Proto Zoa by Lois McMaster Bujold

[lightreads]

Proto Zoa

2/5. Collection of very early shorts. I never read this back when I was in Bujold fandom because it was nowhere to be found in accessible format. It's a weird collection because it's recognizably her but also . . . not very good? There are some highlights – the evocation of the miseries of stay-at-home mothering with a useless spouse in "Barter" are hilarisad. But the keystone novella, "Dreamweaver's Dilemma" is a competent but shallow treatment of an idea I've seen done many times much better (also creepingly sexist around the edges). But the one that really threw me was "Garage Sale," a manifestly unkind story about neighbors who hate each other and both behave horribly.

Comments

[readerjane]

I liked the humor in "Barter," but when I read it I thought how easy it would be to abuse a tool like that. And at first it's not noticeable - pause the kids for the weekend so you can catch up on sleep, and they've aged a couple days less than they should have done, but what's a couple days? Until you've done it so many times they're not the right age for their school year. And jump-start the spouse until the house is in great repair, but he knows something's wrong and he's starting to panic inside wondering what that something is. And then it felt pretty creepy.

[lightreads]

Yes, agreed. She has this throwaway thought of of course she won't pause them too too much because she doesn't want preschoolers in 30 years. And I couldn't tell if this was creepy foreshadowing or not. I think not.