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More beautiful brilliance fro U. Malik.
I have no idea what I just read, but I know I really enjoyed reading it.
In her heart was a steaming shadow that whispered nasty things. It impaled her with its familiarity and a dreadful suspicion grew in her that the beast was rage and wore a face she knew well.The only proper response I had to Usman Tanveer Malik’s short story ‘The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family’ was Huh?That’s not to say that the short story is bad, per say. Or even that it’s somewhere in the vein of boredom-inducing. It’s a good story. I think. It could even have been a gre...
The premise and setting is pretty great - I'm seeing more and more fantasy and scifi using this setting, and it's good to see. A fairly typical revenge story but with a bit of a twist.
Different ingredients, same dish with a little spice in itThis book revolves around the character Tara and how the current terrorism situation in Pakistan affects her life and how she adapts to it.To be honest there was nothing new. Most of us are well aware of this but I really liked the way the author used metaphors to compare the current state of matter with the current state of humans. I really want to read more from this author because I was left stranded and wanting more when the story fin...
This is an excellent, powerful story... but I'm not sure I'd call it science-fiction. (It's a Nebula Nominee and appears in Strahan's Best SF of the Year anthology...)Yes, there's a bizarre element, and a 'scientific' framework - but both feel largely symbolic.The story is dedicated to the victims of a terrorist attack in Pakistan, and effectively discusses terrorism and the hopeless circle of hate and revenge that leads to such violence.
How did this story win an award? It's barely coherent.
3.5 StarsOk. This one was probably the most confusing of all of the Nebula Nominees. Though even after all of the convoluted text, way-over-my-head rhetoric/references, and odd pacing I still quite liked it! The thematic and significance of this story is very relevant today, and at the end I'm left feeling like it all was one big allegory to discuss Terrorism, family and loss. I might be wrong! I'll have to re-read it some day, as I'm sure I missed a lot this first time around.
I had read this in 2017, on the recommendation of my writer friend Shiv Ramdas, and was thoroughly shaken up. I remember requiring two reads of the (stunning) denouement to then realize the significance of the rather complicated and apparently irrelevant name of this long short story. This is a stunning achievement. Highly recommended.(PS: 1. On the rare occasion that I really, really like a novel / story, I am shaken out of my general state of Jabba-the-Hutt-esque stupor to send a note to the w...
Powerful use of language--just a little showy and self-satisfied in stretches, but the most humble parts of this short work are sufficiently disarming to re-establish the balance of the whole. Immerse yourself in this multidimensional update of Zelazny-style novelette. There's impressionistic association between phases of matter (specifically, what happens to bonds and containers when you keep adding energy) and life in the most violence-prone sections of Pakistan. Floating apart (above) the inc...
I don't think one will be able to enjoy the nuances of this story, unless one has a basic grounding in thermodynamics and a knowledge of the ground realities in Pakistan.When energy is continuously applied, solid melts to form liquid, which further vapourises to form gas. If we keep on applying energy, at very high temperatures, matter will become something where "positively charged nuclei swim in a raging ‘sea’ of free electrons". This is called the 'Plasma' state.The author is applying this me...
