{"id":1093,"date":"2021-05-10T10:48:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-10T10:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2021-05-13T17:23:30","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T17:23:30","slug":"ex-vitro-by-daniel-marcus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1093","title":{"rendered":"Ex Vitro by Daniel Marcus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Ex Vitro<\/em><\/strong> by Daniel Marcus <em>(Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, mid-December 1995) is set on Titan, where a couple, Jax and Maddy, do science work on the geology of the planet and its slug-like aliens. In the background there are rumbles about a possible nuclear war on Earth between PacRim and EC.<br>The second chapter switches the point of view from Jax to Maddy (as does the fourth). She is worried about her family in Paris, a likely target, and this causes an argument between them. Maddy later thinks about a embryo of theirs she has in cold storage, but about which she hasn\u2019t told Jax.<br>The third chapter sees Jax observing the slugs on the surface when Maddy calls: there has been a war on Earth and her parents are dead. She wants to leave Titan for the Moon or the L-5 colonies, so Jax calls their boss at Sun Group, who tells them that Naft and Russia came through alright and that he can send a ship for them later if they want.<br>The last chapter sees Jax lie to Maddy about the timescale of a likely pickup. Later on Maddy goes out on the surface and opens the canister holding the embryo, destroying it.<br>I guess this okay for the most part\u2014if you are interested in dysfunctional relationships against a backdrop of a dysfunctional Earth\u2014but it just grinds to a halt. I\u2019d also have to say I\u2019m not a fan of overly contrived writing like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>They cycled through several iterations of crash and burn, learning each other\u2019s boundaries, before they settled into a kind of steady state. Still, their relationship felt to Jax like a living entity, a nonlinear filter whose response to stimuli was never quite what you thought it was going to be. &nbsp;p. 68<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>* (Mediocre). 4,750 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex Vitro by Daniel Marcus (Asimov\u2019s SF, mid-December 1995) is set on Titan, where a couple, Jax and Maddy, do science work on the geology of the planet and its slug-like aliens. In the background there are rumbles about a possible nuclear war on Earth between PacRim and EC.The second chapter switches the point of [&hellip;]<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[305],"tags":[21,5,4,306,12],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daniel-marcus","tag-21","tag-5","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-daniel-marcus","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\/1093","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=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1137,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}