STET

by Sarah Gailey

" 'STET' is presented as an excerpt from a textbook of the future that discusses artificially intelligent vehicles. The main body of the story is a single paragraph, written in dry academic-speak and citing such fictional volumes as Magda Sheenan’s 2023 study 'A Unified Theory of Autonomous Conscience and Vehicular Awareness of Humanity as Compiled from Observations of Artificial Intelligence Behavior in Decision Matrices'. But the real story occurs in the set of footnotes that accompany the lone paragraph, citing further documents from this future era."

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction

ebook

First published October 1, 2018

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!

this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.

this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.

IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.

DECEMBER 9: STET - SARAH GAILEY

stories like this one are why i'm glad i do this exhausting project every year. i probably wouldn't have discovered this if i hadn't been specifically hunting for short stories to stockpile for this endeavor. it's by no means my favorite short story ever, but i appreciate the innovative way the story is told so very much. it's a single paragraph of extremely dry textbook-writing with clickable links to annotations, which themselves contain clickable links to the editor's notes and the author's responses to her notes.

ostensibly written in 2042, the subject matter is AI in the field of self-driving automobiles, with a particular focus on the algorithm determining priority-of-life in "trolley problem"-like situations, where impact is inevitable with one of two different entities, activating a decision-matrix that assesses which of the two should be avoided in the collision.



the back-and-forth comments between the author of the piece and her editor are where it's all at, storywise, as facts illuminating the author's experiences and the relationship between the women unfold and it becomes clear that maybe someone else should be writing this textbook, for reasons of professional objectivity and personal decency.

great story, and a really fun way of telling a story.

LET IT STAND!

read it for free here

DECEMBER 1: PG - COURTNEY SUMMERS
DECEMBER 2: THE JUMPING MONKEY HILL - CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
DECEMBER 3: ORIGIN STORY - T. KINGFISHER
DECEMBER 4: THE GREAT SILENCE - TED CHIANG
DECEMBER 5: A CLEAN SWEEP WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS
DECEMBER 6: BORED WORLD - ANDY WEIR
DECEMBER 7: VAMPIRE - ROBERT COOVER
DECEMBER 8: A STATEMENT IN THE CASE - THEODORA GOSS
DECEMBER 10: MARGOT'S ROOM: EMILY CARROLL
DECEMBER 11: HORROR STORY - CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
DECEMBER 12: TERRAIN - GENEVIEVE VALENTINE
DECEMBER 13: IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN - ZEN CHO
DECEMBER 14: GHOUL - GEORGE SAUNDERS
DECEMBER 15: DURING THE DANCE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 16: CLEARING THE BONES - CELESTE NG
DECEMBER 17: THE WAITER'S WIFE - ZADIE SMITH
DECEMBER 18: DEMOLITION - FIONA MCFARLANE
DECEMBER 19: NO PERIOD - HARRY TURTLEDOVE
DECEMBER 20: DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE - GG
DECEMBER 21: RUB-A-DUB-DUB - TONY MILLIONAIRE
DECEMBER 22: HANSA AND GRETYL AND PIECE OF SHIT - REBECCA CURTIS
DECEMBER 23: BRIDESICLE - WILL MCINTOSH
DECEMBER 24: I, CTHULHU, OR, WHAT'S A TENTACLE-FACED THING LIKE ME DOING IN A SUNKEN CITY LIKE THIS (LATITUDE 47° 9' S, LONGITUDE 126° 43' W)? - NEIL GAIMAN
DECEMBER 25: CHRISTMAS TALE - MARK LAWRENCE
DECEMBER 26: THE MONSTERS OF HEAVEN - NATHAN BALLINGRUD
DECEMBER 27: TWO DREAMS ON TRAINS - ELIZABETH BEAR
DECEMBER 28: THE MARTIANS CLAIM CANADA - MARGARET ATWOOD
DECEMBER 29: UNDER THE WAVE - LAUREN GROFF
DECEMBER 30: MR. SALARY - SALLY ROONEY
DECEMBER 31: A/S/L - EMMA CLINE

come to my blog!

[jessica]

oh i must read more sarah gailey - link: https://firesidefiction.com/stet#one

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an editor, I couldn't resist the story just because of the name (and as a reader, because of the author). Funny, there was a story on a similar subject (autonomous cars deciding who dies) in Asimov's magazine within the last couple of years. Also in the last couple of years I remember reading another story told mostly in the footnotes. All good.

[rachel ~ trans rights are human rights]

sarah gailey said, "oh, you think you know how a short story should look?" and then they crushed your expectations into smithereens and wrote something brief an haunting and fascinating. read it here.

[Pat Swanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short story doesn't have the luxury of time that a book has - the author has to get in, make you feel something, and get out.
This is a _very_ short story, and it accomplishes that goal.

I felt for Anna and her loss, to the point where I felt uncomfortable marking the story as four stars - not because it deserves fewer, but because of the tooltip associated with it: "really liked it". I felt like I was intruding on the character's grief, here to gawk at and enjoy it.

The unique format works well. I've never seen a story mostly told through footnotes and edit comments. Due to both the use of the unique format I could see in another year this maybe having won the Hugo, but it's hard to compete with "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies".

[Seth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm torn between appreciating the style and recoiling from the feeling that this story is trying to manipulate me via the identifiable victim effect and the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics with a dash of status quo bias - using a fictitious victim in a highly contrived scenario, no less!

[Cally Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would've liked this better if I wasn't in college. All I was thinking throughout is "bruh, your editor has a point on objectivity and unnecesary references, maybe becomr a journalist instead" and then it got to the last editor's note and I was like, "oh, I get it!" That first read was annoying enough though I'm giving it a three

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

really cool format, very creative and inventive and i've never considered you could tell a story this way before, 4 stars for that alone tbh. though i feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this format, like yo i can just imagine so many possibilities... multiple editors, different types of edits, yo

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brief but interesting read, which i recommend. however quite how short it is, I feel is a detriment to the idea. I could have read a much longer more elaborate version of this and would have been happy to get the opportunity

[Sei Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

short, but packs a punch

[Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call me crazy for considering this page-long story a "book," but the details are truly in the footnotes! This experiment in narrative form worked for me: the language is sufficiently complex to set a sci-fi tone and techno context, and the additional footnotes combine stirring dialogue and selective academic jargon to give the story a sense of time and place with very few actual details. It's uncanny.

[Emmmmmmmma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a cool idea!! The digitalization of this unique media that allows for comments to be written and give context to the story is so interesting! Reminds me of S (Ship of Theseus) but is a short story, which I think works better for this formatting style, and easier to understand. Love this story sm!! <3

[aes ❀ · Rating 4 out of 5]

bet so much!! extremely big fan of utilizing non-fiction formats for creative fiction storytelling and i thought this was SO COOL even from just the concept alone. i loved the subject matter rin as someone who has A Lot Of Thoughts on artificial intelligence and its ethical considerations and that penultimate footnote.... yes.

[Douglas Anstruther · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love when a story manages to tell a story by telling a different story. Not only is that the case, but the format is unique yet accessible. And to top all that off, it manages to be heartbreaking. Well, done.

[Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Here is a great example of form as an element of story.

[Akiva ꙮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always here for experiments in form.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Effective short story told mostly through footnotes

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ughhhh so good.

[M.Marie.S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting multimedia/editing storytelling
https://firesidefiction.com/stet#fifteen

[AJ Kerrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The magic here is that a story that looks like dry academic speak at a glance can be so efficiently affective.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique format of an academic or tech paper with annotations between the writer and the editor. There is a conversation about AI being able to make the correct choice in who to run over in a self driving car, in this case between an endangered species of bird or a young girl. The format is the real draw here for me. As I read, I was discovering new layers to the story, new depth to the main character and that was really cool.

[Anubischick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It'll take you less than a minute to read this story, and weeks before it leaves you, if it ever does.

[Devon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gailey went straight for the emotions on this. I really liked the format that Gailey used. I really like how the story unveiled in the comments of the article, even though it ripped out my heart.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If an artificial intelligence made that decision, then why did it make that decision? Do you think they'll stop?