(urth) Short Story 21: Of Relays and Roses

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Sun, 4/22/12, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:


From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Short Story 21: Of Relays and Roses
To: "



 

Reading your summary, I was half expecting a riff on Asimov’s ‘The Machine That Won The War’.  Could work as a story, too, IMO!

 

- Gerry Quinn

 

 

The old coin toss for the brunette or the blonde?  As long as you believe the computer selected her... it very well could be a riff on some of Asimov's or some other SF author's computer stories on some level, but I haven't read widely enough in 50's and 60's  SF computer stories to id any real influence.  

 

This story is so ... optimistic (I guess that's the word) it really feels like an outlier in Wolfe's fiction.  Nothing really goes wrong except the sales of the dating service ... and even then, it's positive PR.  The implication is that all the economic setbacks are very temporary.  Pretty outright mechanistically utopian from Gene.  The next story, Remembrance to Come, is a return to a more tense and somber tone.
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