{"id":4586,"date":"2022-06-22T11:05:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T11:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4586"},"modified":"2022-08-11T16:51:10","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T16:51:10","slug":"the-long-tail-by-aliette-de-bodard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=4586","title":{"rendered":"The Long Tail by Aliette de Bodard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Long Tail<\/em><\/strong> by Aliette de Bodard (Wired<\/em>, 30th<\/sup> November 2020) opens with Thu salvaging on the spaceship Conch Citadel<\/em>, twenty years after the war, when a \u201clineaged memory\u201d from another of her crew, \u00c1nh Ng\u1ecdc, makes her pause at the entry of the room she was about to enter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking more closely, Thu could see, now, that the holes in the floor were a little too regular, the mechs\u2019 multiple legs a little too polished, the edges of the robots\u2019 disk-shapes distorted, as if someone had pulled and the metal had given in like taffy. Not a physical room, then. The real room, the one she could interact with, lay under layers of unreality. A whole lot of it.
Shit. Shit.
Thu chewed at her lower lip, considering. Everyone onboard the scavenging habitat knew there was no correlation between the unreality and what lay underneath. Going in there would be a calculated risk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As she weighs up the possible problems against the financial advantages, she is contacted by a third crew member, Khuy\u00ean. She tells Thu that \u00c1nh Ng\u1ecdc has been infected by a new form of the nanites which infect the wreck, and that she is \u201con her way to chimeral\u201d\u2014a condition where the affected experience constant delusions (\u201cunreality\u201d).
The next part of the story sees Thu retrace \u00c1nh Ng\u1ecdc\u2019s path through the ship to find out what she was contaminated with and where. During this journey we get backstory about (a) Thu\u2019s mother, who became contaminated by nanites and had to have her implant removed (privately, the company wouldn\u2019t pay) leaving her essentially lobotomised and (b) the Conch Citadel<\/em>\u2019s part in the final stages of the war.
Eventually (spoiler) Thu tracks down the ship\u2019s Central (its AI), which was thought dead. Initially Thu thinks that the Central is still fighting the war, but it turns out that it is just lonely and looking for company (or something like that).
There isn\u2019t much of a story here, and all the gimmicks and window dressing (nanites, unreality, her mother\u2019s implant removal, the rogue AI, etc.) doesn\u2019t really hide that. Also\u2014and I don\u2019t usually like making this kind of criticism of stories\u2014why wouldn\u2019t they uses drones or mechs or robots to search such a hazardous environment (especially one where problems of human perception are involved)?
** (Average). 4,600 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Long Tail by Aliette de Bodard (Wired, 30th November 2020) opens with Thu salvaging on the spaceship Conch Citadel, twenty years after the war, when a \u201clineaged memory\u201d from another of her crew, \u00c1nh Ng\u1ecdc, makes her pause at the entry of the room she was about to enter: Looking more closely, Thu could […]<\/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_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1089],"tags":[17,296,487,1090,1091,12,1059],"class_list":["post-4586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aliette-de-bodard","tag-17","tag-296","tag-ai","tag-aliette-de-bodard","tag-altered-perception","tag-short-story","tag-wired"],"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\/4586","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=4586"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5316,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4586\/revisions\/5316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}