Matthew Lloyd’s Reviews > Her Smoke Rose Up Forever > Status Update

Apparently this was the third time that I've read "A Momentary Taste of Being" - perhaps explaining the little I did remember, that it was three years ago, not eleven, that I last read it. But for the longest Tiptree story in this collection - by two hours! - it drags. The ending is not satisfying for a novella-length work; there's not enough else to it to make me want to linger on it.

"And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" is a reminder that we've been saying "don't let computers do all your thinking for you" for 50+ years and people still aren't listening

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" has depths to it that are far from exhausted in the age of influencer culture - although the idea that ads might be banned feels like a far fetched utopia now - but I still struggle to get through the language, especially in audio format. When I read this again in Warm Worlds and Otherwise, I'm going to try to take it slow, see if I can parse Tiptree's future dialect better.

I read this collection 11 years ago. The opening double header - a story about an airborn pandemic and a story about a massive growth in femicide - hit differently now. Stories from the 1970s, maintaining their relevance today - in a way I love it, but in another way, I hate it!