Weeding Womb

Coelacanths


Coelacanths by Robert Reed. Errr, yeah. While ostensibly about far-future humans and the various roles (from microscopic to macroscopic) they've fallen into, the most prominent segment of the story is that of The Speaker - and that scares me.

His speech (to an unknown audience) starts out by helping explain that the stars of the other vignettes (Able, Procyon, and Escher - he never interacts with them and they barely interact with each other) are humans of wildly different forms. Problem is, that's all he explains. We're handed three wildly different and semi-related universes without any reasons why they're like that, how they got that way, or even what they really are.

And to make matters worse, The Speaker doesn't shut up there. Instead, he goes on to not only keep spewing pro-human propaganda, but we learn that he is naked, with an ideal body type. Okay.

But we also learn that he has a 'long fat penis'. Well, that's a bit much.

A long fat penis that The Speaker makes erect. Distractingly erect, if the text is to be believed. Okay, that's fine, thank you, please go flaccid.

A long fat erect penis that he makes ejaculate seemingly by force of will. Okay, fine, let's go home now, we've seen enough. Can I hear more about the worlds of Able, Procyon, and Escher? Please?

And then he starts rubbing the semen between his fingers. Uhhhh....

I was left with the feeling that The Speaker was some kind of avatar for the author and his unseen audience was the reader. Which makes me wonder about the author.

In the end, the only part that wasn't so surreal that it confused me was this part, and this part made me feel icky.

The Archon

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