Terraform, February 23, 2015

“There Is Nothing in the Universe That Is Not Me” by Dominica Phetteplace

Reviewed by Martha Burns

In the ten short vignettes that comprise “There Is Nothing in the Universe That Is Not Me,” Dominica Phetteplace manages multiple comic riffs on video game tropes and Buddhism. Each vignette introduces another game in which an unnamed female protagonist is the winner. There is a game “located in a place that superficially resembles England in the Middle Ages.” In another game, to defeat an evil Queen of an alien planet’s underworld, our protagonist quotes the Buddha. The evil queen’s reward is “a pony and my freedom.” As an avid video game player myself, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the references to the narrative structures I’ve come to grin at or, sometimes, wince at. And Kudos to Terraform for recognizing that stories about video games that are focused on the tropes rather than the tech are a type of speculative fiction! I am also an avid reader of traditional speculative fiction set in England of the fantasy Middle Ages where knights say “fuck” as well as fiction in which rulers of the underworld have a soft spot for marginally wise humans. Those are the exact same tropes, yet in that context they tend not to be recognized for the patent absurdities they are and for readers or writers to question some of those moves can be seen as anathema (most especially the depiction of women wherein they are their own version of the pony and freedom), yet in this piece we have a female superhero who mocks and subverts much silliness with, for example, two husbands for the heroine who are Hero #1 and Hero #2. My feeling is that speculative fiction takes itself much too seriously far too often and we badly need a video game female Buddha to set us on the middle path. Highly recommended.