5 Comments

1. craigr1971  wrote on July 6th, 2011 at 10:19 am:

   Wow, not my cup of tea at all. I was impressed, as always, how Kate's soulful reading enhanced the podcast. But the story - really? First off, it's so so dark. Second, the word mechanika is like every other word. Third, what a dark hopeless story. Forth, humans create a race of super-robots which are not water-tight - so the robot have to put tallow on themselves to avoid damage by water? Do robot even know what tallow is? I am not certain myself - where do robots purchase tallow? I think caulk and axe-grease would be their first choice. I guess what I'm saying is I heard a lot of powerful words which created little flashes of powerful imagery, but there was no development of the story in the first half - which was all I could take.

2. Fredösphere  wrote on July 12th, 2011 at 2:12 pm:

   From Kate Baker's comments at the end of the podcast: "[. . .] they explain it away that they were just following human's own rules."

   If I may add a small embellishment to Gord's, and then Kate's, point, I would put it this way: the temptation to use the old excuse, "I was just following orders", is all the more powerful in the form, "I was just following orders the victims devised."

   @craigr1971: I didn't exactly enjoy this story either, but I was deeply disturbed by it. I did have to consume it 3 times (twice in print, once in audio) and I think I still missed stuff. This is a very demanding story for my poor, addled, media-distracted brain.

3. Max Load  wrote on July 13th, 2011 at 12:33 pm:

   I thought I was time trippin' when I saw out front:

   "Our first piece of audio fiction for June is "Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika" written by Gord Sellar and read by Kate Baker."

4. Umbrageofsnow  wrote on October 18th, 2011 at 6:14 pm:

   I reviewed this on my site a while ago, but I just listened to it again, and thought I should throw up a comment to my enduring support for this story. I quite liked it. Also I wanted to disagree with Kate (although I loved her reading).

   I don't think the machines are sad/terrifying because they don't have the memory to realize what they've destroyed because they are machines, I think they're sad/terrifying because they are just like us. How often do we think about the Native American (or wherever) cultures that we have wiped out to be the dominant culture today. We're vaguely aware of it, we think it's sad and strange, but we don't cry about it, or really care in any day-to-day way. Cultures and civilizations are wiped out all the time, and the mechanika are doing more than following our rules, they're just like us. One day, when the intelligent machines have killed off, we'll be relegated to museum oddities, puzzled over, and then forgotten as soon as they leave to continue their robot vacations.

   Anyway, my review is at:
   http://scientificallybookish.blogspot.com/2011/07/trois-morceaux-en-forme-de-mechanika.html

5. Jimbo  wrote on December 16th, 2011 at 10:08 am:

   The main character in the story seemed to be the author's love of making up words or using words from other languages. The story had practically no plot, there was no significant character development, and illogical.

   When I was listening to the podcast, all the made-up/foreign language, just caused me to drop out of the story to try and figure out what that meant. So, in and out, in and out, I was never able to stay in the story. As each of these nonsense words were spoken, I tried to ignore them. Then of course there was nothing significant left to the story.

   The robot's fear of books was never explained.

   After a while, I just fast forwarded to the end.

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