Covenant

by Elizabeth Bear

A convicted serial killer is sentenced to “rightminding” to cure the neurological dysfunction that led to his sociopathic killing of thirteen women. On a frigid New England morning, the tables are turned and the hunter becomes the hunted.

Genres: Short Stories

15 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

What Goodreads really needs is a "currently WRITING" option for its default bookshelves...

Reviews

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covenant by Elizabeth Bear
Short story set in the future, when mental illness can be cured.

[Holly (The GrimDragon) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I’ve sunk into that beautiful quiet place where there’s just the movement, the sky, that true, irreproducible blue, the brilliant flicker of a cardinal. Where I die as a noun and only the verb survives."

[Andrew Grangaard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this as part of _Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 9_ (2014).

Glad I had a chance to read it in an anthology of unrelated stories so it was served without expectation or preconception, so the story could drip and flow at its own pace.

Beautifully written and paced, the story presented neither faster nor slower than needed with nothing extraneous. Themes and questions masterfully woven into the narrative.

[Chan Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in The Best Of Elizabeth Bear (not Hieroglyph as shown in the cover image on Goodreads). It was brief and quick, and I suppose could be classified as a “thriller”. A psychopathic serial killer has been “rightminded” via chemicals and surgery, but then encounters a dangerous situation. Worth reading.

[B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterclass in world building through precise storytelling. I wanted the story to keep going.

[Danyel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I throughly enjoyed this short story. It appears in an anthology called Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future, that focuses on more optimistic speculative fiction. I was intrigued but a bit worried. The bleakness of speculative fiction is what I love about it. This short story was delightfully creepy. It imagines a world where convicted serial killers can undergo a procedure called "rightminding" that changes their impulses. I loved the technology, the writing and the plot. You can read this story here: http://www.slate.com/articles/technol...