Yellow and the Perception of Reality by Maureen F. McHugh
My rating: 4/5 cats
She’s touching things a lot lately. I let her touch me. She’s relearning all those colors and edges and sounds and textures the way an infant does. She’s putting that together. She keeps getting better. She’s started dropping things. I know it’s on purpose. She drops and then she looks. They don’t know how much better she’s going to get but I do. Wanda will get well.
a long time ago i read this author’s short story collection After the Apocalypse, and this free tor shortie reminded me how oh-so-good she is. it’s a smooth, rich story, and you can just ignore the science parts if they make your brain hurt because the human elements are lovely and haunting, ditto for the octopus parts, and that “cover” image is already giving me nightmares. it’s not a terribly long story, but you feel full after reading it—plump and satisfied.
i would very much enjoy reading the further adventures of claude the octopus, as long as they weren’t too sad.
and that’s a short review of a short story!
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2020/07/22/yellow…
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