{"id":1988,"date":"2021-12-11T11:58:08","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1988"},"modified":"2022-02-11T18:22:47","modified_gmt":"2022-02-11T18:22:47","slug":"the-beast-of-tara-by-michael-swanwick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1988","title":{"rendered":"The Beast of Tara by Michael Swanwick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Beast of Tara<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Swanwick (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, January-February 2022) is a \u201ccompanion piece\u201d to last year\u2019s Dream Atlas<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> March\/April 2021)1<\/sup> and, by the by, also has similarities with Scherzo with Tyrannosaur<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July 1999).2<\/sup> All these (spoiler) involve people from the future interfering with the past.
In this story that intervention comes in the form of a young schoolboy called Gallagher, who turns up at an Irish archaeological site because he wants to write an article for his school paper. The team he visits are using an experimental machine to recover historical sounds (\u201cA stone contains within itself the diminishing vibrations of every sound that ever bounced against it\u201d), and Gallagher \u201caccidentally\u201d damages it on two separate occasions. On his third attempt to do so, Finn, the local fixer\/bouncer, intervenes, and Gallagher reveals he is an agent of (not from) the future. He explains he is there to stop development of their new technology because, once they progress, they will find that they will be able to recover sounds from the future as well as the past (there is some waffle about the \u201cquantum realm\u201d here).
After Gallagher disappears in a puff of dust, the team leader, Dr Leithauser, decides to continue with their work, and the story concludes with the revelation that Finn is also an agent from the future (from a faction opposed to Gallagher\u2019s). The team then recover the sound of a harpist playing at the coronation of an Irish king.
This is okay, but the the not entirely convincing plot is formulaic time-traveller material\u2014and tarting it up with bits of Ireland, old and new, doesn\u2019t disguise that.
** (Average). 3,400 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. My review of Dream Atlas<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. My review of Scherzo with Tyrannosaur<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beast of Tara by Michael Swanwick (Asimov\u2019s SF, January-February 2022) is a \u201ccompanion piece\u201d to last year\u2019s Dream Atlas (Asimov\u2019s SF March\/April 2021)1 and, by the by, also has similarities with Scherzo with Tyrannosaur (Asimov\u2019s SF, July 1999).2 All these (spoiler) involve people from the future interfering with the past.In this story that intervention […]<\/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":[193],"tags":[17,539,4,541,194,12,540],"class_list":["post-1988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-michael-swanwick","tag-17","tag-539","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-history-from-sound","tag-michael-swanwick","tag-short-story","tag-time-travellers"],"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\/1988","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=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2746,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions\/2746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}