Tag: James Patrick Kelly

Review of Unique Visitors By James Patrick Kelly

Unique Visitors
By James Patrick Kelly; Read by James Patrick Kelly
FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD (link to jimkelly.net) – 15 Minutes (7.11 MB) [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: www.jimkelly.net
Published: April 2004
Themes: / Science Fiction / Time Travel / Immortality / Internet / Personality Uploading /

Submit query. There are currently 842 unique visitors monitoring this session. The average attention quotient is 27 percent. Twenty-seven percent! Don’t you people realize that you’ve got an eyewitness to history here?

Afraid to die? Want to watch reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies for all eternity? All you have to do is give up your body. Even better you can visit the future throught the miracle of forward time travel, just set your alarm clock for a million or so years and turn yourself off.

First published in the hardcover anthology Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001), the short story “Unique Vistors” takes its name from the term for webpage hits and posits a future where you are you can become your own webpage! Full of wry humor, nostalgia, philisophical insight, and internet savvy, this the prototypical James Patrick Kelly tale.

Told in the first person, what would have been an otherwise straightforward performance by Kelly is accented and enhanced with electronica music, echoing voice effects and canned laughter. I’m not sure the canned laughter or the echoing voice work – but I liked the techno music and the sound quality and production values were good. As with the all the other audio stories of Kelly’s we’ve reviewed, “Unique Visitors” is available for download on Kelly’s website for FREE – become a unique visitor, try it yourself! Kelly only asks that if you enjoyed hearing the tale you consider making a donation to his PayPal account. Donate as little or as much as you like, but seriously consider giving him a little something – after all, its in our own interest – because if we do he’ll give us more stories like this!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Pyramid of Amirah By James Patrick Kelly

The Pyramid of Amirah
By James Patrick Kelly; Read By James Patrick Kelly
FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD (link to jimkelly.net) – 18 Minutes Hour (8.21 MB) [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: www.jimkelly.net
Published: April 2004
Themes: / Fantasy / Religion / Magic Realism /

Sometimes Amirah thinks she can sense the weight of the pyramid that entombs her house. The huge limestone blocks seem to crush the air and squeeze light. Time passes.

Surrounded by boxes of goody-goody bars, her only food, Amirah lives alone in what was once her parent’s house. Its her home now, and she’s honoured to become a pyramid girl. During the day she vacuums up the limestone dust that drifts down onto every flat surface, at night she leaves the lights on all the time, even when she sleeps. As the years pass the light bulbs start to burn out one-by-one and Amirah wonders if the meaning of her living entombment will ever come.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 2002 issue, James Patrick Kelly’s strange tale highlights the meaninglessness of any specific ritual in religion, and then concentrates its focus on how such sacrifices are necessary for religious epiphanies. “The Pyramid of Amirah” is by no means Kelly’s best work, but its quite an original concept and he does a good job given the short length and the subject matter. Some listeners may find themselves wondering what the story is about, and I sympathize with them, but don’t think it’s a problem with the story. If you’re in the mood to think about a tale after you’ve experienced it, this ones for you.

Sound quality and production values as usual are great. Kelly’s reading is pretty upbeat given the lonely isolation of the main character, but it doesn’t detract from the listening. As with the other audio stories available for download on Kelly’s website, “The Pyramid of Amirah” is available for FREE! Kelly only asks that if you enjoyed hearing his stories you consider making a donation to his PayPal account. Donations mean he’ll have reason to continue recording these unique tales!

Posted by Jesse Willis