A5 Large Print Edition: A dark vision of the future via the author Nickolaus A. Pacione. Set during the year 2013, this is a future that no one wants to imagine can happen and inspired by those films that the Discovery Channel put out. This is his first attempt at doing a cyberpunk style Science Fiction story. Rated PG-13 for storm menace. Think what happens when technology survives the Mayan Calendar. No one really knows what the future holds especially the not too distant future. What does the year 2013 look like? This is one of those futures that can be a posiblity. As morbid as it seems, one can ask the question what if and this could be one of those what ifs. This is the what if no one wants to see, but this is one of those that are unavoidable. Inspired by the Quakes and Storms Relief Anthology, namely Trent Roman and Erin Mackay.
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By Jeff McGillicutty
Mar 4, 2010
I found a copy of this work at my local library. Having had the misfortune to have read "Collectives in a Forsaken Landscape" by the same author, I decided to sit back and give it a fair chance. Perhaps the author had changed his approach to literature and the English language? Perhaps the author had secured a good editor and a copy of The Elements of Style? Not to my surprise, I found that none of these were to be the case in this book. Poorly fleshed out characters and plot, more redundancy in basic sentences (if the sentences had any structure to begin with) and overall just a big mess of words mishmash-ed together to tell some type of story. I'm still not sure what the story is here as none of it made any sense. Was this supposed to be a mystery? science fiction? horror? Does the author purposely try to make his works short so he just starts a thought and never finises it? I have yet to research this author, but judging by his own reviews written here, I believe I can... More > form a good opinion of him based solely on those alone.< Less
Short synopsis: A news team is in Florida in an amphibious Hummer amidst a storm surge from a so-great-and-terrible-that-it-has-no-name hurricane, and they rescue a woman clinging to a palm tree. After that the plot is simple: the Hummer is buffeted by the storm; the news team finds out the woman they rescued was once cryogenically frozen; they hear of more storms occurring; and everything is horrible horrors just like a movie. The End. But there are still some amusing lines that beg to be exposed: “…God only knows how cold [Illinois] would get at night, night time recorded temp. were said to be -5 degrees Fahrenheit. Still livable, but they cannot go out in the cold unless they got tundra gear.” *** -5 F isn’t that cold. That’s brisk winter morning – and, no, you don’t need “tundra gear” to survive it. Just a good warm coat, hat, gloves, and a little common sense. *** “The other person in the vehicle helped the jarhead tuck the lady in the back and slide her into a compartment which... More > allowed the sick to rest, after they were finished tucking her in. "Let's slide her into the compartment so she could warm up faster -- it is long enough for her."” *** Brought to you straight from the Department of Redundancy. I think Nicky made a bulk purchase because this was only one example out of many. *** “…I didn't get a chance to get your name earlier when we were pulling you out of the water." "Georgina Davidson," the woman answered. "Ah yes, the camera managed to capture that information from reading your dilated pupil….” *** So he knew her name, but he asked her anyway? *** “I was really sick with an illness back then and they were planning to put me in cryogenics so they could cure it … they wanted to make sure I finished college first before they put me under ice.” *** Um, yeah, a terminally ill person would want to finish college before doing something that might save her life. And then she talks about being unfrozen and attending college at the same time as her kids. She also says first that she was frozen for ten years, and then later, she says it was 20 years. In other parts of the story, she says she was frozen in 1996 and awoken in 2010, and that she was 21 when frozen and 38 now, which I think is three years after she was revived. So the cryogenic process must have addled her brain – or rather, poor Nicky’s, assuming Nicky could ever do math in the first place. *** “I was fed via my veins and they eliminated waste that way too,…” *** Where does he get is science? Sesame Street? Batman comics? Doctor Who? The body eliminates wastes through the kidneys, colon, and urinary tract – not the veins. *** “…hell hath no fury but that of a woman scorned…” *** Nicky, the master of the misquote. *** “Every warning of a natural disaster of this magnitude was told about, but they never listened to the advice of the elders.” *** Screw the elders. I’d listen to the meteorologists. And after that I started skimming because nothing was happening – just more rambling about the horrors of the storm. In fact, the words “horror” or “horrors” appear 55 times in the story. Could someone buy Nicky another noun? *** “In 2013, they still used DSL and Dial Up to access the world wide web, but they also were getting access by just using an electrical outlet.” *** Nicky would have failed “Wiring 101”. *** “Computers shut down in the case of an actual emergency, such as the howl of the hurricane winds.” *** Not the winds, mind you. Just the howl of the winds. Oh, and the Midwest is under permafrost. And the only way to communicate with them is by instant message. Of course, if instant messaging works then so would telephones and the Internet. *** *sigh* Yep, he’s trying to throw in every bit of science he claims he’s gleaned from the Discovery Channel. However, it appears his video comprehension is as poor as his reading comprehension. All in all, this is another story to mock from afar. Don’t spend money on it.< Less
