Most popular posts

Most popular posts (% based on the most popular)

100%
"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid  

64%
"Warm" by Robert Sheckley 

31% (% based on two posts, forgetting I'd written the earlier one; otherwise Silverberg's would come before)
"The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" by Andrea Kail (earlier, more popular post 

26%
"Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg 

20% (% based on two posts, forgetting I'd written the earlier one)
"The Stone Cipher" by Tony Pi (later, less popular post) 

18%
"Day Million" by Frederik Pohl 

7%
"Life in Steam" by Gra Linnaea

& 

"They're Made out of Meat" by Terry Bisson

Number Stopping by:

The first year was 100/month
The second 150/month
The third 200/month
Since July, it's 700/month

Visitors most often come from:

United States
Russia
Germany
Canada
France
United Kingdom
Philippines
Ukraine
Netherlands
India

"The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" by Andrea Kail

Writers of the Future XXIII

An epistolary story: told through letters from the genetically reincarnated King Tut to the genetically reincarnated Abraham Lincoln. Tut is young and slowly realizing the implication of being reincarnated in his far future: the difficulty of love as a museum piece, the difficulty of being a king without a kingdom and your former history, and the difficulty of politics making him the target and symbol of all that protesters dislike about world leaders, and finally the difficulty of finding out what the genetic museum curators actually have planned for him.

Stories told through epistolary form can be fun--seeing the world through another’s eyes but filtered for another, personal reader, which can create an interesting dynamic--but can also risk keeping the drama backstage. This one does not escape its risk; however, it does a great job addressing the fall-out of bringing someone back from the past.

"The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" by Andrea Kail

Written entirely in letters, "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" tells of King Tut or Ghazi writing to Abraham Lincoln. Like Lincoln #3, Ghazi is reborn to the future, but his life is not welcomed by all.

SPOILER: Ghazi is in trouble politically with those who see him as antithetical to their political will and with those who see Ghazi as a potentially lucrative experiment. This is the story's zinger it holds until the end--and a potent one. Also effective is the use of Lincoln--also shot at. While generally dramatic, a good portion feels rather loose or structured as more of a novel than a short story. Moreover, is this the personality that Tut would have had, considering the society he grew in and his genetic propensity? Nonetheless, the story engages us in some painful questions.

• Writers of the Future, 23