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PoniesPonies by Kij Johnson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The story is available here. Go read, I'll wait -- it'll take you less than four minutes.



Yeah, I need someone to explain to me what's so brilliant about this. Because it's being talked about like it's this amazing, groundbreaking thing, and I'm reading a controlled and perfectly constructed but ultimately shallow parable about dreams and fitting in.



I mean, it's very well done, obviously -- the archetypal TopGirl and everyoneLikesHerGirl, the cartoonishly nauseating violence. That moment where the incarnation of Barbara's dreams has more defiance than Barbara does. The way this is not just a story about conforming yourself but conforming your -- actually, you know, you could say it's also about conforming your sensawunda.



But at the end, I'm just going so? And? Yes? This is news? My girlfriend suggests, after throwing herself on the sword and reading some of the comments at Tor.com, that most people who are blown away by the story are people who haven't ever spent time thinking about these things. I find this deeply depressing. That women could have lived through these rituals -- because most of us did, in one form or another -- and never know it, even years later.



But, sincerely. Am I missing something here? Is there something else going on with this story?



View all my reviews

Date: 2011-07-31 03:25 pm (UTC)
ellen_fremedon: overlapping pages from Beowulf manuscript, one with a large rubric, on a maroon ground (Default)
From: [personal profile] ellen_fremedon
Is there something else going on with this story?

Nope.

Date: 2011-07-31 05:59 pm (UTC)
jadelennox: Senora Sabasa Garcia, by Goya (Default)
From: [personal profile] jadelennox
oh thank God, I thought I was the only person who just didn't get it. I mean, yes, it's well done. But it's well done in the sense that... Well, sometimes you read a book where it what if the WHITE people were BLACK and the BLACK people were WHITE and there was an apartheid state with the BLACK people on top? And you can't help thinking, no matter how well written it is, and? Isn't that the kind of revelation any thoughtful person should have in high school?

Date: 2011-07-31 11:32 pm (UTC)
readerjane: Book Cat (Default)
From: [personal profile] readerjane
(that most people who are blown away by the story are people who haven't ever spent time thinking about these things.)

Maybe the point is that it needed to be this cotton-candy in order to get people who have never been inclined to think about it, to do so?

Date: 2011-09-01 11:59 pm (UTC)
esther_asphodel: a woman with her face almost concealed by stack of books (bibliophile)
From: [personal profile] esther_asphodel
You articulated my problem with that story much more clearly than I had managed. It just felt really pointless, despite the anvilicious moral. I was pleased that it didn't win the Hugo.

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