>LitMag Wave: One Story #77

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One Story No. 77 is “Prayer for the Long Life of Certain Inanimate Objects” by Paul Maliszewski. On the surface, the story is unique. The father of two sons builds robots, machines that the sons, especially the older of the two boys, resent. But they clearly inherit his obsession, not with robots necessarily, but with things, and have a hard time seeing the humanity of their parents.

“The husband withdrew to his office. He was working on plans for a small, nimble robot, something he called a wall-climber. Nothing workable ever came of it, but for months he saw it fully realized in his dreams. It hung from imaginary ceilings. It changed light bulbs that were hard to reach and wholly hypothetical. He was not consumed by his work; he fed himself to it.”

While the boys do achieve a certain amount of self-realization, the arc of this story is pretty low, and ultimately not one of my favorites.

Next up: Harpur Palate

About the author

I am the author of three novels--THE LAST BIRD OF PARADISE, OLIVER'S TRAVELS, and THE SHAMAN OF TURTLE VALLEY--and three story collections--IN AN UNCHARTED COUNTRY, HOUSE OF THE ANCIENTS AND OTHER STORIES, and WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW, winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction. I am also the co-founder and former editor of Prime Number Magazine and the editor of the award-winning anthology series EVERYWHERE STORIES: SHORT FICTION FROM A SMALL PLANET.

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