{"id":2597,"date":"2022-01-27T14:48:35","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T14:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2597"},"modified":"2022-02-12T12:51:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T12:51:09","slug":"long-term-emergencies-by-tom-purdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=2597","title":{"rendered":"Long-Term Emergencies by Tom Purdom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Long-Term Emergencies<\/em><\/strong> by Tom Purdom (<em>Asimov\u2019s SF<\/em>, January-February 2022) is set in the Asteroid Belt and has as its protagonist a woman called Muskeree. She is the long-lived Director of Community Relations of a data storage company called the Institute, and the story opens with her trying to contain a dispute between three individuals which is affecting the Institute\u2019s ability to get new contracts\u2014something that may affect its long-term existence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>[Sandora] vented her outrage over the community network. Kellerson tried to dismiss the whole matter. Others joined in.<br>One of the others was the stepson of one of the more established elders on the asteroid.<br>Ramis Valden was only twenty-six, but he had acquired a well-developed talent for turning interpersonal squabbles into conflicts over fundamental principles. He had gone after Kellerson as if he was assaulting a major threat to interplanetary civilization.<br>[. . .]<br>The flare-up had evoked queries from three of the Institute\u2019s clients. Right now the situation was still tolerable. But the trend was moving in the wrong direction.&nbsp; p. 140<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the rest of the story revolves around Muskeree\u2019s attempts to defuse the situation by either dealing with the three characters directly, or indirectly through their family and friends.<br>The <em>Foundation<\/em>-like social mathematics vibe at the end is reasonably intriguing, but most of the rest of it (an HR person endlessly talking to people about other people) is about as interesting as you would expect\u2014especially when you don\u2019t do the blindingly obvious thing and sack Ramis, or threaten to sack him, for being a troublemaker.<br>** (Average). 7,050 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long-Term Emergencies by Tom Purdom (Asimov\u2019s SF, January-February 2022) is set in the Asteroid Belt and has as its protagonist a woman called Muskeree. She is the long-lived Director of Community Relations of a data storage company called the Institute, and the story opens with her trying to contain a dispute between three individuals which [&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":[661],"tags":[17,539,4,663,676,12,662],"class_list":["post-2597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tom-purdom","tag-17","tag-539","tag-asimovs-sf","tag-asteroid-belt","tag-personnel","tag-short-story","tag-tom-purdom"],"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\/2597","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=2597"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2756,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597\/revisions\/2756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}