I fiori della prigione di Aulit

by Nancy Kress

Uli non era reale.
Nella comunità di Mondo, chi si rendeva colpevole di reati gravi veniva estromesso dalla Realtà Condivisa. La condanna poteva essere temporanea, come nel caso di Uli, colpevole di aver ucciso la propria sorella, e ora tenuta a lavorare per il governo fin quando non avessero deciso che le poteva essere riammessa alla Realtà. Ma poteva anche essere definitiva, come la condanna inflitta al Terrestre Carryl Walters. E Uli ha la possibilità di redimersi, se solo riuscirà a ottenere da quello strano individuo le informazioni che il governo vuole da lui. Ma come potrà riuscire a ottenere qualcosa da un alieno che non condivide neppure la sua stessa visione della realtà?

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Novella, Fiction

56 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

Nancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella Beggars in Spain which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Liutauras Elkimavičius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nancy ateivė. Aš tikrai žinau. Ne veltui ji taip gerai išmano ET politinius ryšius, biologiją, mąstymo būdą ir papročius. Ji čia atskrido mūsų tyrinėti kaip jau yra dariusi daugelyje kitų planetų. Space antropologė tokia. Bet kaip ir visi mokslininkai, idėjų turi daug, bet sausoka. Soso. #LEBooks

[Shadow Wolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

the actual rating is somewhere between 2 and 3 stars depending on how generous I am feeling so let's just say 2.5.
read in "The Beaker's Dozen" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...) because it shares the setting with the Probability trilogy (https://www.goodreads.com/series/6370...)
The story is prefaced by a blurb from the author that mentions reality maps, how their overlap shapes reality and how when they match almost exactly, you have the setting of the story, World. I got a little hung up on that and was distracted from the story because I kept trying to figure out if this was meant in the more mundane way or the more metaphysical one. Per an interview with the author, World is a consensus reality where having a different point of view is painful due to a combination of telepathy, pheromones and body language. (Source: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/no...)
Personally, I consider this a bit of a strike against the story as a fictional story, especially one set in a world fully of the author's making, should contain all the background information within the itself and readers should not have to resort to external sources for context. As it is, I had trouble grasping how the setting was supposed to work and was too distracted by trying to work out the logistics of the society to concentrate on the immediate plot. I thought the explanation of the event that set everything into motion was a bit of a cop out, too. Maybe it happened, maybe it was just an unethical science experiment. There is no way to tell for sure. Maybe there is a group of Terrans and World people running these experiments and another mixed group opposing them but maybe there is not, we are not given conclusive evidence and the main character decides to opt out of the whole dilemma to be a simple mine worker on a loosely regulated frontier somewhere. Interesting setting and initial premise but neither is developed in a satisfactory way. Perhaps the Probability trilogy will be a better read.

[Luca Cresta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sempre interessanti le trame della Kress. Un'opera forse troppo breve per il l'idea che contiene.
Narrazione serrata e personaggi che lasciano il segno anche se nella brevità del formato.
Assolutamente consigliato.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Michael Kevane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the short story in a SciFi collection. Very impressive. A tad confusing for the reader, but the overwhelming sense of being immersed in a collective style culture is compelling.