December 21, 2012, 10:48:46 AM by TaoPhoenix
This is the only First-Person tale I have looked at in a while. Far be it from me to guess sample sizes, but it's a rarer form not least because of the difficulty pulling off the technique. I haven't clarified the differences of how that style makes me feel vs the traditional third person. Hmm.
The author does a decent job of using consumer items to depict California in some timeframe such as 2040. (Historically it's real tough to predict future dates like that because the pace of progress gets jammed up for social-political reasons, but Teslas and HoloBots aren't all that hard to do, SF wise, so thirty years feels like a nice time frame in the future. It doesn't seem to matter if that stretches out to 2050 etc.)
So we have a burnt out prison guard, who carefully calls himself a correctional officer. (There's a connotation somewhere - does he need that little boost of P.C. terminology to get by?) The pacing is methodical, for various reasons. I think it works here - I don't mind a little orientation to get used to being in "California, 2040", before the main point of the story arrives. Not every story needs to open with "Once upon a time, a 10 year old girl named Hannah woke up, whereupon the evil demon spider sitting on her bed bit her head off."
-- About 2/3 of the way through I at least am suspecting a chance for an ending like "the lead character is himself just in a punishment program." Everything in control, all inner monologues. Update: Yep. Called it. So overall, not bad, it's only up to the author if he wanted it to be more of a surprise or if he wants the reader to slowly figure it out first like I did. If he didn't, it's not clear to me how to fix it.
