{"id":706,"date":"2021-03-01T22:35:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T22:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=706"},"modified":"2021-03-16T13:15:19","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T13:15:19","slug":"mariana-by-fritz-leiber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"Mariana by Fritz Leiber"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Mariana <\/em><\/strong>by Fritz Leiber (<em>Fantastic<\/em>, February 1960) opens with Mariana discovering a secret panel of switches in her house, one of which has a lit sign labelled \u201cTrees\u201d underneath. When her husband Jonathan comes home from work she asks him about the switches:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-style-default is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>\u201cDidn\u2019t you know they were radio trees? I didn\u2019t want to wait twenty-five years for them and they couldn\u2019t grow in this rock anyway. A station in the city broadcasts a master pine tree and sets like ours pick it up and project it around homes. It\u2019s vulgar but convenient.\u201d<br>After a bit she asked timidly, \u201cJonathan, are the radio pine trees ghostly as you drive through them?\u201d<br>\u201cOf course not! They\u2019re solid as this house and the rock under it\u2014to the eye and to the touch too. A person could even climb them. If you ever stirred outside you\u2019d know these things. The city station transmits pulses of alternating matter at sixty cycles a second. The science of it is over your head.\u201d&nbsp; p. 156 (<em>The Year\u2019s Best SF #5<\/em>, edited by Judith Merril, 1961)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>While Jonathan is away at work the next day (spoiler) she switches off the trees, much to his annoyance when he comes home\u2014and then exacerbates matters the next day when she switches off the \u201cHouse\u201d. Next to go is \u201cJonathan\u201d when he angrily confronts her; then she switches off the \u201cStars\u201d in the sky above.<br>After sitting in the dark for several hours (no sun rises as there are no stars) she notices the fifth switch is off and labelled \u201cDoctor\u201d. She switches this one on and shortly finds herself in a hospital room. A mechanical voice asks her whether she wants to accept treatment for her depression or continue with the wish-fulfilment therapy. Mariana responds by turning off the \u201cDoctor\u201d switch on a pedestal beside her and, when she is back in her virtual reality, she turns off the switch labelled \u201cMariana\u201d.<br>This last action doesn\u2019t really make any sense\u2014why would therapy program let her suicide?\u2014but the surreal, dream-like logic of the story may work for some readers.<br>** (Average). 1,900 words.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mariana by Fritz Leiber (Fantastic, February 1960) opens with Mariana discovering a secret panel of switches in her house, one of which has a lit sign labelled \u201cTrees\u201d underneath. When her husband Jonathan comes home from work she asks him about the switches: \u201cDidn\u2019t you know they were radio trees? I didn\u2019t want to wait [&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":[204],"tags":[161,17,206,205,12],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fritz-leiber","tag-161","tag-17","tag-fantastic","tag-fritz-leiber","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\/706","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=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":819,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}