{"id":2386,"date":"2022-01-14T11:52:32","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T11:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2386"},"modified":"2023-01-09T15:03:38","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T15:03:38","slug":"bereft-i-come-to-a-nameless-world-by-benjamin-rosenbaum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2386","title":{"rendered":"Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World by Benjamin Rosenbaum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World<\/em><\/strong> by Benjamin Rosenbaum (<em>Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, July-August 2020) starts with Siob, a member of the far-future Dispersion of Humanity, remembering a faraway conflict before he arrives on a world where Thave (another member of the Dispersion) lives.<br>The planet is disguised to appear uninhabitable, and Thave lives through several host bodies in a futuristic underground city. Siob remonstrates with her about her choice (a dull section that seems essentially to be about cultural aesthetics).<br>Later, Siob asks Thave about other members of the Dispersion before he goes down to \u201cBedlam\u201d\u2014the final long stream of consciousness section of the book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Outside the door, the city seethed, roiled, cacophonous. Brimming with people. Were they people? Brimming with dolls, brimming with shadows, brimming with monsters. I forced a smile, a monstrous gritted-teeth affair. \u201cI can\u2019t, Thav\u00e9. I can\u2019t. I can\u2019t. I can\u2019t. I have to go down.\u201d<br>Thav\u00e9 nodded (whatever that meant).<br>It was time for Bedlam.<br>There was a claw-hand of a moon, violent violet, digging down past my eyes, beneath the portal, the partial, the penetrating perorating peach perfection, capsized<br>capsized in an ocean of night.<br>That\u2019s not right. Focus on the hands, on the hands\u2014leather? of leather? Running through the heather.<br>(\u201cI can see where I am, I can always see where I am. Dreaming with part of my brain. But how to interpret what I see? How to know if that\u2014that\u2014is a bed, a wall, a hand, a moon, a vault, a vertilex, a transix, a typhoon?\u201d)<br>Cultural detox. Hallucenophenomenic aspects of.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m not entirely sure what goes on subsequently, but I vaguely recall a lot of memories and angst. And, of course, the two pages of blank verse, which were an especial treat.<br>There is a lot of surface glitter in this story but not, I think, much else.<br>* (Mediocre). 5,750 words.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Asimov\u2019s SF, July-August 2020) starts with Siob, a member of the far-future Dispersion of Humanity, remembering a faraway conflict before he arrives on a world where Thave (another member of the Dispersion) lives.The planet is disguised to appear uninhabitable, and Thave lives through several host [&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":[635],"tags":[21,296,4,636,637,12],"class_list":["post-2386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benjamin-rosenbaum","tag-21","tag-296","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-benjamin-rosenbaum","tag-far-future-humans","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\/2386","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=2386"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6129,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2386\/revisions\/6129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}