A story from an author new to me (he had one story collected in a recent Horton Year’s Best, but I never got round to reading it).
And it’s online here.
An interesting story with a couple of dimensions and element to it, that just didn’t quite fit together closely for me for it to work.
It starts with an interesting setup, it’s Tokyo, and Shinsumi Takinami is one of a small number of people who can’t engage with digital socialisation and communication, preferring to speak rather than use the otherwise ever-present digital communication options. On top of this he is visited by strange dreams/visions of faraway planets and galaxies.
Finally enrolled in a self-help group by the authorities, he finds this becomes a route into a network of similar people who wish to overthrow the current system, by force. And this leads to some mech-combat and betrayal.
There’s a lot squeezed into not too many pages, but props to Kabir for aiming high.
More from this issue here.
