Diabolical Plots #129, November 2025

“When Eve Chose Us” by Tia Tashiro

“The Interview” by Tim Hickson

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

In “When Eve Chose Us” by Tia Tashiro, a woman volunteers to join the group mind offered to humans by aliens. The narrator is her best friend, who wonders why she made this decision and ponders how it will change their relationship.

The story alternates this part of the narrative with expository sections relating the arrival of the aliens and their war with humanity, which ended in the agreement to allow people to join the group mind. This background information seems both unnecessary to the main plot, which is an intimate one, and not detailed enough to be interesting. The story can be read as an allegory for the loss of a friendship, and as such it has a certain emotional power, even if it is a bit sketchy.

In “The Interview” by Tim Hickson, a simulated human being applies for full citizenship. The process reveals how people treat these imitations of humanity.

The story features an artificial person reminiscent of those found in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and, perhaps even more so, the replicants in its loose film adaptation, 1982’s Blade Runner. The interview process consists of both mundane inquiries and bizarre hypothetical questions. This seems overly complex once the motives of the interviewers are revealed.

The human characters treat the replicant in ways that are both complimentary and dismissive, which is oddly contradictory. The author makes the point that all sentient beings should be given the same rights as people in an effective manner.

Victoria Silverwolf is currently reading a collection of works by Leo Tolstoy.