melancholyhttp://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/f
This novella is a collaboration between myself and Jay Lake. It is about loss, and identity, and longing to go home. It is about an animatronic Captain Hook, doing his best to shepherd the last remains of the human race. It is about dreams.
"The difficulty with steering by stars is that stars are by their very nature ghosts; they died long before we ever saw their light. When you choose a star to steer by, you are casting yourself as the lead character in a ghost story. It's far better to create stars of your own, set them in the heavens, and steer by the light of something living."
—Michael Lowry III, founder of Lowryland
"All stories are ghost stories."
—Jas of Lowryland
Welcome to Lowryland. This post also serves as your discussion thread, should you want to comment on the story itself; there will be spoilers.
January 7 2014, 21:09:46 UTC 3 years ago
I was left with several questions that I wish had answers, like:
Was Hook's name (i.e. "Jas") meant to be a clue about his dual nature? (I noticed at the end that his name was James minus the "Me".)
What was the other Hook reprogramming Mr Grin to do, exactly? Was it just meant to be something that would distract Jas enough to let Hook take control?
Was Pan's birth really a virgin birth? My first guess would be that somehow Hook had something to do with it, but if so I can't see how he had the biomedical knowledge necessary to implant an embryo in Anniehall (I didn't get the sense from the quoted Lowryland protocols that the Enhanced Entertainers were programmed with that level of advanced knowledge), and I can't see how he had the resources necessary to perform such an operation.
What led Hook to suspect that the destruction of Earth was a ruse created by the Taushin?
Anyway, a bit late with this, so I guess I don't really expect answers, but hey, the story got my mind a-wondering.
January 8 2014, 19:33:08 UTC 3 years ago