The Wellness Center by Lee Gimenez

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Megawatts
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The Wellness Center by Lee Gimenez

Post by Megawatts »

Reminded me of the movie Soylent Green. Maybe that’s the reason we are on a health kick today. We’ll taste better in the future! Just had to get that one in!!

The intro worked Okay; it did grab my attention.

Good writing in this one, clear, concise and easy to follow with good sentence lengths and word choices. The dialogue I felt was very good!
Characters can alive. And the descriptions were judicial which always works better than just adding for the sake of having description.

The sensory input was strategic in my opinion. The writer uses subtle inputs through-out the story, but saves the most powerful sensory effect for the end: “The room was frigid and there was an overpowering pungent smell.”

If the whole story had powerful sensory inputs like that sentence near the end, then that sentence at the end would not stand out like it does, at least to me. I hope others comment on this because maybe I’m reading too much into it!!

The story uses religion to control an alien race on a distant planet, and that alien race we use for labor and food! Earth is a war and no supply ship can reach this planet called Azulation.

The Blues--indigenous aliens I believe---are rebelling against human authority. They must have figured out that they are just live-stock for the humans on Azulation and also figured out what this ‘cure’ really is!

Erik a former detective turns into a rebel after discovering how Blues a killed and processed. He starts a one man rebellion to save the blues from mankind’s cruelties.

A nice well-written story which follows an old theme, but one that never dies!!

Good one!!! :wink:
Tesla Lives!!!
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Robert_Moriyama
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Obscure literary antecedents

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

"Ride A Tin Can" (short story by R. A. Lafferty), in which a sentient (but not too bright) species is wiped out by The Singing Pig Breakfast Food Company (which convinces the creatures to, yes, ride a tin can to wonderful new adventures).

"A Boy and His Dog" (story by Harlan Ellison), in which the Boy living in a post-atomic wasteland eventually decides that the girl from the underground "Kansas" is more useful as food for him and his telepathic dog than as a companion / sex object.

"Jerry Was A Man" (story by Robert Heinlein), in which it is established that the superchimps created as expendable slave labor qualify as human (okay, they weren't being eaten -- unless they were used as pet food after they died --), in spite of the best efforts of their creators to prove otherwise.

And, of course, "Monkey Planet" by Pierre Boule, which became "Planet of the Apes". (Dunno if the apes ever used humans as meat, but humans certainly use apes as meat in some protein-starved areas of Africa...)

On the non-literary front, the Russians and Japanese (and maybe Norwegians?) still "harvest" whales for "research" (and sell the meat and oil, just so it doesn't go to waste, of course). Northern indigenes (them what has lived there for a long time) also hunt and eat whales on a non-industrial scale, but at least they have the excuse of (a) tradition, and (b) not having a Mickey Dees every fifty yards.

As far as I know, "civilized" Europeans and Asians have not generally used their slaves as food, even if they regarded them as less than "human"...

(If a Blue serves you breakfast that includes Blue-meat sausages, then you have a case where one Blue is involved, but the other is definitely committed...)

:lol:
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
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