Dreams From Next Door Review
By Will Neely, a great work acquaintance!
“Review”, more like thoughts/reaction. I am NOT a critic, in case that is not obvious.
Polimancy
Exactly what would happen if magic was real. I liked the concept of the story and world but didn’t get into the specific plotline as much. I think it mentioned it being the first professionally published work, which makes sense.
Plains Hunter
I liked the hunter bringing out his wands instead of guns. Good twist and introduction to him as a magic user. Also great showing of the sci-fi aspect. I didn’t get into this world as the others for some reason I have yet to put my finger on. It felt like pretty classic hero’s arc/story. Or a one shot D&D Campaign, now that I think about it.
The Worth of a Thing
I think this story did the best job of weaving the sci-fi aspect (the “what if…”) into a universe. Obviously it had the benefit of seeing the effects magnified over the time scale sampled, however each did a good job creating the world around it. I think this was my favorite story. I wished several of the sections lasted longer so I could see more about that slice of time (Pirates/Guild and the Hand specifically).
Took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the random comments about yellow rocks towards the end being gold. Nice circle on the story.
Silicon Souls
Cool to see Huntsville sneaking into the setting. Reminiscent of Clarke’s 2001 series of books with the Obelisks and the ancient civilization turning themselves into pure energy. The storytelling was fitting, using the short snippets was cool with the idea of the memories stored and fracturing those who access it. I wanted more of the world, but not from that perspective. A full story from the government (NASA’s) initial finding, research, planning to the moon, discovery of the side-effects and very specifically the lobbying would have been really cool, especially if interspersed with more of the technology or original civilization itself.
Metamagic
Reminds me of a sci-fi story by Clarke where a tinkering boy fixes up an old piece of technology that had fallen out of fashion (I believe NOT an Earth based story) which was essentially a personal music player necklace. I cannot for the life of me (or my Google searches) remember what the title was (This was not the main storyline anyways, and my memory is likely off).
I liked this story second best. I would have liked it more in high or middle school; the plotline was very 80’s teenage hacker. The sci-fi aspect was the coolest technology wise and I really wanted see that more than the teens running around getting punched by Bash (great bully name tho).
points++ for use of pseudo-code for the chapters titles (see what I did there?).
The Storyteller
WandaVision meets the Truman Show!
I wanted more story; it seemed really short once it revealed the “reality” of the town. That actual world (and all it took to keep running), like the Truman Show, would be a really cool one to explore. Especially in a fragmented way from different people’s perspectives as they blip in and out, get written and re-written. Piecing together the truth would be an exercise for the reader as they go along. I am NOT the person to figure out how to do that without confusing the heck out of the reader, just seems like a cool concept.
Written by a human.
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