The reclusive manager of a large space-going junkyard discovers and re-activates a mothballed machine intelligence. He was lonely and wanted a friend--a companion. The ship was fine with that. It reasoned that being a human's friend was a great reason to exist.
Size: 28 KB (4,995 words)
Genre: Science Fiction
Sex Contents: No Sex
Tags: Science Fiction, Military
Review by richardshagrin [other reviews by richardshagrin]
Reviewed:
I haven't been reviewing many stories lately and I have been getting regretful about not helping my fellow (and probably a few female) readers find good stories to read. Well, I found one. It isn't supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but its a good solid seven plus. It looks like a background dump for a really long possibly better story, and there isn't a lot of plot. It is one of those Faxon specialties, he tells you how to do things and shows them being done.
I am not going to get into what happens. Its a short enough story you can read it for yourself, and I recommend you do so. It is science fiction (please don't call it sci-fi, I don't care for that term. If you want to talk about fi, join the Marines, they all say semper-fi a lot. Doing the numbers, 6 is average, like a C in grade school. 7 is good, like a B. 8 is very good, outstanding even, like an A. 9 is even better than an 8, maybe an A plus. 10 is very rare.
I gave plot a 7. We get hints of lots of interesting things happening as the hero takes a journey toward the center of the galaxy, but we don't hear much about it. That's where this could be a much longer and probably better story. The technical is fine, I didn't see any problems but I didn't see anything that made me want to go crazy and give it a 9 or 10. The appeal is a little higher than just a 7, but it isn't an 8, either, even rounding up. With more story and more about what happens to the hero it might easily be higher than a 7, or even than an 8. Maybe somebody will write that story one of these days, but today isn't the day. I liked it, its a good, quick read. I strongly suspect you will like it too.
