Daddy's World

by Walter Jon Williams

A child's perfect world is interrupted when he learns his body died and his brain scan is just a computer program ... and his family is using an AI interface to pretend everything is normal.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Ebooks

ebook

First published March 1, 1999

About the author

Walter Jon Williams has published twenty novels and short fiction collections. Most are science fiction or fantasy -Hardwired, Voice of the Whirlwind, Aristoi, Metropolitan, City on Fire to name just a few - a few are historical adventures, and the most recent, The Rift, is a disaster novel in which "I just basically pound a part of the planet down to bedrock." And that's just the opening chapters. Walter holds a fourth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving. He lives in New Mexico with his wife, Kathy Hedges.

Reviews

[seak · Rating 4 out of 5]

A favorite author of mine, Daniel Abraham, and I'm sure many others often mentions Walter Jon Williams as being one of those highly underrated (and therefore under-read) authors, so I've been slowly taking notice. In addition, I thought his story in the Songs of the Dying Earth anthology was just about perfection.

Then I found out that this novelette was free and even won a Nebula award, as nebulous it is whether these awards actually matter (see what I did there, I'm sure I'm first). So it was a win-win situation. I just checked, however, and it's no longer free, and $1.99 is on the higher end for a novelette (looked it up, it's not a novella at least as far as the Nebula Award was concerned).

I guess I should start by screaming at you: DO NOT READ THE BLURB FOR THIS BOOK. IT IS FULL OF SPOILERS. I REPEAT, DO NOT READ THE GOODREADS BLURB.

Okay, now that that's out of my system, I was spoiled from the blurb and I think it ruined the effect I could have had realizing what this weird, magical world was instead of knowing from the beginning. Then again, there's that whole theory that spoilers actually enhance your reading experience that I don't know if I completely buy, but I think has some merit.

Anyway, Daddy's World is a strange world, almost like Adventure Time (sorry, no LSP in this one) if you've ever seen that. A boy goes around his world and random things talk to him (like a flying kite) and there's princesses and castles that only let him in if he knows Spanish irregular tenses (or something like that).


(While I love this sentiment, this story is not about being stupid at all which is pretty much the point of Adventure Time ... unless I missed it.)

He enjoys exploring this magical land and then hanging out with his family for dinner. But then he starts noticing that his younger sister is actually much more advanced than he is. It wasn't so at first, but now she not only reads and does math at a higher level than he, she also looks older.

Any more and I'll do what the Goodreads blurb does such a good job doing. I'd highly recommend this captivating novelette filled with plenty of imagination. If you like Adventure Time, this isn't nearly as odd or weird or crazy, it's quite a few degrees from that. Instead it's an interesting, magical fairy-tale land you'll enjoy with plenty of things to think about such as what defines prison and who should be in control.

4 out of 5 Stars (highly recommended)

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daddy's World was recommended to me from someone in the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club. I don't remember who or how it transpired; but I had it in my head to read this in June as some sort of Father's Day tribute. Hmm, that may have been a tad misguided.

Daddy's World is the story of a little boy Jamie that lives a storybook like existence where during the day he lives within a childlike imagination and at night he goes home and has dinner spends time with his parents and his sister and they live as a family. The veneer in this perfect world begins to crack as the sister begins aging far more rapidly than Jamie. He notes that he is maturing but not aging. The little boy learns that he is dead and that his consciousness has been uploaded into a computer program. His parents, and sister are alive in the real world and they come to spend time with their son everyday at the bidding of his father. As the story advances, people age and die and this virtual world has aged and turned into something far uglier as Jamie matures. The mask is off and it is an unintended prison. The chilling ending finds the originally uploaded Jamie with his newly uploaded father as if reset had been invoked. An ending very counter to the what the evolved Jamie would want but then this virtual reality was built for the father not Jamie…

A very short but poignant and clever story with a main character that really doesn't make much of an appearance. A story of megalomania disguised as grief. The title of the story is apt as only Daddy's concerns matter in the end. Conceptually the story is brilliant and it is executed well for its time. But it is dated and the technology in the story hasn't aged well. Ah, the perils of penning a near future story and writing about technologies that have already advanced beyond the author's imagination. A very good story that won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 2000.

4+ Stars

Read on kindle

[Lis Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie is a little boy growing up in a safe, perfect world. Fun things happen here, like new parts of the world appearing, with entertaining creatures like the Whirlikins, or when he's a little older, the Roman Forum and Coliseum--complete with Cicero, and chariot races. Jamie does have dim memories of being in a hospital, but that was a long time ago, when he was very little. Magical things happen in this world.

But Jamie starts to notice some strange and disturbing things. His little sister, Becky, is now older than he is. There are other anomalies.

There's a quiet horror building here, and we feel deeply for Jamie, and for Becky.

Maybe not quite so much for Daddy, even though he has the best of intentions.

Science fiction with a well-done thread of horror. Recommended.

I received a free ebook of this story from the author.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Jon Williams takes a killer look at cybernetic family values in "Daddy's World" (1999), which won the 2001 Nebula for best novelette. Free online copy at http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/willi...

[Mack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like what I'm writing. Intertextuality. We live in the same era and so on; our subjects are connected.
"Daddy's World" is okay - a good idea and good characters. Polished language. Postmodern, with characters almost thinking about themselves as characters - but they never leave the story. A good story, though, and a good idea, too.

[Florin Pitea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memorable story, from start to finish. I've mentioned it in my PhD thesis as well.

[J.L. Dobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daddy's World by Walter Jon Williams

This is a short story.Probably somewhere around twenty to thirty pages. But it's really good as a short story and entertaining. It's also thought provoking. It asks some simple questions, which may or may not come up in the future.

Jamie lives in an idealistic life, which sounds like it's out of some children s novel. It's peopled with characters that could only live in books. But Jamie's Mom and Dad are there and so is his sister Becky. His days are simple filled with time to play but also time to learn.

Until one day when everyone seems to freeze. Stranger things happen where he sees parts of a person and hears a voice. This is the first indicator that things are not as they seem, which is actually pretty much a relief because this was reading too much like a children's tale.

Soon his sister makes a suggestion that they play matchmaker between Don Quixote and Princess Gigunda by deceiving Don into believing that Gigunda is really Dulcinea who, of course, Don Quixote loves. This antic heralds in a time when Becky, who is younger, starts to age faster than Jamie. This perplexes him but he's not ready to face what is happening.

As with short stories this becomes difficult to review because it's so short and a person doesn't want to give the whole story away.

This story is almost a cautionary tale. A modern fairy tale or fable. With the what if being what if we could download the mind of someone we love, who is dying, into a computer. It takes time to examine the ethics and legality of letting someone have that much control over your mind when you pass from this earth.

There are consequences as the conditions lasts longer than originally planned and eventually Becky, who has to live in both a real and fantasy world is a catalyst to Jamie gaining back more control of his life. But, just how will that work out for any of them.

You will have to read and see.

This short is a good introduction to the mind of Walter Jon Williams and his world building. I personally recommend his Implied Spaces novel as another good starting point.

Good Thought provoking SSF for all Future of the digital age related Science Fiction lovers.

J.L. Dobias

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent exploration of creating a virtual world around a downloaded human mind would look like, except there’s always a catch. I’m reminded of James Gunn’s explanation of what makes good science fiction: you can imagine cars, then imagine freeways, but science fiction becomes real when you can imagine traffic jams. Williams has done that here, finding the root of a problem where consciousness becomes electronic—it’s all about who has control of the program, and that’s not something virtual. Recommended.

[Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rose

I had trouble reading through this whole book. There just didn't seem to be much of a real story. While Jamie was finding out about the truth of his life, it seemed as though nothing was really happening.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. It was fairly transparent how things would pan out, but it's a great short story in virtue of raising some deep questions in a poignant and memorable way. It stuck with me for a while after reading.

[John Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark technical fantasy

I enjoyed this very much. And I really enjoyed the exploration of how an AI can never be totally human.

[Margaret Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

The type of story that doesn't scare you upfront but will haunt your dreans

[Paulo Sousa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really nice

A young boy and a parents’ dream not to loose him. A wonderland with d. Quixote and Cícero. And a truth that will need to be understood.

[Allie Cross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me cry! I'm sure it'll live rent-free in my head for the next little while. I'm considering using it with my middle-school students.

[Mook · Rating 4 out of 5]

First story of 2016 and it is a disturbing take on artificial intelligence, life, and family values. Jamie is a young boy who lives in a perfect world full of funny characters and interesting things to do. It's constantly changing, but Jamie doesn't mind. Until he starts noticing odd things. Like how his younger sister grows older than him. How other 'people' in the world don't seem real the way his family does. It all comes to a head when his sister Becca confesses that Jamie died years ago, and his parents had him scanned into a computer program as a way to keep him alive. While the eventual plan was to rescan the brain into a clone, the imagined technological breakthroughs never came. Jamie is trapped in a computer program, not quite alive or inanimate, and his existence is tearing his family apart.

The very creepy implications of people wanting to raise their kids in a "perfect" environment, where they can never be hurt and where they could never come into contact with anything their parents don't agree with was chilling. The ending implies that Jamie is going to be trapped indefinitely. Jamie ends up asking his sister to kill his program, but she evidently did not destroy the backups. Which is how a younger, earlier version of Jamie ends up with his father (now a computer program) right back where he started.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful and sad story. What world would you not create for your dying child. This family learns that they can save the memories of their dying child. They hope through cloning to bring him back. in the real world there is only a short time that parents can control their child's world. The dreams of youth, imagination, and fantasy only stay with us for so long in the human mind. How would you react to a world caught in the imagination of a child? I immediately connected with this story. When I was young I had fantasy about Don Quixote based solely on hearing the songs from the musical. This book played on the childlike fnatasy i created from the musical. My fantasy was no where near the reality of the book or the real play. Wow Walter what a great story. A refreshing look on the question of humanity, and tilting at windmills.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 3 out of 5]

reviews.metaphorosis.com

3 stars

This is a decent story, fairly well written, and I got it when it was free. Still, I have a hard time seeing how it won the Nebula. There's nothing very new here. The story starts strong, in a world that's clearly unusual, intriguing, and a bit dark. But the story weakens as it moves forward. While interesting elements remain, the ending, meant to be startling, is a letdown. The writing is good, and the core concept is adequate (on the way to being tired), but there's nothing really special about the story overall. If you like Williams, or the story is free again, pick it up. Otherwise, I'd let it go.

[Chris Aldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

From The Years Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois .
A suitably thought provoking and eventually quite scary scenario in which a young boy comes to realise the world he occupies is a VR simulation created as a padded prison by his Daf to keep his son safe from unwholesome influences. 5 stars for the imaginative realisation of a VR world designed for the parents rather than the toddler.

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting concept for a short story about artificial intelligence and such. Won a Nebula, I believe, but it really didn't grab me at all. Not much else I can say about it.

[Ricky Kimsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not What He Seems

In this award winning short story the central character is not what he seems and his idyllic life comes crashing around him.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

More realistic than most child-in-a-box AI fantasies.

[Fast T · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it

[miss z lovell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb

Superbly written little gem. Its one of those short stories that gives you something to think about when you,ve finished it. My favorite short story iv read for a long time