The Crow Procedure

June 30, 2009 6:23 PM

The surgery to give Mr Dapple the wings of a crow was scheduled to take twelve minutes...
posted by homunculus (23 comments total)

That was a great story. Thanks for sharing it!
posted by overglow at 7:19 PM on June 30, 2009

Very good indeed.
posted by ook at 7:40 PM on June 30, 2009

A quick and fun read. Thanks!
posted by lazaruslong at 8:14 PM on June 30, 2009

I really liked this story.

The to-be-crow's "blue-within-blue" eyes, his outsider status amongst the Cree, reminded me of what Edward Abbey wrote in Desert Solitaire, his vision of a possible future:

""Time and the winds will sooner or later bury the Seven Cities of Cibola, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, all of them, under dunes of glowing sand, over which blue-eyed Navajo bedouin will herd their sheep and horses, following the river in winter, the mountains in summer, and sometimes striking off across the desert toward the red canyons of Utah where great water falls plunge over silt-filled, ancient, mysterious dams."
posted by subatomiczoo at 8:15 PM on June 30, 2009

Very nice!
posted by Scattercat at 8:26 PM on June 30, 2009

The ancestors say that when we gain the trust of the Crow, then we will be free to build a village in the sky.

Today is a good day to live in the sky.
posted by jimfl at 8:29 PM on June 30, 2009

cthl;dr

(Can't Tell How Long. Either give me a single-page link — I'm blocking your Flash ads anyway — or tell me "Page 1 of N".)
posted by nicwolff at 8:44 PM on June 30, 2009

It's eight pages, but here's the whole thing on one page if you prefer.
posted by Rhaomi at 8:54 PM on June 30, 2009

Neat story.
posted by schyler523 at 9:30 PM on June 30, 2009

I felt very Karl Pilkington-esque reading that headline. "There was a thing on the internet right, about a man who had an operation to give him crow wings, so he could fly about. Everything's changing."
posted by turgid dahlia at 9:49 PM on June 30, 2009 [3 favorites]

It's Gibson placename+gestalt with Orwell/Huxley pacing+moral. Futury, some sense that somebody fucked up somewhere; not clear on whose fault it is.
posted by Graygorey at 10:52 PM on June 30, 2009 [2 favorites]

Graygorey - I get the impression that you're just making an observation, not a value judgement, or at least I'm willing to give you that benefit of the doubt. In any case, I think you have described it well. That sort of 'vauge somebody fucked up sense' used to pull me in, but after I tried to write a short story capturing it I started to feel a little bit that it was just an excuse for lazy plotters ;)
posted by thedaniel at 12:27 AM on July 1, 2009

Riel was his least favourite resident — good looking, always in full war paint and headdress, and early to every metamorphosis.

I liked it - thanks for posting.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 3:18 AM on July 1, 2009

I had trouble understanding what was going on at first, but I liked it as I got deeper into it!--But I didn't like how it ended; I wanted the story to keep on unfolding, at least to the point that I understood what was going on, or actually could guess the root of that whole 'vague somebody fucked up sense' thing. That being said a lot of creativity and detail packed into such a tiny little story.

Also, reading fiction on the internet is painful. Felt like eternity to get through it and now my eyes want to bleed.

Also also: first comment on metafilter ever! Long-time lurker, now I bought myself a username and commented my comment. Hopefully the first of many.
posted by festivemanb at 4:06 AM on July 1, 2009

“Perfection,” Dapple said. “It’s like your motto said. Just like. ‘Why should reality deny you the truth?’ Spent the final dribidrabs of my aunt’s second pension on this knify, but how worth it.”

Ugh. Cutesy slang, clumsy exposition, and the inherent purity of the native people. It's like someone won a contest for the laziest science fiction story ever.
posted by xingcat at 4:24 AM on July 1, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh, boy, more racial exceptionalism, with Noble Savages to make us feel bad about ourselves as members of a non-Noble Savage culture. They should totally have illustrated it with a dream catcher. Native Americans practicing surgery! Exciting because it's exotic! They have education and technology, what a mind-bender!

Bleah.

This was a story about what the characters were, not who they were, and it pretty much defeated its own purpose. On top of that, it was lame and preachy and generally irritating, far too smug with its own ribofunk vibe, even tho the subgenre is fifteen years on by now.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:38 AM on July 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: you name it, we'll hate on it.
posted by ook at 7:02 AM on July 1, 2009 [6 favorites]

I liked it, but was frustrated not knowing how much was left. Would it really be possible to make wings with a power-to-mass ratio to lift a man?

People wanting to transform into birds seems a common theme in some science fiction - well, Iain M Banks at least, which is mostly all the SF I read. Why is this? Is it a deep-set desire for a lot of people?
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 8:09 AM on July 1, 2009

Liked it... very creative.
posted by LakesideOrion at 8:15 AM on July 1, 2009

Good read. The best thing about it though was Sam Weber's painting.
posted by HumanComplex at 9:11 AM on July 1, 2009

I dug it. Thanks for posting.

p.s. Haters gonna hate.
posted by brand-gnu at 12:53 PM on July 1, 2009

Dapple’s blue-within-blue eyes opened abruptly. “Am I awake?” he asked.
posted by homunculus at 10:29 PM on July 1, 2009

The Crow Paradox
posted by homunculus at 12:13 PM on July 27, 2009