there will again be lemon scented napkins. :) People have even forgotten how to call for help to report problems, crimes or accidents; ubiquitous surveillance is supposed to automatically summon the appropriate authorities.
It takes an interesting approach to tell the story from the point of view of one of the city's most low-tech residents, an elderly street-vendor of kimchi & rice.
Enjoyable story of two elderly street vendors making their way through the technopocalypse.
Madeline Ashby is a futurist author of the vN novels as well as other future tech short stories. ****
People seem to have forgotten how to cope with technological failure. Are there no trains running? But, if there was something wrong with the trains, there be an alert message, wouldn't there? The trains and the newsfeeds wouldn't all go down at the same time. And so the want-to-be passengers just continue to stand on line as the stations fill with people, no one believing that a train will never come. (And one day there will again be lemon scented napkins. :) People have even forgotten how to call for help to report problems, crimes or accidents; ubiquitous surveillance is supposed to automatically summon the appropriate authorities.
It takes an interesting approach to tell the story from the point of view of one of the city's most low-tech residents, an elderly street-vendor of kimchi & rice.
Enjoyable story of two elderly street vendors making their way through the technopocalypse.
Madeline Ashby is a futurist author of the vN novels as well as other future tech short stories. ****
Yeah I liked this one quite a bit. Enjoyed the ground-up perspective
It was kind of an interesting look at what tech does to the poor & what happens when tech breaks. I gave it 3 stars.
Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy
Books mentioned in this topic
vN (other topics)War Stories from the Future (other topics)
"A Stopped Clock" by Madeline Ashby
From the scifi anthology War Stories from the Future, part of our discussion of War Stories from the Future. (The entire collection is available free online in several formats.)