Puss Reboots: Blog: February 2008: The Voluntary State

Recent posts

The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers by Jan and Stan Berenstain
The Best Christmas Ever by James Patrick Kelley
The City by Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja
Commander Toad and the Voyage Home by Jane Yolen
The Dame in the Kimono by Leonard J. Leff by Jerold L. Simmons
Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese
Dragonite's Christmas by Akihito Toda and Kagemaru Himeno
The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit
The Fattening of America by Eric A. Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman
The Halloween Play by Felicia Bond
Heavens to Betsy & Other Curious Sayings by Charles Earle Funk
How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
Hungry Hill by Carol O'Malley Gaunt
Imaginative Still Life by Moira Huntly
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird
The Mariah Delany Lending Library Disaster by Sheila Greenwald
Maxine an the Ghost Dog by Linda Pack Butler
Midnight Sun by Elwood Reid
Monkey See, Monkey Do by Marc Gave and Jacqueline Rogers
Murder in the Place of Anubis by Lynda S. Robinson
Olivia Counts by Ian Falconer
Rusty's Train Ride by Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright
Ship Fever by Anrea Barrett
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Pam Adams
The Toontown Players Present Chicken Little by Margaret Snyder
The Voluntary State by Christopher Rowe
The Winter of the Birds by Helen Cresswell
Witch Week by Diana Wynn Jones
Yours Turly, Shirley by Ann M. Martin

FSF Reviews:
If Angels Fight by John Bowes
Philologos, Or a Murder in Bistrita by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Previous month

The Voluntary State: 02/27/08

The second story in Science Fiction: The Best of 2004 is "The Voluntary State" by Christopher Rowe.

Imagine a modern day Philip K. Dick story set in Tennessee where cars are sentient and everything and everyone requires a license. Now imagine freedom fighters in Kentucky trying to bring down Tennessee. That's the basic idea behind "The Voluntary State."

From reading through reviews online, I gather that the story was very popular when it was published. I personally didn't enjoy it as much as "The Best Christmas Ever." There were just too many off the wall details crammed into this short story for me to parse. I think the story could have worked better if it had been longer, either as a novella or as a full novel.

If you don't want to buy the book, you can read the story online.