Genre:
Science Fiction/Young Adult/Short Story
Description:
“Professor
Buford Doss, never got the respect or credit he deserved. Such
prestige went to what he insisted were inferior peers and even
mentally dense graduate assistants. But Professor Doss had a plan to
remedy all of that. A big plan. A miraculous plan. And he was anxious
to set it in motion, even if it meant engaging in a bit of deceit.
You may say he had no intention of 'dragon' his feet on the matter.
No siree. Not Dr. Buford Doss.”
Author:
From
James Womack’s author page on Amazon: “I'm a deaf person who
likes to write stories. Actually, I prefer telling stories in
American Sign Language (ASL) but not everyone understands it. For me,
storytelling is storytelling so writing stories gives me much
pleasure. My hope is readers get pleasure from what I've written. I'm
not focused on any specific genre so my stories range from science
fiction to religious based stories. I hold a bachelor degree from
Gallaudet University and a Masters degree from California State
University of Northridge. I used to teach Deaf high school students
before teaching college students full time in the last two decades of
my career. I'm married to a really cool woman who was also my
Gallaudet University classmate during my time there. My non-writing
activities include cooking, fishing, playing with my youngest
grandkids, and experimenting with applying computer software to
educational purposes.”
Appraisal:
I
found the author’s voice in this tale absorbing and had no trouble
engaging with Buford Doss. Buford worked in the bio-engineering field
as a glorified lab assistant to insignificant people, who considered
themselves scientists, with insignificant goals. All they did was
waste grant money on research projects of little value to anyone
other than themselves. Buford had big dreams though, outside of the
box dreams. However, he was told repeatedly his ideas were
preposterous and could not be done.
Buford
Doss was a gifted ego-maniacal madman who, because he was good at his
job, was able to manipulate the university’s system to get exactly
what he needed using faculty discounts and the use of the university
lab equipment for processing research findings in a field study. Well
that is to say as close as he could get without actually getting a
grant for his study and experiments.
The
story is told through Dr. Doss’s eyes so it is easy to see why he
was viewed by his peers as he was. He doesn’t hide his disdain for
his colleagues from the reader. Since this is a short story things
develop and move quickly. It is wondrous and exciting, too bad that
Buford was so caught up in performing his miracle he neglected to
thoroughly think it all through. I imagine anyone interested in
science fiction will enjoy this story.
Format/Typo
Issues:
I
found nothing significant to mention.
Rating:
**** Four stars
Reviewed
by: ?wazithinkin
Approximate
word count: 7-8,000 words
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