“What did you mean, ‘Not again?’”

July 22, 2023 8:36 PM

A new wrinkle on the old story of three wishes, set after the end of the world. "As Good As New", by Charlie Jane Anders, published on Tor.com in 2014. "The door to the panic room wouldn’t actually open when Marisol finally decided it had been a couple months since the last quake and it was time to go the hell out there. She had to kick the door a few dozen times, until she dislodged enough of the debris blocking it to stagger out into the wasteland." A short fantasy story with no villain, where two people work together to make stuff. It’s a hopeful story -- with creativity and love and working together and systematic thought, we can turn things around.
posted by brainwane (18 comments total)

I love this one!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:23 PM on July 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Thank you—another good story I enjoyed
posted by librosegretti at 9:41 PM on July 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I remember reading that and thought it was really good. Even more relevant now than when I first read it.
posted by metahawk at 9:42 PM on July 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Excellent post, what a great story! The concept is a great marriage of 2 cliched setups that manages to be more than the sum of its parts.
posted by signsofrain at 10:46 PM on July 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed this. I suspect I’m not the only person who sees your posts on the blue, thinks “great, another brainwane short story!”, and immediately dives in.
posted by greycap at 11:06 PM on July 22, 2023 [16 favorites]

Ahhh, love this one! Anders' All the Birds in the Sky is also great. I should really find more of her work to read.
posted by Wretch729 at 4:50 AM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Did she use just three wishes? She got four during the story.
posted by Harald74 at 6:03 AM on July 23, 2023

Harald74 - yes, she held back her fourth wish so that she or one of her descendants would be able to use it at some point in the future to save the world, if needed. (And thanks to her third wish they would have warning).

This was lovely - just what I needed to read today.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 6:25 AM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

That was really good. Thanks!
posted by gemmy at 7:05 AM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Great story. It's also included in the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes.
posted by signal at 7:25 AM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

wow, that was delightful.
posted by supermedusa at 9:41 AM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

In the comments on Tor.com you can read my multiple comments as I came back, several times, years apart, rereading the story and burbling with praise.

I so love that Marisol and Richard become friends, that his crankiness is the crankiness of someone who loves excellence and despises lazy writing and thoughtlessness. I love the comparison of cliches to plaque, and “Anything is better than unearned ambivalence.”

At this particular moment I think my absolute favorite moment is:

“I mean, I get why people want criticism that is essentially cheerleading, even if that doesn’t push anybody to do their best work.”

“Well, if you think of theatre as some sort of delicate flower that needs to be kept protected in some sort of hothouse”—and at this point, Wolf was clearly reprising arguments he’d had over and over again, when he was alive…

By the way, right now I am imagining Richard Wolf as starting off talking a bit like Addison DeWitt from All About Eve.

I just really really love stories where two people who would contextually, traditionally be set up to be adversaries find common ground and have great conversations and make friends and help each other, and through cleverness and empathy and hope, they find a better path forward than they either could on their own. I just love that so much. If anyone in this thread has any recommendations for stories like that, will you please consider posting them as front page posts sometime in the next couple weeks? I'm going to be going through a kinda rough time and I could use the solace.
posted by brainwane at 10:30 AM on July 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

Cute story! A nice twist on the old three-wishes/beware-what-you-wish-for trope. The ending didn’t sit quite right with me, though. I didn’t think her wishes were sufficiently shenanigans-proof for there not to have been some severe unintended consequences.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:14 PM on July 23, 2023

I didn’t think her wishes were sufficiently shenanigans-proof for there not to have been some severe unintended consequences

but we'll never know if/that there aren't, will we? that's one of the clever aspects of the story, to me, she's trying so hard to avoid future destruction, but who knows if that is even possible? maybe no wish, no matter how carefully worded, can keep us safe forever...
posted by supermedusa at 12:22 PM on July 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

So the bottle was found relatively nearby the shelter. I wonder if it was the billionaire (Burton) who last had the bottle. After all, he was “in Bulgaria scouting a new location for a nano-fabrication facility, and had died instantly.” Was he involved in the tech that destroyed the world? Bulgaria is a type of mushroom after all (though, it’s black not white). It’s little details like this that make this such an enjoyable read!
posted by johnxlibris at 6:39 AM on July 24, 2023

Great observation! She didn't test the dust properly, did she, so it might as well have been the infamous "grey goo" of nanofabrication sci-fi.
posted by Harald74 at 1:08 PM on July 24, 2023

Thank you, brainwane. I enjoyed it.
posted by straight at 8:50 PM on July 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just really really love stories where two people who would contextually, traditionally be set up to be adversaries find common ground and have great conversations and make friends and help each other, and through cleverness and empathy and hope, they find a better path forward than they either could on their own. I just love that so much.

Oh my -

me too. I hadn't thought of that specifically as one of the beautiful things about this story, but it definitely is.

I really liked the second wish - I don't think I would have thought about probabilities. Interesting approach.

I liked the special effects, too - "A sparkly mist streamed out of the bottle’s narrow mouth—sparkling like the cheap glitter at the Arts and Crafts table at summer camp when Marisol was a little girl, misty like a smoke machine at a cheap nightclub—" and "Everything went cheaply glittery around Marisol". Very nice - vivid, and not overused.



The stories you share here bring me such joy and comfort. I wish I had some of my own to offer you - all the time, but especially right now - but I can only offer my gratitude and appreciation instead. Thank you, brainwane. I appreciate you.
posted by kristi at 9:02 PM on August 16, 2023 [2 favorites]