All About Emily by Connie Willis
97 pages
Published 2011
Read February 24
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
It's
cheating a bit to claim this one as a "book" I read. Despite what the
jacket flap claims, 17,000 words is not "long" for a novella. The large
print, wide margins, and small pages disguise the fact that there just
isn't much here. It's published by Subterranean Press, who for whatever
reason think it's a sound business practice in print's waning years to
print up "deluxe hardcover editions" of modest novellas and sell them
for $20 a pop. I wonder who even buys these things, mismanaged libraries
aside. (Someone affiliated with my library, either staff or vocal
patron, must have a thing for Subterranean Press.) The "illustrations"
inside are all kinds of goofy, made goofier by recycling them in an
amateurish collage on the cover. I prefer to imagine characters on my
own terms, thank you, instead of having some model smiling blandly in an
undergraduate-level photoshop.
This is a workmanlike AI story,
nothing fresh or memorable except, perhaps, its Broadway trappings.
Projecting current celebrity and internet culture several decades into the future led
to rather silly reading. (The phrase "go viral" is like fingernails on chalkboard for me.) I like what little Connie Willis I've read,
but this little story will not make any favorites rankings.
No comments:
Post a Comment