Status Updates From The Memory Librarian: And O...

The fifth and last story, “Timebox Altared”, revisits the concept of the third story, a place where one can experience time differently. Four children find a monument in the woods and build a room where they can see the future that might be. To me it’s about the value of representation and imagination; to create the future you must first imagine it and believe you and people like you are capable of building it.

Story four, “Save Changes”. If you had an artifact that would reverse time, but only once and you don’t know for how long, how would you use it?

With such short stories there’s not often time to reach a conflict or provide resolution, so what really shines in stories 3 & 4 has been the worldbuilding. The story ends and the empire hasn’t crumbled, so you’re left with plenty of questions to mull over.

Third story, “Timebox”, sets up an interesting premise, a pantry that’s removed from time. You go in, do whatever for however long, and come back exactly when you left. And then the story ends, a bit ambiguously and with some interesting relationship implications but without much exploration of what a place like that could do, personally or systemically, for better or for worse.

Through the second story, “Nevermind”. A little more down to earth, about a women’s commune outside the State’s control. It still highlights the challenge with a book like this where memory is so important: we don’t always know when we’ve slipped into the past, or when that past is fragmented and nonsensical because their mind has been altered. Times like those you just have to read for the vibes.

Done with the title story. Like most SF&F it’s a bit disorienting at first, you just have to have faith that the world and its technology or magic will eventually make sense. But this was really well done and has some interesting discussion points like freedom vs. security, or the gift that is the ability to forget. And while it makes its own leanings clear it doesn’t claim to have The Answer.

I like Bahni Turpin as a narrator, but the florid prose here gives me the impression that Turpin’s reading it blind. That’s probably true of most audiobooks, but it *shows* here.

When you know how a sentence will end you might read the beginning differently. When you can feel how a scene is developing before the shift is stated outright, you might read a line differently. That’s not really happening here.

About 1/3 of the way through the title story. The Panopticon has progressed beyond surveillance cameras and drones to a stage where it skims citizens’ memories, storing them in a central library. From there the memories can be preserved, but also modified or destroyed depending on what the Standards bureau deems appropriate for society.