{"id":2490,"date":"2022-01-20T13:49:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T13:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:20:03","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T22:20:03","slug":"sparklybits-by-nick-wolven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2490","title":{"rendered":"Sparklybits by Nick Wolven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sparklybits <\/em><\/strong>by Nick Wolven (Entanglements<\/em>, 2020) gets off to a bloated and rambling start with four mothers, who are group-parenting a child called Charlie, meeting to discuss his lack of progress. During their long conversation, lights and icons flash across the walls\u2014this is attributed to \u201cSparklybits\u201d, but there is no immediate explanation as to what is going on. The author manages, however, to squeeze this in on the first page, well before the light show:1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jo checked what was left of the brunch. No pastries, no cinnamon buns, no chocolate in sight. Just a few shreds of glutinous bagel and a quivering heap of eggs. They usually did these meetings at Reggio\u2019s, and Reggio\u2019s, say what you will about the coffee, was a full-auto brunch spot with drone table service and on-demand ordering and seat-by-seat checkout. Which was all but vital when the moms got together, when the last thing you wanted to worry about was who got the muffin and who bought organic and who couldn\u2019t eat additives or sugar or meat. Whereas when they did these things at the house, the meal always became a test of Jo\u2019s home-programming skills. Likewise the coffee prep, likewise the seating, likewise every other thing.
All she needed, Jo thought, was one tiny bite of cinnamon bun to help her through. But a rind of hard bagel would have to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The mother-stereotypes (\u201cAya can be a big mamabear about nutrition. Teri\u2019s a hardass when it comes to finances. Sun Min\u2019s got a lock on the educational stuff\u201d) chatter about Charlie\u2019s \u201cproblems\u201d for another few pages before Jo, the live-in mother, and Teri go to speak to Charlie. We then see Charlie communicating to the flashing lights\u2014now described as a virus\u2014in his room, using a non-verbal\/sign language.
The story finally perks up (and starts making some sense) when Evan, the AI virus exterminator (and mansplainer) turns up to deal with the problem. After some talk about the virus\/ghost, the semaphore\/lights language, the internet of things, etc. Evan manages to capture Sparklybits when it turns up to see what is happening. Charlie loses his temper.
The final part of the story (spoiler) takes place after the three non-resident mothers depart, and Jo takes Charlie to Evan\u2019s workshop. There, the two of them see other AIs that Evan has captured and given a home. At the end of their visit Charlie gets to take Sparklybits back home, but with strict instructions to keep him contained in the device that Evan has provided. However, the final page sees Charlie show Jo something that he and Sparklybits are building, although I\u2019m not entirely sure what the point of this is (the picture he shows Jo has two tiny figures stand on the lawn in front of the house holding hands; Charlie wears a conspiratorial grin while he does this).
This story has a bloated and inchoate start (you can\u2019t help but think that Robert Sheckley\u2019s first line for the same story would have been, \u201cThere was a ghost in the house\u201d); a decent middle; and a weak ending (and a twist I possibly missed because, again, too many words).2<\/sup> Overall it is an okay satire about modern parenting I guess but, having reread the above, I suspect I\u2019m being over-generous.
** (Average). 8,750 words.

1. What is it about Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em> (and adjacent anthology) stories that they have this constant description of food and people eating?

2. I\u2019m rapidly coming to the conclusion that Wolven is just not my cup of tea (and if he was coffee, he would be a cup that is mostly full of froth and not liquid). Of the stories by this writer that I\u2019ve read so far, there is only one that I liked, Confessions of a Con Girl<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, November-December 2017). As for the others, I thought Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, January-February 2016), Passion Summer<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, February 2016), and No Stone Unturned<\/em> (Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, January-February 2021) were mediocre; and Galatea in Utopia<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, January-February 2018) and Carbo<\/em> (F&SF<\/em>, November-December 2017) were awful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sparklybits by Nick Wolven (Entanglements, 2020) gets off to a bloated and rambling start with four mothers, who are group-parenting a child called Charlie, meeting to discuss his lack of progress. During their long conversation, lights and icons flash across the walls\u2014this is attributed to \u201cSparklybits\u201d, but there is no immediate explanation as to what […]<\/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":[111],"tags":[17,296,460,112,7,654,653],"class_list":["post-2490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nick-wolven","tag-17","tag-296","tag-entanglements","tag-nick-wolven","tag-novelette","tag-parenting","tag-rogue-ai"],"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\/2490","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=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2561,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions\/2561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}