Title: Maladaptive
Author: JD Edwin
Date: 2021
Publisher: Story Cartel Press
Length: 220 e-pages
Quote: "I walk out
of every movie theater already rewriting the film I’d
just watched in my mind.'
What if Yoda was a spy for the Empire? What if 1984 ended with Winston saying "Bleep have I left to live for, anyway?"? What if Rhett Butler got as far as the front hallway before running back screaming "Wait! I take it back!" That's one way to find plots for stories. Some plots work better when tweaked; some are just different; some fall apart.
J.D. Edwin plays with plots. What if superheroes are real, but they're not conscious of how they morph from their mundane identities into their superhero or supervillain selves? What if an autistic child's limited understanding of a few crucial words could save the world? What if the sweet girl working the concession stand really were a sweet rather than a real girl? Maladaptive is a set of answers to this kind of questions.
It has recurring themes. There's a circus that has redeeming social value. There are Grim Reapers, apparently different ones. There are people with superpowers, and people trapped in strange games, and characters who use numbers for names, although none of those stories seems to take place in the world of Headspace.
This book is the work of someone who makes up lots and lots and lots of stories, and writes out the best ones. As a result, the first words I wrote down after finishing the final story were "Dang, she's good."
The difficulty in writing about this writer's stories is keeping out the spoilers. So I'll stop writing about Maladaptive now.
Instead I'll say that after expecting to see the "Games Theme" at strangehorizons.com in November or December, it's a relief to see it live in June. My thoughts on the trilogy that's scheduled to be complete this summer are at http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/headspace-and-master-of-the-arena-by-j-d-edwin/ .
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