Impossible Dreams by Tim Pratt
My rating: 3/5 cats
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a short story advent calendar. it’s not a true advent calendar since i choose all the stories myself, but what it lacks in the ‘element of surprise’ department it more than makes up for in hassle, as i try to cram even MORE reading into a life already overcrammed with impossible personal goals (live up to your potential! find meaningful work! learn to knit!) merry merry wheee!
since i am already well behind in my *regular* reviewing, when it comes to these stories, whatever i poop out as far as reflections or impressions are going to be superficial and perfunctory at best. please do not weep for the great big hole my absented, much-vaunted critical insights are gonna leave in these daily review-spaces (and your hearts); i’ll try to drop shiny insights elsewhere in other reviews, and here, i will at least drop links to where you can read the stories yourselves for free, which – let’s be honest – is gonna serve you better anyway.
HAPPY READING, BOOKNERDS!
links to all stories read in previous years’ calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
2016: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…
2017: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send ’em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 10
The shelves yielded miracle after miracle. Here was The Death of Superman, directed by Tim Burton, starring Nicolas Cage; in Pete’s universe, Burton and Cage had both dropped the project early on. Here was Total Recall, but directed and written by David Cronenberg, not Paul Verhoeven. Here was The Terminator, but starring O.J. Simpson rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger—though Schwarzenegger was still in the film, as Kyle Reese. Here was Raiders of the Lost Ark, but starring Tom Selleck instead of Harrison Ford—and there was no sign of any later Indiana Jones films, which was sad. Pete’s hands were already full of DVDs, and he juggled them awkwardly while pulling more movies from the shelves. Here was Casablanca starring George Raft instead of Bogart, and maybe it had one of the alternate endings, too! Here a John Wayne World War II movie he’d never heard of, but the box copy said it was about the ground invasion of the Japanese islands, and called it a “riveting historical drama.” A quick scan of the shelves revealed no sign of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, and those two things together suggested that in this world, the atomic bomb was never dropped on Japan. The implications of that were potentially vast . . . but Pete dismissed broader speculations from his mind as another film caught his eye. In this world, Kubrick had lived long enough to complete Artificial Intelligence on his own, and Pete had to see that, without Steven Spielberg’s sentimental touch turning the movie into Pinocchio.
this is a sweet, if predictable, story about a maaaagical parallel-world video store full of films that were never made and missing films that were – in ‘our’ world, anyway. it’s also a film-geek romance. it’s cute, it’s light, it’s schmaltzy enough to give you cavities – just a little fantasy puff piece, whose unchallenging content is absolutely appreciated (by me) after a long tiring day, but it’s not going to stay with me long. super film geeks may appreciate this more than me, for the references and the ‘what-if’ daydreams it is likely to inspire. me, i’d rather have byron’s burned-up memoir over A Streetcar Named Desire starring jessica tandy. (replacing vivien leigh, not marlon brando. i’d totally watch it if it was jessica tandy AND vivien leigh, no matter which of those ladies stepped into the stanley kowalski role.)
AND THAT WAS DAY TEN!
read it for yourself here:
http://web.archive.org/web/2007042207…
*******************************************
DECEMBER 1
DECEMBER 2
DECEMBER 3
DECEMBER 4
DECEMBER 5
DECEMBER 6
DECEMBER 7
DECEMBER 8
DECEMBER 9
DECEMBER 11
DECEMBER 12
DECEMBER 13
DECEMBER 14
DECEMBER 15
DECEMBER 16
DECEMBER 17
DECEMBER 18
DECEMBER 19
DECEMBER 20
DECEMBER 21
DECEMBER 22
DECEMBER 23
DECEMBER 24
DECEMBER 25
DECEMBER 26
DECEMBER 27
DECEMBER 28
DECEMBER 29
DECEMBER 30
DECEMBER 31
