Genre:
Speculative Fiction
Description:
“Lizzie
Greene seems to have it all -- a great husband, a job she loves, a
baby on the way, even a rent-stabilized two bedroom apartment on New
York's Upper West Side. Then a random decision leads to a senseless
act of violence, and it all disappears.
But what if
things had been different? What if things are different? Could
someone be both dead and not dead at the same time? Is it insanity to
believe in mysteries that go beyond human understanding, in the
evidence of things not seen?
Lizzie's
sister, her best friend, and many others think she's lost her senses,
but maybe she's gotten a glimpse of something most of us never get to
see.
Schrodinger's
Telephone is more for fans of
The Twilight Zone
than of Twilight.”
Author:
A native
New Yorker, Marion Stein has two Masters Degrees, one in creative
writing and the other in social work. She moved around the US and
Mexico before returning to New York in September 2001. In addition to
this novella, she has a novel, Loisaida,
and another novella, The Death
Trip, available.
For more,
visit Stein’s blog.
Appraisal:
Speculative
fiction is an umbrella that encompasses many subgenres: Science
Fiction, Fantasy, dystopian, Horror, and Supernatural Fiction are
just some. However, some speculative fiction doesn’t neatly fit
into any of the subgenres, and Schrodinger’s
Telephone is one of those. A
case could be made that it is Supernatural Fiction, but that
presupposes one specific interpretation of what happens to the
protagonist, Lizzie, when there is at least one other possibility,
that Lizzie is insane.
Regardless
of what we call it or how we categorize it, Schrodinger’s
Telephone is a quick and
engrossing read that will exercise your mind. How would you react if
someone you knew insisted that something impossible had happened?
What if
that someone was you?
FYI:
Added for Reprise Review:
Schrodinger’s Telephone was a nominee in the Speculative Fiction
(excluding fantasy) category for B&P 2014 Readers' Choice Awards.
Original review ran March 3, 2013
Format/Typo
Issues:
No
significant issues
Rating:
***** Five Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 25-30,000 words
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