Swanwick delivers a pretty short story filled with black humor about a man who visits digital copies of his deceased father and wife.

Clarkesworld November 2024

It is a future where people have the option to be resurrected using their digital copies. Massey has a body he wants to resurrect his wife Jenny into. However she is not pleased with that and their disagreement leads to Jenny revealing a sinister truth about how they died.

There are some pretty interesting concepts presented by Swanwick in this story and it raises interesting ethical questions about dealing with consent and rights for dead people with this sort of technology. However, I think the story goes over it all too quickly. It mostly lead up to the big reveal and then stops, with little time to go really deep into the issues or give any of the characters much depth. It might make a decent Black Mirror episode though.

Read in Clarkesworld November 2024
Rating: 2