{"id":108,"date":"2020-12-21T15:24:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T15:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=108"},"modified":"2021-01-29T14:01:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T14:01:46","slug":"the-three-descents-of-jeremy-baker-by-roger-zelazny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=108","title":{"rendered":"The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker by Roger Zelazny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker<\/em><\/strong> by Roger Zelazny (F&SF<\/em>, July 1995) begins with the Raven<\/em>, a spaceship whose crew includes Jeremy Baker, coming out of \u201cextracurricular space\u201d when its Warton-Purg drive fails. This failure occurs in the vicinity of a black hole, so the tidal forces soon destroy the ship, and Barton is the only one to survive (he happened to be testing his EVA suit at the time).
The rest of the longer first chapter has him drift towards the black hole where he then encounters an energy being called Nik:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho\u2014What are you?\u201d Jeremy asked.
\u201cI\u2019m a Fleep,\u201d came the answer. \u201cI\u2019m that flickering patch of light you were wondering about a while back.\u201d
\u201cYou live around here?\u201d
\u201cI have for a long while, Jeremy. It\u2019s easy if you\u2019re an energy being with a lot of psi powers.\u201d
\u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re conversing?\u201d
\u201cYes. I installed a telepathic function in your mind while I had you unconscious.\u201d
\u201cWhy aren\u2019t I being stretched into miles of spaghetti right now?\u201d
\u201cI created an antigravity field between you and the black hole. They cancel.\u201d
\u201cWhy\u2019d you help me?\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s good to have someone new to talk to. Sometimes I get bored with my fellow Fleep.\u201d  p. 311 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Nik goes on to tell Jeremy that the Fleep are conducting experiments on the black hole with the aim of reversing time. Then, after modifying Jeremy somewhat, Nik sends him back to before the destruction of the Raven<\/em>, where Jeremy attempts to rescue the ship but fails.
Another Fleep called Vik sends him back for yet another go, but this also fails, and the chapter closes with Jeremy contemplating his doom.
The second section has Jeremy inside the black hole with Nik discussing various singularity related matters (information loss, energy conservation, etc.).
The third section then has them end up in a \u201ccornucopia\u201d\u2014an information store created by Nik\u2014after the black hole explodes. Nik creates a visual library metaphor for all the information that is inside the cornucopia, and they and the other books begin to get acquainted.
This gets off to a pretty good start\u2014the breezy, flip style is entertaining\u2014 but the middle and ending morphs into pseudo-scientific musing about the properties of black holes.
** (Average). 2,400 words.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Three Descents of Jeremy Baker by Roger Zelazny (F&SF, July 1995) begins with the Raven, a spaceship whose crew includes Jeremy Baker, coming out of \u201cextracurricular space\u201d when its Warton-Purg drive fails. This failure occurs in the vicinity of a black hole, so the tidal forces soon destroy the ship, and Barton is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[5,17,25,15,12],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roger-zelazny","tag-5","tag-17","tag-fsf","tag-roger-zelazny","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}