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Am I Free To Go?

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The line between utopia and dystopia ... is, often, who you are. Or who your neighbors think you are.

22 pages, ebook

First published December 12, 2012

57 people want to read

About the author

Kathryn Cramer

56 books41 followers
Kathryn Cramer lives in Westport, NY. She is an editor of the Hieroglyph project sponsored by the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. Her story, "Am I Free to Go?" was published by Tor.com in December 2012.

She co-edited the Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF series with David G. Hartwell. Her most recent historical anthologies include The Space Opera Renaissance and The Hard SF Renaissance, both co-edited with Hartwell. Their previous hard SF anthology was The Ascent of Wonder (1994).

She is working on a film adaptation of her story "You, in Emulation" with director Edward Cornell.

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5 stars
5 (7%)
4 stars
11 (16%)
3 stars
25 (37%)
2 stars
15 (22%)
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11 (16%)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Profile Image for karen.
4,012 reviews172k followers
May 2, 2021
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

last year, amy(other amy) tipped me off to this cool thing she was doing: the short story advent calendar, where you sign up to this thingie here and you get a free story each day.

i dropped the ball and by the time i came to my senses, it had already sold out, so for december project, i'm going rogue and just reading a free online story a day of my choosing. this foolhardy endeavor is going to screw up my already-deep-in-the-weeds review backlog, so i don't think i will be reviewing each individual story "properly." i might just do a picture review or - if i am feeling wicked motivated, i will draw something, but i can't be treating each short story like a real book and spending half my day examining and dissecting it, so we'll just see what shape this project takes as we go.

and if you know of any particularly good short stories available free online, let me know! i'm no good at finding them myself unless they're on the tor.com site, and i only have enough at this stage of the game to fill half my calendar. <--- that part is no longer true, but i am still interested in getting suggestions!

DECEMBER 30



Would you rather have the cops haul you out of bed, or the robbers? The answer to this riddle is that the cops are supposed to haul the robbers out of bed and leave me out of it.

this is a very low three stars, but it might be my own fault for trying to read something on the longish side when i was so hungry and sleepy. because i am both things very much right now. this was disjointed in a way that never came together for me - that never made me understand the point of its fragmentation, although the parts i understood i enjoyed. mostly. i'm not sure what is paranoia, what is real, what the parts of the story that seem extraneous are meant to convey...

but a lot of that is probably my body trying to eat its own organs. your turn now.

read it for yourself here:

http://www.tor.com/2012/12/12/am-i-fr...

DECEMBER 1: FABLE - CHARLES YU
DECEMBER 2: THE REAL DEAL - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 3: THE WAYS OF WALLS AND WORDS - SABRINA VOURVOULIAS
DECEMBER 4: GHOSTS AND EMPTIES - LAUREN GROFF
DECEMBER 5: THE RETURN OF THE THIN WHITE DUKE - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 6: WHEN THE YOGURT TOOK OVER - JOHN SCALZI
DECEMBER 7: A CHRISTMAS PAGEANT - DONNA TARTT
DECEMBER 8: DEEP - PHILIP PLAIT
DECEMBER 9: COOKIE JAR - STEPHEN KING
DECEMBER 10: THE STORY OF KAO YU - PETER S. BEAGLE
DECEMBER 11: THE HEEBIE-JEEBIES - ALAN BEARD
DECEMBER 12: THE TOMATO THIEF - URSULA VERNON
DECEMBER 13: THE JAWS THAT BITE, THE CLAWS THAT CATCH - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 14: ROLLING IN THE DEEP - JULIO ALEXI GENAO
DECEMBER 15: ANTIHYPOXIANT - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 16: THE AMBUSH - DONNA TARTT
DECEMBER 17: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TRAITOR AND A HALF-SAVAGE - ALIX HARROW
DECEMBER 18: THE CHRISTMAS SHOW - PAT CADIGAN
DECEMBER 19: THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS - PAUL CORNELL
DECEMBER 20: THE TRAINS THAT CLIMB THE WINTER TREE - MICHAEL SWANWICK
DECEMBER 21: BLUE IS A DARKNESS WEAKENED BY LIGHT - SARAH MCCARRY
DECEMBER 22: WATERS OF VERSAILLES - KELLY ROBSON
DECEMBER 23: RAZORBACK - URSULA VERNON
DECEMBER 24: DIARY OF AN ASSCAN - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 25: CHANGING MEANINGS - SEANAN MCGUIRE
DECEMBER 26: SHOGGOTHS IN BLOOM - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 27: THE CARTOGRAPHY OF SUDDEN DEATH - CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
DECEMBER 28: FRIEDRICH THE SNOW MAN - LEWIS SHINER
DECEMBER 29: DRESS YOUR MARINES IN WHITE - EMMY LAYBOURNE
DECEMBER 31: OLD DEAD FUTURES - TINA CONNOLLY

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Profile Image for Tony.
1,667 reviews
January 11, 2013
Really interesting. Though it is nothing like it, somehow, I kept thinking of Margaret Atwoods, "The Handmaids Tale". Perhaps because though the heroine is purposeful she is out of control. Her actions are dictated by her circumstances, her sense of what is wrong with her world propels her to actions.
Profile Image for Sara G.
1,332 reviews24 followers
July 29, 2020
The concept is interesting, good and valuable. The execution is boring, I'm sorry.
Profile Image for JM.
897 reviews924 followers
December 13, 2012
Seldom do I read something I find uninteresting. This one was one such story. I'm not saying it's bad, mind you. I just didn't like it.
Profile Image for Opal.
70 reviews17 followers
February 10, 2013
Confusing. Intense. Thought-provoking. Worth rereading.
Profile Image for Paul LaFontaine.
646 reviews6 followers
February 10, 2018
A suburban housewife and hacker lives on the edge of a police-dominated society that that simultaneously harasses her as she harasses it. Who is the power and who is the prisoner? The protagonist or Officer Friendly the faceless and interchangeable instrument of corporate power?

Some of the ideas here are really compelling with regard to technology and power. The characters are strong, the ending was less strong to me. Feels like the potential source or a larger work about a dystopian new future.

Recommend.
74 reviews
February 1, 2021
Quite a thriller.

What my ratings mean:
5 – I felt this book was an exemplar in its genre/field. That does not mean I agree with everything it says (or the moral of the story). It is likely to be a book that will change my thinking about a topic.
4 – A very impressive book for its genre/field. It probably didn’t change me or my thinking though.
3 – An enjoyable way to spend the time reading it.
2 – This was a pain to read. It was probably difficult to finish.
1 – Life’s too short and/or I’m not smart enough to get the point of this book.
Profile Image for Sarah.
503 reviews18 followers
December 21, 2012
I have absolutely no idea what this was about. There were some interesting concepts, but they were just side notes not what the story was actually about. The phrase "The line between utopia and dystopia...is, often, who you are. Or who your neighbors think you are." hooked me, but the story went downhill from there. I don't think it's a bad story; it's just not for me.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews

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