Tag: 2*

Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Hunting Problem by Robert Sheckley (Galaxy, September 1955) opens with Drog arriving late at a meeting of Soaring Falcon Patrol (Drog “hurtles down from the ten thousand foot level”). Drog is chastised by his Patrol Leader, who then recites the Scouter Creed to the assembled scouts:

“We, the Young Scouters of the planet Elbonai, pledge to perpetuate the skills and virtues of our pioneering ancestors. For that purpose, we Scouters adopt the shape our forebears were born to when they conquered the virgin wilderness of Elbonai. We hereby resolve—”
Scouter Drog adjusted his hearing receptors to amplify the Leader’s soft voice. The Creed always thrilled him. It was hard to believe that his ancestors had once been earthbound. Today the Elbonai were aerial beings, maintaining only the minimum of body, fueling by cosmic radiation at the twenty thousand-foot level, sensing by direct perception, coming down only for sentimental or sacramental purposes. They had come a long way since the Age of Pioneering. The modern world had begun with the Age of Submolecular Control, which was followed by the present age of Direct Control.
“. . . honesty and fair play,” the Leader was saying. “And we further resolve to drink liquids, as they did, and to eat solid food, and to increase our skill in their tools and methods.”  p. 36

Drog is then told by his Patrol Leader that, if he wants to get his first-class scouter award before a forthcoming Jamboree (Drog is the only second-class scout in the patrol), he needs to bring back the pelt of a Mirash, a “large and ferocious animal”. The Patrol Leader states that three of these previously thought extinct animals have been spotted to the north. The story point of view then switches to three human prospectors who have recently landed on the planet—they are the Mirash that are going to be hunted by Drog.
The next part of the story sees Drog stalking the humans, a task which does not begin well when one of the prospectors tells his colleague that he saw a tree move—and one of them subsequently blasts it:

Slowly Drog returned to consciousness. The Mirash’s flaming weapon had caught him in camouflage, almost completely unshielded. He still couldn’t understand how it had happened. There had been no premonitory fear-scent, no snorting, no snarling, no warning whatsoever. The Mirash had attacked with blind suddenness, without waiting to see whether he was friend or foe.
At last Drog understood the nature of the beast he was up against.1  p. 40

There are a couple more conventional efforts by Drog to trap the humans (these include a steak dinner waiting when they arrive back at camp—they avoid the tangle-grass and rising disc of earth—and then the sounds of a damsel in distress—which they ignore). Drog (spoiler) finally catches one of the humans by using “ilitorcy” (the use of a thick mist, essentially). The story then closes with both first-class scout Drog flying the pelt of a Mirash at the Jamboree and all three humans escaping alive in their spaceship. The pelt turns out to be an environmental suit that one of the men was wearing.
I suppose this is a moderately enjoyable, if slight, YA piece. The ending may provide more of an uplift to others than it did for me.
** (Average). 3,950 words. Story link.

1. Robert Sheckley’s stories often have mordant asides about the nature of humanity, e.g. his description of humans as “pushers” in the superior Specialist (Galaxy, May 1953)—if you want a piece that has a YA feel but which also works for adults (and has a great sense of wonder ending), I’d read that instead.

Laughter Among the Trees by Suzan Palumbo

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Laughter Among the Trees by Suzan Palumbo (The Dark #69, February 2021)1 opens with Ana driving to a park in Canada, during which she recalls (a) her arrival in the country as the child of West Indian immigrants, (b) her early days in school, and (c) the birth of her sister Sab. Ana then recalls a childhood family camping trip where her younger sister disappeared during the night (Sab left the tent—against Ana’s wishes—with Greg, a boy she had been playing with earlier that day). Sab was never seen again, nor was the boy—and there was no evidence he had ever been at the campsite.
The story then moves forward in time to when Ana has grown up, her father has died, and her mother is in a care home. During one of Ana’s visits to see her mother, the old woman talks about the disappearance of Sab and shows Ana a picture of a boy that looks like Greg—it materialises that Greg was a cousin of Ana’s mother who drowned back in the West Indies in 1962 when Ana’s mother wanted to go swimming in a flooded river. She tells Ana, “‘dis go haunt you here.’ You can’t outrun the past, Ana, even if it’s dead and drowned in another country.”
The story closes with Ana going back to the camp site. Then (spoiler), on the second night, a ghostly Sab appears and tells Ana to follow her. They go to a cave, where Ana finds Sab’s remains and later lies down beside her bones. The story closes with Ana feeling a dense cold, and something gripping her throat.
This is reasonably well told, but it seems to be more an autobiographical slice-of-life than a ghost story (the immigrant background, the family accounts, and the dysfunctional relationship with her sister, etc.). I’d also add that the internal logic of the haunting doesn’t really convince: I can see why Greg would kill the mother or Sab for revenge, but why would Sab lead Ana to the same fate given it was her own childhood stupidity and wilfulness that got her killed?
Finally, there are one or two sentences or word choices that could do with being changed, e.g. the very clunky first sentence:

The highway to the campground cuts through the granite Laurentian Plateau like a desiccated wound.

What’s a “Laurentian Plateau”? Do wounds become “dessicated”? Why distract your reader with this kind of thing? Wouldn’t, “The highway to the campground cuts through the plateau like an old wound” be a simpler and more apt beginning (the story is in large part about an old wound)?
** (Average). 5,950 words. Story link.

1. This was a 2022 Nebula Award finalist in the short story category. Another mystifying choice.

Good and Faithful Servant by Thomas F. Monteleone

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Good and Faithful Servant by Thomas F. Monteleone (Amazing, March 1976)1 begins with an exoskeleton clad future soldier called Denek reporting to his controller in Chicago that he has located approaching intruders and is going to engage. The subsequent combat sequence (which extends through the night and into the next day) sees him destroy three vehicles with laser and mortar fire. During the action we learn that Chicago may be the only world that Denek knows:

He wanted to finish this last one and return home. He missed the protective shell of the City, wrapped around him and the others like a great cocoon. It was incredible that anyone would wish to destroy Chicago. It was so unnatural to him, he could not understand.
What type of beings were the intruders? The question emerged slowly in his simple brain. Never seen, they were only known as an invading force that occasionally appeared on Chicago’s warning screens. Perhaps he would someday learn more about them.  p. 113

Before Denek leaves the battleground he notices one of the intruders is still moving. When he investigates he discovers it is a woman. Denek starts talking to her and learns that she is from another city state like Chicago, they have made a number of efforts to contact his city, and, unlike Denek and his fellow citizens who are controlled by Chicago’s computer, they are free.
Later that evening (spoiler) Denek takes off his exoskeleton and he and the woman make love but, when he wakes the next morning and puts it on again, the controls are overridden. Denek watches as his arm rises and the laser fires at the woman, killing her. The Chicago computer tells Denek that it is aware of what he did last night—and what he learned—before using the exoskeleton to tear his body apart.
This is a readable enough piece, but the action is fairly formulaic, and some may wonder why the computer didn’t override him the moment the woman started talking (thus saving itself a trained soldier).
** (Average). 4,200 words. Story link.  

1. This story and three other “Chicago” stories, Chicago (Future City, 1973), Breath’s a Ware That Will Not Keep (Dystopian Visions, 1975) and Far from Eve and Morning (Amazing, October 1977), were incorporated into the novel, The Time-Swept City (1977).

That Story Isn’t the Story by John Wiswell

Posted on by Paul Fraser

That Story Isn’t the Story by John Wiswell (Uncanny, November-December 2021)1 opens with Anton leaving a vampire household with the help of an old friend called Grigorii. As they leave the house in Grigorii’s car, Anton sees Mr Bird (the vampire) return:

A black town car trails up the street toward them. Sleek and black, with that short club of a man Walter at the wheel. Mr. Bird’s senior familiar. Anton knows who sits in the tinted windows and the shadows of the rear seats.
From inside the Kia, Grigorii pops the passenger door open. “Come on, man.”
Is blood spotting in Anton’s jeans? He gropes at his thighs, unsure if the moisture is sweat on his palms or if he’s bleeding. The car is getting closer. Mr. Bird definitely sees him. Anton sinks into the car. He clutches his seatbelt until they are doing forty in a twenty mile zone. He’s too worried to turn around, and too afraid not to fixate on the rearview mirror.
The black car stops in the middle of the street. A rear door opens, and a dark thing peers out. There is no seeing any detail of that figure—no detail except for his mouth. It is open and sharp. Distance doesn’t change how clearly Anton sees the teeth.

Anton then meets Luis, another stray, at Grigorii’s house, and worries about Mr Bird before examining himself in the toilet to see if the bite wounds in his thighs are still bleeding (these are semi-permanent, and bleed in the presence of Mr Bird). They aren’t, which means that Mr Bird is not nearby, or not yet.
This background feeling of menace and unease pervades most of the rest of the story, and rises and falls as different events play out. To begin with, Luis is attacked on the way back from his job, something Anton thinks may be related to his departure and which causes a fight between the two when Anton tried to inspect Luis for bites. Then Walter, Mr Bird’s familiar, approaches Anton to tell him that he must return, the first of two visits (during the second one Walter tells Anton that the twins, two of the vampire’s other victims, have also run away).
There is never any force or violence used to get Anton to return, oddly enough and, towards the end of the story, the contacts stop and Anton transitions to a normal life. Then, one evening when Anton and a new boyfriend called Julian go out for a meal, Anton sees Walter working in the restaurant and realises that he has left Mr Bird too.
The story closes a few weeks later, when Anton goes out of town with Julian for the weekend and detours past Mr Bird’s house: Anton sees the building is in an obvious state of disrepair and then, while he sketches the house, it collapses.
This has the trappings of a vampire story but is really a mainstream piece about escaping abusive relationships or situations, and one which suggests that people can choose their own destinies—the line “that story isn’t the story” is used a couple of times:

Walter asks, “What made you think you could survive without him?”
“That story is not the story I’m telling today.” [Anton replies.]

[Anton] asks [Grigorii], “What happened to your [abusive] mom? Do you ever see her?”
“That story is not the story I’m telling today, man.”

This would have been a reasonably good straight piece, but the story undermines itself somewhat by setting up the vampire menace at the beginning of the piece and then letting it fade away. That said, I realise that the idea of a perceived threat being more perception that reality may be one of the points the story is trying to make.2
** (Average). 9,000 words. Story link.

1. This was a 2022 Hugo and Nebula Award novelette finalist, and won the Locus Poll.

2. I subsequently found this comment from Wiswell in a short interview in the same issue of Uncanny:

The other thing I knew was coming was Anton wouldn’t have a normal ending. No confrontation with Mr. Bird. No fight to the death. No self-sacrifice. No diabolical master plan. Everything that we sometimes dread will happen to us, or our loved ones, because of our trauma? That is partially because we’ve been harmed. It’s also partially an illusion. I wanted to let Anton slowly recognize what was a trauma mirage, while his worthiness of self-respect wasn’t illusory at all.

I didn’t get the self-respect part (if you don’t feel that way by default then maybe perhaps that is more apparent), but the rest makes sense.

O2 Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Posted on by Paul Fraser

O2 Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Galaxy’s Edge, November 2021)1 opens with a short fight section before the story flashbacks to a point a few months earlier where the narrator, a new student at the Academy of Laws, is listening to his induction lectures. We later learn that the academy is located in a future Nigeria where climate change has damaged the atmosphere so badly that people need masks and portable air when they go outside (and where they use oxygen as a currency):

Mrs. Oduwole was at the podium now. The Head of Hostels began by stating that the generators would be on until midnight for reading and for the making of breathable air. After midnight, we would revert to our O2 cylinders which we must keep by our bedsides throughout the night.
The tuition was expensive but was only meant to cover the central hall’s oxygen generation when lectures were on. O2 masks filtered the bad air temporarily, for the brief periods when moving between places. O2 cylinders were for longer periods when there were no O2 generators.
We weren’t allowed to be in the hostels during the day when lectures were on, for any reasons. She didn’t care if you were a girl on your flow, no matter how heavy. And this was apparently the only example she felt obligated to give.

During this series of lectures the narrator goes outside the hall for a break and meets Ovole, a female friend/undisclosed love interest. During their bantering exchanges we find out she has cancer (“Do you want to feel [the tumour]?” she asks at one point).
After several pages of the above, and other data dump information about the narrator’s academy and society (various forms of institutional and political oppression make the narrator struggle to breath in more ways than one it would seem), the story kicks up a gear when he decides to visit his old gang on the mainland, a part of the story that has some interesting local colour. When the narrator later talks to an old gang acquaintance, he learns that Dr Umez, one of the induction lecturers, has a reputation for molesting both male and female students. Then, when the narrator tells the acquaintance that he needs to earn some money (for Ovole’s medical needs), they go to the O2 arena and watch a cage fight that ends when one of the combatants is killed.
The narrator subsequently decides not to take the risk of entering the cage fights, but (spoiler) he then learns that Ovoke is in hospital and needs expensive ICU treatment. So, after a visit to hospital to see Ovoke and her parents, he returns to the arena and enters the fights. After a vicious bout he kills his opponent and wins a substantial prize pot, but it is too late—Ovoke has died in the meantime.
The story closes with the narrator using the prize money to form his own gang, and their first action is the killing of the abusive Dr Umez.
This is a bit of a mixed bag. The opening set-up (about ten pages) is overlong and plodding, and the story only really gets going when the narrator goes to the mainland. I also didn’t care for the political messages that were constantly telegraphed throughout the story (“You see, the rich deserved to breathe”, “She thought she would be nothing in a patriarchal society that valued men for their ability to provide, and women for reproduction”, etc., etc.—the author is not a fan of show don’t tell). On the other hand the mainland setting and culture is interesting, as is the idea of oxygen as a currency—so a promising piece, but not an even or polished one (its Nebula Award and Hugo nominations way overrate the story).
** (Average). 8, 150 words. Story link.

1. This story was (unusually) reprinted in Apex, another online magazine, two months later. I cannot see the point of Galaxy’s Edge putting it online for a month and then taking it down, only to let another publication reprint it almost immediately (my understanding is that most venues have a period of exclusivity in their contracts).

Tangles by Seanan McGuire

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Tangles by Seanan McGuire (Magic The Gathering, 2021)1 opens with the dryad narrator and her tree arriving on a new “Plane” (I assume this is one of many realities in a fantasy multiverse). She has come to the Kessig forest to free the tree from her service:

They had taken another five steps when the tree spoke again, saying, Here. Stop.
Wrenn stopped. They drove their roots deep into the ground, and bit by bit, she began to pull herself out of the home that had been hers for so long. As she pulled, her awareness of the great tree dwindled, until she felt like a tooth that had been loosened in its socket, still part of the body but awaiting only one last sharp blow to knock it out entirely.
Then, with a final yank that she felt all the way to the bottom of her stomach, she uprooted herself and was no longer joined with Six. Six, who was no longer the majestic, towering treefolk he had become during their time together—trees had no gender as such, but dryads did, and upon discovering the concept in her mind, he had considered his choices and decided he preferred the masculine2—was now a mature, healthy, beautifully twisting Innistrad oak, his branches reaching for the clouded sky.

Wrenn subsequently searches the forest for a new tree and, as she does so, the villagers from a nearby settlement start hunting her (they fear she is a “white witch”). Accompanying them is a mage called Teferi, who finds her before the villagers do and makes her acquaintance. Then, when Teferi detects a demon behind them, he unleashes a magic spell that vanquishes the beast but also distorts the forest around them—and they end up locked in some kind of maze or Mobius strip (after walking for a time they eventually find themselves back where they started).
By now Wrenn urgently needs to find a tree to help contain the fire within her, so she gives Teferi advice about how to view and untangle his spell, as well as adding her magic to his. He (spoiler) succeeds in undoing the spell’s effects and they return to their original location. They also find that, during this process, Teferi has “bent” time, and a nearby sapling has aged and matured into a tree which is suitable for Wrenn.
This is a competently done story but an uninvolving one—possibly because the plot feels like various game moves rather than something which develops organically.
** (Average). 5,150 words. Story link.

1. This is one of this year’s (2022) short story finalists for the Hugo Award. Magic The Gathering is a fantasy game

2. Even trees are choosing their own gender nowadays. Hurrah.

Sample Return by C. Stuart Hardwick

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Sample Return by C. Stuart Hardwick (Analog, July-August 2021)1 opens with the protagonist Katy and her fellow crewmember, Xavier, in the process of launching an impactor probe towards Jupiter. Although this part of the operation is successful, the Proteus, the craft designed to collect the samples the impactor probe will cause to be ejected from the Jovian atmosphere, has a launch malfunction. Katy (whose mother has just died) quickly suits up and goes EVA to free the craft, even though they are in a high radiation zone.
Initially Katy just tries to dislodge the explosive bolts holding the Proteus to their ship, Jovian Queen, but her actions soon become wilder:

She jerked her safety line, setting the brake on her take-up reel so her line went slack. He hauled on his tether to reel her in, but as she drifted within reach of the webbing, she swept the shears forward and cut it, then jiggled her line to reset the brake and feed her slack back down into the take-up reel still attached to Proteus.
“Katy, no!”
Xav grabbed for her, but the line popped taught, and she spun and sailed down toward the hub.
“Dammit, Katy! Get back up here before you get yourself killed!”
He was probably right. She was probably committing suicide, but if she had to die to save the mission, then she had to. That was a calculation she’d made long ago, before they’d ever left Earth, long before that . . .
And goddammit anyway! If the mission failed now she’d be written off as hysterical, but if Xavier were down here, they’d already be writing his heroism up for the feeds back home. After all, they’d say, what was one life—any life—compared to iron or steam or stone tools or fire? The world’s monuments were filled with the names of men who’d died for less. Who’d left families and fortunes and nations behind. Who every one shared the same dying wish: that it all hadn’t been in vain.
But Katy wasn’t dead just yet. It would be dicey now, but if she could free those pins quickly enough—before the Queen started her burn—she might still be able to make it. Maybe.  p. 130

Katy doesn’t make it back, of course, and departs with Proteus for a Jovian fly-by. The rest of the story (spoiler) sees her spend the next few days debugging faults on the probe while her suit AI fills her full of anti-radiation meds. Then the impactor probe hits and the capture pods start deploying from Proteus to capture the samples. Katy manages to jump into one of pods, and hopes that she will survive until the Jovian Queen returns to pick them up. However, Katy is ultimately rescued by a skiff the ship’s crew have built to rescue her, and it turns out, although she is ill, that she has been sufficiently shielded from radiation by the chunk of the metallic hydrogen blown out of the Jovian atmosphere. Katy has a final sentimental vision of her mother.
This is a fast paced adventure with plenty of rivets, reckless action, and miracle escapes—it may appeal to some, but I thought it rather far-fetched. I’d also hate to be on a spaceship with someone like Katy, who would likely not only kill herself, but take others with her.
** (Average). 8,150 words. Story link.

1. This was the runner up in the novelette section of the Analog Readers’ Poll for 2021 stories.

The Purple Pterodactyls by L. Sprague de Camp

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Purple Pterodactyls by L. Sprague de Camp (F&SF, August 1976) is another of the supernatural adventures of Willy Newbury.1 In this one he is on holiday by the sea with his wife Denise and, when they visit a nearby amusement park, Willy notices something at the rubber ring stall:

The prizes were even more original: a flock of plush-and-wire pterodactyls. They came in several models and sizes, some with long tails and some with short, some with teeth and some with long toothless beaks. The biggest were over a yard across the wings. They were made so that you could hang one from your ceiling as a mobile.
If the wind was strong, you could lock the wings in place and fly the thing as a kite. They were all dyed in shades of purple.
“Purple pterodactyls!” I cried. “Darling, I’ve got to have one of those.”  p. 144

Willy’s attempts to win one of the pterodactyls are unsuccessful, and he also isn’t able purchase one (he asks the stall’s proprietor, Mr Maniu, when he sees him at the beach the next day, but is refused). Willy’s luck changes later, however, when he buys an old ring for a quarter and, when his wife takes him to a jeweller to have it valued, discovers that the ring is ancient and the stone a real emerald. Then, when Willy is asleep that night, the djinn of the ring reveals himself to Willy and says it can perform “little favours” for him. Willy asks the djinn to help him win a purple pterodactyl.
This begins a spat that sees, after Willy subsequently wins more than one of the prizes, (a) Maniu hire his own djinn to stop Willy winning any more; (b) Willy going back to win a third pterodactyl when his own djinn tells him of this; (c) words disappearing off a speech Willy gives at a local women’s club meeting; (d) Willy winning another two pterodactyls; and then (e) Willy and Denise having their boat capsized by a freak squall that comes out of nowhere.
At this point Willy realises that he is involved in a potentially lethal vendetta, so he promises the djinn his freedom if he can get Willy out of his predicament. The story then ends (spoiler) with a shriek in the night, and Willy seeing Mr Maniu on the beach the next morning, his body covered in sand as usual . . . then Maniu’s decapitated head rolls off the mound.
When Willy sees the djinn in a dream several nights later he promptly gives him the ring and his freedom. Then he wakes up and has sex with his wife, as you do when you’ve just caused someone’s death.
This piece isn’t as slight a story as some in the series, but it does have a deus ex machina ending and is tonally a bit off: not only does the final line about sex with his wife not sit well with previous events but, if it wasn’t for Willy’s awful behaviour (who need five purple pterodactyls?), relations between the two men would not have deteriorated. I’m probably reading too much into a piece of light fantasy, but still. . . .
** (Average). 5,650 words. Story link.

1. The ISFDB page for the Willy Newbury series.

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson

Posted on by Paul Fraser

The Rise of Alpha Gal by Rich Larson (Asimov’s SF, September-October 2022) sees the narrator, Heli, meet her ex-girlfriend Nea in an all-night McDonalds. When Nea questions the choice of meeting place, Heli tells her it is ironic before launching into an explanation that involves (a) her reminding Nea of a cousin who got tick bites and developed an allergy to red meat (“The allergy’s unusual because it’s triggered by the Alpha Gal carbohydrate instead of by a protein”) and (b) that Heli has developed an Alpha Gal analog that can induce a permanent meat allergy with one dose. Heli then adds that she can make it contagious. . . .
After this revelation they debate the rights and wrongs of this type of eco-terrorism, before Heli eventually realises that her ex-girlfriend isn’t as enthusiastic about the prospect as she expected. They finally agree that the analog should be made available as a voluntary injection for those that want to give up eating meat (“Saving the world in slow motion”). After Nea leaves, however (spoiler), Heli inserts the contents of a vial into a sanitizer spray and starts spreading the agent.
This is a conversation about an idea, not a story—the novelette or novella that telescopes out from Heli’s final action would have been much more interesting.
** (Average). 2,300 words.

Theory and Practice of Economic Development: The Metallurgist and His Wife by Richard Frede

Posted on by Paul Fraser

Theory and Practice of Economic Development: The Metallurgist and His Wife by Richard Frede (F&SF, August 1976) opens by establishing Horowitz as a hen-pecked husband who lives in an overheating apartment. On Saturdays he usually goes fishing and, during one particular trip out on the Many Happy Returns, something very odd happens:

[It] was at that moment that there was such a mighty tug on the dropline that Horowitz was in fear of losing his finger. Then, just as suddenly, there was no tension to the line at all. But as Horowitz looked over the side into the water, a large flounder about twice the size of any flounder Horowitz had ever seen before, surfaced next to the dropline. The fish had a hook and line in its mouth, and it seemed to gaze up at Horowitz and to judge him. After some little time the fish said, “Would you kindly remove your hook from my mouth?”  p. 70

During the ensuing conversation the fish tells Horowitz that taking the hook out rather than cutting the line will reduce the risk of infection, that it is an enchanted businessman, and that it knew better than to take the bait but couldn’t resist, etc. Then, after Horowitz returns the fish to the water, it tells him that it owes him one.
When Horowitz later tells his wife about this fantastic event she is contemplative rather than dismissive and tells him to go back and ask the fish for a better apartment. Horowtiz does so and, after the fish expresses his surprise that he is back so soon, tells him, “It’s in the mail”.
This is the first of a number of demands that the wife makes as she quickly becomes dissatisfied with what she has been given (a country home, a bigger apartment in the city, and a seat as a US Senator soon follow). When Horowitz is eventually told to tell the fish that she wants to be President (spoiler), the fish gets fed up and tells Horowitz that they are both going back to their original apartment. Horowitz says he would be happy to return there but asks if his wife can stay where she is. The fish says it’ll arrange a divorce, that Horowitz can go back to the original apartment, and that his wife can live with her mother.
This entertainingly combines the fantastic elements involving the fish with the mundanity of married life (in this latter respect it somewhat resembles a humorous mainstream story). The ending is a bit of a dud, though.
** (Average). 4,200 words. Story link.