Plugged In
by L. Timmel Duchamp &
Maureen McHugh
ISBN: 1-933500-22-0 (10 digit)
ISBN: 978-1-933500-22-5 (13 digit)
Publication Date: 6/1/2008
(trade paperback) 93 pages
$12
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"In the kingdom of the blind," Sydney said, "The one-eyed girl
is king." In "Kingdom of the Blind," Sydney, one of the
codemonekys who maintain DMS, the software system that keeps the physical
plants of the Benevola Health Network running, suspects the recent outages
in the system may be a sign of the system's sentience rather than due to
simple corruption of its code. Her fellow geeks view the reset button as a
possible if drastic solution for restoring the system's integrity, but
Sydney fears it might be a much too Final Solution...
In L. Timmel Duchamp's "The Man Who Plugged In," Howard Nies becomes the
first male to plug into a Siemens Carapace. And as an ad in the February
2013 issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology notes,
the Siemens Carapace is "a prenatal cradle of caring" at the cutting
edge of technology, "made of the finest, strongest, most lightweight
materials ever produced. Its clean, round lines and soft, silvery matte
finish can't fail to reassure both the parents and the gestational carrier
who wears it that the child within is getting better care and protection
than any naturally gestated child."
Reviews
Need a quick dose of weird, brainy science fiction but don't have time to
commit to an entire short story collection? Then consider a new kind of
book, from Aqueduct Press, which you might call a short story single, with
an A-Side and a B-Side (though both stories get an A from this
reader). Plugged In contains "The Man Who Plugged In," by L. Timmel Duchamp
and "Kingdom of the Blind" by Maureen McHugh....Highly
recommended.
—
Annalee Newitz, io9.com
(
read the whole review)