| Title | : | Fireside Magazine Issue 60, October 2018 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published October 1, 2018 |
| Awards | : | Hugo Award Short Story for "STET" (2019), Locus Award Short Story for "STET" (2019) |
— Inner Space by Takim Williams
— Light and Death on the Indian Battle Station by Keyan Bowes; illustrated by Saleha Chowdhury
— STET by Sarah Gailey
— Odontogenesis by Nino Cipri
— Pendants of Precariousness by D.A. Xiaolin Spires
Fireside Magazine Issue 60, October 2018 Reviews
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Formally like Nicholson Baker's
The Mezzanine for the hyperlink generation, a tiny text telling a titanic story whose layers grow like the lamination in puff pastry. They're as buttery-rich as those layers, too.
Gailey thinks about things we all think about...what happens when something goes utterly irretrievably bad?...and then builds an armature of words to hang feelings on. We the audience stand back and look at the shapes while our minds assess and absorb the meanings. Like the best pastry-eating experiences, the mental exercise of consuming a Gailey story involves enjoyment of the whole while remaining aware of the subtle parts.
This is a genuinely moving story, about a universally relatable subject, that asks hard questions about awful predictions of tragedies to come. It's free online and takes at most 10 minutes to read (you'll want to go back and re-experience some subtleties), and fully deserves its nomination for the 2019 Hugo Award for Short Fiction. -
I really liked this short story by Sarah Gaily and would have liked it despite it being nommed for Hugo 2019.
It's dry. So dry. Written dry, but damn the data points are awesome.
Vehicular homicide. By AI.
How did it learn to make its judgments? Us. *shiver*
Totally recommend. -
STET is a 2019 Hugo Awards finalist in the Best Short Story category.
This story is told in an unusual and interesting way. It’s a scientific paper with annotations. For me the story came alive more in the annotations, although the footnotes provide sufficient information for you to learn the story behind the story. I tend to gloss over whenever I encounter copious footnotes in any text so that influenced my reading experience here.
I had to force myself to get to the guts of the actual story. I felt the pain and anger in this piece but overall it didn’t work for me. I see journal articles and I automatically think of dry, wordy documents I drudged through to find information for university assignments, so I don��t think this format was ever going to be a winner for me.
You can read this short story online
here. I found this version didn’t flow as well for me as the PDF version with handwritten notes, even though they contain the same text.
Content warnings include .
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STET by Sarah Gailey
Oh my, I loved the unconventional narrative of this super short story. I acutely felt the character's grief within a handful of sentences. The biases of those who program algorithms/A.I. is an important topic and I'm glad to see it being explored in fiction.
Nominated for the 2019 Hugos and available for free:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet#fnref:3 -
Read only for "STET" Sarah Gailey's 2019 Hugo short nom. A mess of an idea that someone actually nominated.
Discuss (prob better on the blog, where it won't be deleted): Is Gailey 2018's most over-rated author, or the most over-rated author ever?
Oh, review at the blog, naturally, where I never delete it.
https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2020/... -
***STET by Sarah Gailey***
How does an autonomous car decide who's going to live and who's going to die, if a situation arises where one swerve in any direction will likely result in a casualty?
The story is presented in a very creative way. It's a short scientific text with several footnotes and editor notes, the latter being commentated by the fictional author. The actual story behind the text gets revealed in layers and only becomes fully clear when one has read the comments.
Unfortunately there's a content warning at the beginning of the story, which is a huge spoiler that partly reveals the most emotional aspect of the tale.
Still, it gets full marks for inventiveness.
Truth be told, though, I found it tiring to read, exactly because of its format. The way it is structured never gave me a chance to get into a proper flow of reading. But thankfully it's very short anyway.
So, interesting and relevant questions raised, very creative structure, not exactly fun for this reader.
3 stars, mainly for being different and timely.
Can be read for free here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet
Hugo 2019 nominee for Best Short Story
____________________________
2019 Hugo Award Finalists
Best Novel
•
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
•
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
•
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
•
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
•
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
•
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
Best Novella
•
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
•
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
•
Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
•
The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
•
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson
•
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Best Novelette
•
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho (Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog)
•
The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections by Tina Connolly (Tor.com)
•
Nine Last Days on Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory (Tor.com)
•
The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
•
The Thing About Ghost Stories by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine)
•
When We Were Starless by Simone Heller (Clarkesworld Magazine)
Best Short Story
•
The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed Magazine)
•
The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society by T. Kingfisher (Uncanny Magazine)
•
The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine)
•
STET by Sarah Gailey (Fireside Magazine)
•
The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny Magazine)
•
A Witch’s Guide To Escape: A Practical Compendium Of Portal Fantasies by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine)
Best Series
• The Centenal Cycle by
Malka Older
• The Laundry Files by
Charles Stross
• Machineries of Empire by
Yoon Ha Lee
• The October Daye Series by
Seanan McGuire
• The Universe of Xuya by
Aliette de Bodard
• Wayfarers by
Becky Chambers
Best Related Work
• Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
•
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee
• The Hobbit Duology (a documentary in three parts), written and edited by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
•
An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards 1953-2000 by Jo Walton
• The Mexicanx Initiative Experience at Worldcon 76 by Julia Rios, Libia Brenda, Pablo Defendini, and John Picacio
•
Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon
Best Graphic Story
•
Abbott, written by Saladin Ahmed, art by Sami Kivelä, colors by Jason Wordie, letters by Jim Campbell
•
Black Panther: Long Live the King, written by Nnedi Okorafor and Aaron Covington, art by André Lima Araújo, Mario Del Pennino, and Tana Ford
•
Monstress, Volume 3: Haven, written by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda
•
On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
•
Paper Girls, Volume 4
, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Cliff Chiang, colors by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher
•
Saga, Volume 9, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples
Best Art Book
•
The Book of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition illustrated by Charles Vess, written by Ursula K. Le Guin
•
Daydreamer’s Journey: The Art of Julie Dillon by Julie Dillon
•
Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer
•
Spectrum 25: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, editor John Fleskes
•
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed
•
Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, editor Catherine McIlwaine
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book
•
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt; Macmillan Children’s Books)
•
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton (Freeform / Gollancz)
•
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (Little, Brown / Hot Key Books)
•
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (Balzer + Bray)
•
The Invasion by Peadar O’Guilin (David Fickling Books / Scholastic)
•
Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman (Random House / Penguin Teen) -
This is the review for the short story STET by Sarah Gailey.
The author and I didn't have a nice first encounter - she wrote a novelette with a great premise that completely fell flat for me. Unfortunately, something very similar happened here.
This is an article with footnotes as well as links and editor's comments on the side. It depicts an incident involving an autonomous (self-driving) car that made a fateful decision.
Self-driving cars are quite the hot topic right now. Personally, considering all the maniacs behind the wheel, the growing egotism of the drivers, the still increasing numbers of drunken drivers and all the other stuff that can and often does happen to you on the road, I wouldn't mind if the cars drove themselves like in those wonderful scifi stories of old (though a part of me would also mourn the good old days of driving as I like fast cars). However, the technology necessary for that needs to be sophisticated and well-engineered and even then there would be errors. It's unavoidable.
...
Funny, isn't it?! How we demand perfection from a machine despite us humans being so far from that same perfection. If you look at the numbers, even if car accidents decreased by only a fourth, that would already be a win for everyone. But I bet that wouldn't be enough. After the first accident, people would be coming with pitchforks and torches and demands no human could ever fulfill or has ever fulfilled. What a sad joke.
Anyway, in this story, self-driving cars are a reality, the one in this story is a Toyota. And it made a mistake. Or a decision most humans wouldn't have made. So we are talking about a casualty, about the people learning about this from the news as well as those directly, personally, involved. And as these things go, you have the objective view on things and you have the highly emotionally charged look.
But then we get another data point: those wo taught the AI. It is, true to its name, still artificial after all. So what it did was based on matrices programmed into it by humans. Does that make it homicide? Can we really be neutral in a discussion about this issue, especially considering who the victim in this story was?!
I feel torn about the presentation of this story. On one hand, it's pretty unique (not entirely but it's also not done too often). On the other hand, all the constant links and sidenotes pulled me out of the story's flow so I was more annoyed by the emotionally charged comments left and right than emotionally effected.
Still ... I liked it.
You can read it for free here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet -
I loved the way this story was presented (as an edited paper with a writer rejecting her editor's comments). I loved the story's author's comments on who codes the AIs, what comprises the decision-making ability of an AI, who gets to matter and how laws can reflect this.
A very short short, and full of fury and grief. -
This is a short story, nominated for Hugo Awards in 2019, can be read online here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet#one
It is just a single paragraph on "Autonomous Conscience and Automotive Casualty" scientific article with footnotes larger than the main text. From the footnotes and comments (between the imaginary author and editor) we see the tragedy of an autonomous car accident due to (faulty) choice system. An interesting approach but hardly something one will re-read.
note: stet is an instruction for the typesetter or writer to disregard a change the editor or proofreader had previously marked. -
Review for STET by Sarah Gailey
Very different. In a good way. A tragic story told in the footnotes and annotations. Clever. Very relevant topic. I do not have the answer as to what is right or wrong or how the decision should be made.
Can be read for free here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet
If you want to read something unusual once in a while, check it out. Read it online to be able to fully experience the formatting.
Part of my HUGO 2019 reading. 4.5 stars. -
I'd originally planned not to write Goodreads reviews for the Hugo-nominated short stories -- they're too short, and would cheat my reading statistics a bit -- but then I had to pin down my thoughts & feelings about this one.
"STET" is a blisteringly angry short story, crafted in the form of an academic paper about machine ethics in self-driving cars; which is topical, considering
Nature published a paper last autumn about precisely this thing, called "The Moral Machine experiment". As you wade through the rambling footnotes and livid red marginalia, you piece together exactly why this topic matters so much to the author -- more than anything, the story unravels in multiple layers in the metatextual back-and-forth between the author ('Anna') and her editor, each interjection rebuffed with a terse, furious "STET." ('let it stand'; used as an instruction on a printed proof to indicate that a correction or alteration should be ignored)
One look at it on my Kindle, though, and I instantly knew it couldn't be read as an ebook. This is one where the format matters so much. It's technically only three pages, but I absolutely recommend that you read it in PDF form, in how this was originally presented in Fireside Magazine; the handwriting gives you so much, so that I can practically picture Anna's red pen tearing through the paper, her writing turning cramped and angrier by the line.
It's disorienting to read, this rapid see-sawing back-and-forth, but that just contributes to its punchiness.
Fireside has made a valiant effort at reproducing it online with pop-up footnotes, and you can read it for free here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet
But honestly, as mentioned, I don't recommend reading it online -- the flat text strips the editorial notes of their personality somewhat. I just love the format, you guys.
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STET is in the form of a scientific paper interspersed with editorial suggestions from the journal editor, to remove or modify content they consider inappropriate. To each of these, the author responds, "STET," i.e., leave it as is.
It's about the reliability and trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence as drivers of self-driving cars. When a crash can't be avoided, which lives are to be valued more highly? Who lives and who dies?
Over the course of the story, we learn the background of this research for the author of the paper, and it builds to a heart-wrenching climax.
Recommended.
I received this story as part of the 2019 Hugo Voters Packet. -
Very interesting flash fiction that takes place on multiple levels despite its shortness. It’s both dry, and passionate. Cool story dealing with something that may become a issue in the future, more specifically AI and self driving cars.
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It would be better in written format. It’s too distracting to flip back and forth between the article, the footnotes and the editorial back and forth. It loses a lot of the emotional punch. If it was in paper format? Five stars. As it stands how I read it? 3 stars. I do like the way it was written, definitely unique.
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The presentation is very creative and fun! The moral dilemma at the center of this very, very short story – which life is worth saving more? - is also interesting. However, the story doesn’t really do anything with it, just raises the issue. Maybe if you’ve never ever thought about this type of dilemma at all, STET will leave more of an impression on you. For me, it was somewhat lackluster. What was impressive is that Anna managed to be very annoying and unlikeable just based on the handful of her in-document comments.
On a side note, I’ve seen them in reviews, but this is the first time I’ve come across an official content warning placed at the beginning of a story. Not only is it a big spoiler I could have done without, I actually find this very infantilizing.
Read for free here:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet -
This one didn't work for me. The fractured syntax and format are very distracting. Plus the reader format at FIRESIDE is just terrible -- the banner ads take up half the screen!. Apparently there is a pdf version around with handwritten notes? I couldn't find it.
The central problem for me, though, is that this is not really a story. As others have pointed out. And still others have liked it a lot, plus it got two major award nominations (to my surprise). So YMMV!
Almost certainly this sort of thing will happen when/if self-driving cars come along. One reason why that might not be anytime soon. I've seen a better fictional treatment of this problem, and if I recall where it was, I'll come back to this review. In the meanwhile, see first comment. -
This is very much an experimental style that readers will probably love or hate. I'm more towards the hate end of the spectrum. There's really no story here, although if you read between the lines it's clear that Gailey is channeling some sort of trauma over the death of a loved one, and how our society often values things over people. Kudos to Gailey for trying something different -- it reminds me of some of the avant-garde New Wave of the 1960s and 70s -- but it didn't work for me.
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STET by Sarah Gailey
I'm glad I read this non traditionally-formatted story online at Fireside Magazine instead of on my Kindle. I admire the concept and the execution of the story, and I liked how so much of it happened off-page, in the margins, as it were, but it was still too short and sparse to give me a strong emotional connection.
I received this story as part of the 2019 Hugo Voters Packet. -
Intriguing and heartbreaking
An academic paper on autonomous vehicle decision making from a very personal perspective, with editorial commentary -
Etwas kompliziert zu lesen, aber ok.
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2,5
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Oh, I like this very much. A clever thought with emotional depth, very well executed. Off to look for more Gailey.
Available to read free online -
Short and sweet and so, so bitter. Read the version on Fireside's web site:
https://firesidefiction.com/stet -
Review: STET
This is unbelievably difficult to rate as whilst it is one of the most unique and interesting shorts I have read on the Hugo nominations, it is also incredibly difficult to read due to the format. I ended up with it open on both kindle and phone - using the free online version - to really make sense of it. The kindle text is tiny and the jumping about required online is aggravating.
That said this is certainly worth looking at; it is a story told solely in the footnotes of an academic piece of writing. The content warning was unnecessary mind; it meant that before you'd even begun to work through the notes, you knew a child had died. This definitely impinged on the emotional response later on. A better 'warning'would have been an explanation of what STET means as I certainly had to look this up. Turns out it's a nice way of telling a publisher that your editor is an idiot and to ignore their comments.
Either way, 5 stars for a novel and innovative way of telling a story, without losing the emotional resonance through academic jargon. 2 stars for actual lay out and 4 stars for content... a bit of a mixed bag, but probably rounds up to 4 stars. I'm impressed by how well the relationships are exposed in so very few words, and how Gailey presents the grief, loss, love and anger in such a frustrated form. -
STET by Sarah Gailey
Format is a significant aspect of this short - it comes across rather differently on a mobile screen vs web page, with the former being vertically layered and the latter having a more spatial 2d layout.
I really liked the nuances of the story, the footnotes, the editor critiques and the writer's responses. -
Brain buster. So many layers. Excellent story.
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Rating only for STET by Sarah Gailey
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Hit on some personal pet peeves.
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Pendants of Precariousness: 3* 2 characters in different time wear necklace (one is a shark tooth, the other recording of her mother's insults). The necklaces help them when they get mugged/attacked. Vanessa is eating poutine!
Odontogenesis: 3* Kids grown from teeth. Weird but cool idea. So short though...
STET: 4* A punch to the teeth. The story appears in the footnotes, which is cool (and the way I choose this issue, from a recommendation on Writing Excuses) Automonous car killed a little girl instead of an endangered bird and the mother is writing this is very understandably angry.
Light and Death on the Indian Battle Station: 3* Weaving indian mythology with SF is a good mix. Indian Telepaths are fighting the [Jayaz?] Network (aliens?). Savitri's mother is one of those, and her sister too. After the final battle, her sister dies and her soul is taken by Lord Yama. Savitri pleads for her sister, asking seventy decades instead of 70 years. They will both live that long and die on the same day.
Inner Space: 2* Grieving father is neglecting his children by obsessing over his neighbours. One of the kids injured himself and the other has to badger the father into action. Ambiguous ending.
