Jay Lake, Permanent Fatal Errors

[elfs]

I just finished reading the short story Permanent Fatal Errors, by Jay Lake (available free at the title link). It's typical Lake in some respects: what you're interested in as a skiffy reader may not be congruent with the point Jay's making. The story's pretty straightforward, but the setting is interesting: a starship entirely crewed by Heinlein heroes.

And what is a starship entirely crewed by Heinlein heroes like? Desperately dysfunctional. Jay does an excellent job of showing how and why it would be dysfunctional, in an "I'm so competent no mess I can make could possibly be so bad I can't fix it, so let's see what disasters we can cause and recover from, before the ennui of our insanely long lives drives us nuts!" way. Good points all around, and a fun read. Quick, too.

Comments

[funos.livejournal.com]

Maybe I haven't read enough Heinlein, but they struck me (except for the main character) as obnoxious, cliquish, and incurious, not poly-competent Heinlein heroes.

As far as I could tell...

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

They weren't even poly-amorous.

[links] Link salad trudges upward

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User jaylake referenced to your post from [links] Link salad trudges upward (http://jaylake.livejournal.com/2317770.html) saying: [...] comments on my short story "Permanent Fatal Errors" [...]

[shemayazi.livejournal.com]

I found the page itself somewhat irritating - the scrolling troll of books that didn't disappear until I was halfway down the page. Apart from that, the story itself seems mostly harmless. I prefer Spider Robinson doing Heinlein. Just saying...