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A review by nathanaeljs
Lightspeed Magazine, April 2014 by John Joseph Adams
1.0
When I started reading this story, I thought the premise was creative and exciting. The world literally turned upside down! Was it magic? Science gone amuck? Aliens? Magical alien scientists? Brace yourself for disappointment, we never find out. Oh, and the protagonist is an incredible asshole.
It's been awhile since the protagonist of a short piece of fiction made me hate them as much as I did this guy by the end of the story. The world ends, literally the single most traumatic possible event imaginable. No doubt billions are dead. Most of the world's land animals are probably gone. The surviving humans have potential lifespans best counted in days. Does this concern our protagonist? No, he's upset his girlfriend broke up with him. This is almost the only thing he ever talks about. He is self-centered to the point of being almost comically sociopathic. He lets a woman fall to her death so he can save his ex's goldfish, which he hopes to return to her and win her back with. He leaves a tiny child with two insane women who undoubtedly died along with the girl as soon as they were offscreen, all so he can continue on to his girlfriend. When he sees her crying over her dead rebound guy, who was crushed to death in her home in the room next to her when the world ended, he's enraged. Because she doesn't promptly take him back and start humping him (she's hurt her back and broken her kneecap btw), he rushes off in a rage and leaves her behind and probably dies shortly after the story ends.
I. Hate. This. Story. It sucks. The end.
It's been awhile since the protagonist of a short piece of fiction made me hate them as much as I did this guy by the end of the story. The world ends, literally the single most traumatic possible event imaginable. No doubt billions are dead. Most of the world's land animals are probably gone. The surviving humans have potential lifespans best counted in days. Does this concern our protagonist? No, he's upset his girlfriend broke up with him. This is almost the only thing he ever talks about. He is self-centered to the point of being almost comically sociopathic. He lets a woman fall to her death so he can save his ex's goldfish, which he hopes to return to her and win her back with. He leaves a tiny child with two insane women who undoubtedly died along with the girl as soon as they were offscreen, all so he can continue on to his girlfriend. When he sees her crying over her dead rebound guy, who was crushed to death in her home in the room next to her when the world ended, he's enraged. Because she doesn't promptly take him back and start humping him (she's hurt her back and broken her kneecap btw), he rushes off in a rage and leaves her behind and probably dies shortly after the story ends.
I. Hate. This. Story. It sucks. The end.