Essay on "After This Life"

[scarlettina]

Shortly before the most recent issue of IGMS was released to the Web, Edmund wrote me and asked for an essay about how "After This Life" came to be written. He's just published the essay on the magazine's companion blog, Side-Show Freaks. Read it here. (It's free.) mabfan and erdnase2000 are name-checked.

Comments

[steve98052.livejournal.com]

I know it's not fair to comment on the story without reading it. I meant to contribute to the topic, rather than comment on the story itself. I didn't mean to suggest changes after it's published, although looking at what I wrote again I see I missed what I meant to say. (I wrote a more considered message, wiped it out with a misdirected click, and rewrote hastily and wrong. But excuses or not, what I wrote was still wrong and unfair as written. Sorry.)

Smart people in prison are exceptions, except in the low-security prisons that specialize in white-collar criminal, but enough exist that they're reasonable characters. It would only strain credibility to have an entire prison ward full of smart people.

I suppose a fair share of what I called "everyday dumb" are really cases of extremely poor education. It might take years, but eventually they'd catch up; to dismiss that would be underestimating them. But many are deeply learning-disabled; with a cursory search, I found figures ranging from 9% to almost 90%, depending on definitions.

Anyway, sorry I got carried away with one little observation to the point that I failed to think through the fact that you likely know more about the subject than I do.

I'll read the story, but I need to sleep now.