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The Flowers of Aulit Prison
A female alien whose culture has a vastly different view of reality from humans finds herself forced to be a prison informant. Engrossing story you won't soon forget.
Nebula Award Winner
Nebula Award Winner
32 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 1996
72 people want to read
About the author
Nancy Kress
452 books906 followersNancy 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.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 27, 2016
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
February 25, 2023
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.
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.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2016
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.
Narrazione serrata e personaggi che lasciano il segno anche se nella brevità del formato.
Assolutamente consigliato.
April 24, 2018
Fantastic
January 14, 2026
Extremely original and engrossing story. Kress is one of my favourite writers and she rarely disappoints and this story shines.
March 21, 2015
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.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews