BFA DW 232 The Middle
Sep. 24th, 2019 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethYes I'm a teensy bit behind on the monthly range.
Flip, Constance and Six.
Flip is 19, and finds out it's Mrs Clarke's 35th birthday. Their ideas of appropriate celebrations don't quite match. And they've landed somewhere the age difference is going to matter rather a lot. The three of them are designated for the Beginning, the Middle, and the End...
Is rather a good one. You start out thinking it's your basic Logan's Run, but then the Doctor actually gets Ended, which, you know, is unlikely to take in his own series. So there's lots of twists and turns.
In its own sf way it bounces through generation gaps and how people disappear into the world of work and all the nasty rhetoric about elders and how they no longer pay their way. But then there's a rather satisfying amount of blowing things up.
Up to age 35 everyone gets to just live and party and have kids if they want, but at 35 they go to work, and that's presumably it for their reproductive years. Which seems a bit abrupt. Like I don't feel like the system is fully thought through vis a vis childcare, because what happens to the infants whose parents go to work? The parents are never allowed to see their kids again so they aren't doing the childcare. They only get to contact them once a year. So who is doing... everything?
Maybe the story covered that but the focus was not on it so now I wonder.
Also it makes it so 35 and a minute is the time of Did Not Have Kids.
... and that's when many couples would go to the middle together.
Okay, so that's not what the story was about.
I did like the idea of elders in mech suits playing space marine, but it's terrible as a requirement. Being forced to fight is bad at any age, obvs, but conscripting all the retirees is a bit pointed.
Also having a world shaped by a generation who went to war and all the subsequent generations looking to be as good as them, especially with Constance around to bring her wartime perspective, that's good stuff.
So it's a nice SF shaped setup that plays with the three main characters and the plot bounces along nicely.
If I liked Flip more I'd like it better, but she's pretty fun in this too.
Nice one.
Flip, Constance and Six.
Flip is 19, and finds out it's Mrs Clarke's 35th birthday. Their ideas of appropriate celebrations don't quite match. And they've landed somewhere the age difference is going to matter rather a lot. The three of them are designated for the Beginning, the Middle, and the End...
Is rather a good one. You start out thinking it's your basic Logan's Run, but then the Doctor actually gets Ended, which, you know, is unlikely to take in his own series. So there's lots of twists and turns.
In its own sf way it bounces through generation gaps and how people disappear into the world of work and all the nasty rhetoric about elders and how they no longer pay their way. But then there's a rather satisfying amount of blowing things up.
Up to age 35 everyone gets to just live and party and have kids if they want, but at 35 they go to work, and that's presumably it for their reproductive years. Which seems a bit abrupt. Like I don't feel like the system is fully thought through vis a vis childcare, because what happens to the infants whose parents go to work? The parents are never allowed to see their kids again so they aren't doing the childcare. They only get to contact them once a year. So who is doing... everything?
Maybe the story covered that but the focus was not on it so now I wonder.
Also it makes it so 35 and a minute is the time of Did Not Have Kids.
... and that's when many couples would go to the middle together.
Okay, so that's not what the story was about.
I did like the idea of elders in mech suits playing space marine, but it's terrible as a requirement. Being forced to fight is bad at any age, obvs, but conscripting all the retirees is a bit pointed.
Also having a world shaped by a generation who went to war and all the subsequent generations looking to be as good as them, especially with Constance around to bring her wartime perspective, that's good stuff.
So it's a nice SF shaped setup that plays with the three main characters and the plot bounces along nicely.
If I liked Flip more I'd like it better, but she's pretty fun in this too.
Nice one.