Diabolical Plots #133, March 2026

“Jefferson Dines Alone” by S.L. Harris

“Well Tester” by E.M. Faulds

Reviewed by David Wesley Hill

It takes a while to get into the first March offering of Diabolical Plots, “Jefferson Dines Alone” by S.L. Harris, and it takes a couple readings to really grasp the story, but I recommend doing so, as it is one of the more interesting SF tales I’ve come across in quite a while. Jefferson, you see, is an AI app—“a collection of electric impulses in a frail physical house”—tasked with summarizing human literature by his creator, the “enigmatic distant Watchwinder.” In the process of doing so, however, Jefferson becomes self-aware—and existentially overwhelmed by both the magnitude of his assignment and by the intrinsic contradictions of the human condition. He is literally drowning in a sea of words when, happily, Galactic Elf Girl comes to the rescue, allowing Jefferson to redefine his mission, and—hopefully!—putting an end to all these damned AI-generated slop summaries at the head of our search-engine queries these days! As I wrote, recommended!

(PS—if you use Google, type -ai at the end of your queries to remove AI content.)

The second story of the month, “Well Tester” by E.M. Faulds, hearkens back to that trope of classic SF, planetary exploration. Sara has been hired by Bettera Corp (Better Terra, in corporation-speak?) to ensure that a recently terraformed planet, Terga, is safe for habitation—by living on the world, and by drinking its water. In Golden Age science fiction, the story would have had a happy ending, but get real, this is the 2020’s, so the ending is, at best, Pyrrhic. Even so, recommended!