The editorial intro tips the reader off to the theme of the story : “(Wolven) favors the Asimovian vision of technology as a moral tool, not an amoral juggernaut, and this particular story is a meditation on that theme.”
And the story feels like something Asimov could have written 50 years – and not in a good way, as it spells everything out for the reader. Maybe if you haven’t brought up children in the last 20 years, and survived Pokemon cards and Yu-gi-Oh cards, and purchased a series of games consoles, or gone through the tamigochi craze, then perhaps some of the themes might be fresh to you. But just recently BoingBoing have highlighted Disney’s latest attempt to prize money from parents for upgrades to their latest games, and if you’re a regular reader of that, or other tech blogs, nothing in the story will come as a surprise.
More from this issue here.
