Diabolical Plots #36, February 2018

“9 Things the Mainstream Media Got Wrong About the Ansaj Incident” by Willem Myra

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

The two stories in this month’s issue of this on-line magazine take the reader to a realistic version of the future and a fantastic version of the past.

“9 Things the Mainstream Media Got Wrong About the Ansaj Incident” by Willem Myra deals with two young men hired to play a prank on aliens for YouTube. Things go very badly. The theme of this brief tale is the misuse of social media. Although the story is effective, the science fiction element is not necessary to the plot.

“Artful Intelligence” by G. H. Finn is a technological fantasy about a woman in Victorian England who builds a thinking machine. The device seeks a way to obtain a soul. This is a light piece, full of wordplay. Although amusing, and with an original twist at the end, much of the story will seem familiar to readers of steampunk.

Victoria Silverwolf took a while to get the pun in the second story’s title.