Charles Stross, "Rogue Farm"
Peter D. Tillman
First published in Anders, _Live Without a Net_, 2003. Reprinted in
Hartwell, 9th Year's Best and Dozois, 21st (US) Year's Best SF.
I think this is my favorite Stross short story so far -- which is saying
something, as I've never yet read a Stross short (or long) I haven't
liked, and some are *great*. Such as "Missile Gap" and "Jury Sevice"[1]
<http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/stross-docto
row/stross-doctorow1.html> and "A Colder War"
<http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm> and "Antibodies"
and.... <http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/index.html>
Anyway, I just reread the story for the third or fourth time, and it's
pretty near perfect. A standalone set in deepest Cumbria c. 2060, a
burnt-out software engineer and a deeply-disturbed ex-soldier are just
getting by selling "Hand-raised, not Vat-grown"® beef, when a rogue farm
squats nearby. "Even though it was only a young adolescent, it was
already the size of an antique heavy tank... It smelled of yeast and
gasoline..."
"I'm a nine-legged semiautomatic groove-machine!" crooned the farm in a
warm contralto. "I'm on my way to Jupiter on a mission for love!"
Unfortunately, its 'mission for love' will involve firing a whole
*grove* of stage-trees, which will burn out Joe, Maddie and a hundred
hectares around them. Something Must be Done...
This is British rural humour updated for the mid-21st century. Even
though "Rogue Farm" is Stross Light, it's still dense with invention,
and polished to a mellow glow, with nods to Niven, Pratchett and Varley.
And with lovely throwaways, like Bob the family dog:
" 'At farm been buggering around the pond?"
"Growl exclaim fuck-fuck yup!"
So, join us for a pint at the "Pig & Pizzle" in outer Outer Cheswick....
Great stuff, absolutely not to be missed.
Rogue Farm was adapted to anime video for Scottish TV in 2004
<http://www.roguefarm.com/>.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
PS: Charlie, you may want to update your isfdb listing, which is
missing this and other works.
PPS: Why call the beast a farm?
[1] See
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=tillman-6EE553.16321401022003%40new
s.fu-berlin.de> for my (long-ago) comments. "A fractional-dimensional
parasitic turd-gobbler from outer space?" Huw says. "Have I got that
right?"
Mike Dworetsky
news:Tillman-5B032E...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
Yes, this is one of my favourites too.
--
Mike Dworetsky
(Remove "pants" spamblock to send e-mail)
sigi...@yahoo.com
Fond as I am of both Charlie and his work, I have to dissent on this
one. The ending completely ruined the story for me.
[spoiler follows]
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The farm was obnoxious, annoying, and potentially dangerous. However,
it was also a group of intelligent beings (nine IMS). This is made
quite clear to us. It's a group intelligence that's behaving badly.
The farmer's solution is to, um, kill them all. With premeditation and
malice aforethought. And a cheerful final note that the ground will be
particularly fertile down in that corner next year.
I dunno. I have trouble seeing a story whose protagonist solves his
problem by mass murder as a laff riot. Maybe it's just me?
Doug M.
Aaron Denney
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If the options are narrowed down to "it dies", or "I and all my friends
and family starve to death"...
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
Peter D. Tillman
Aaron Denney <wno...@ofb.net> wrote:
> On 2006-04-10, sigi...@yahoo.com <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Fond as I am of both Charlie and his work, I have to dissent on this
> > one. The ending completely ruined the story for me.
> >
> > [spoiler follows]
>
> .
>
> .
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> .
>
> .
>
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> > The farm was obnoxious, annoying, and potentially dangerous.
More than potentially -- the story explicitly stated that, when the
stage-trees are fired, the surrounding 100 ha go up in smoke. And that
this had happened to other people in the near-past.
> > However,
> > it was also a group of intelligent beings (nine IMS). This is made
> > quite clear to us. It's a group intelligence that's behaving badly.
> >
> > The farmer's solution is to, um, kill them all. With premeditation and
> > malice aforethought. And a cheerful final note that the ground will be
> > particularly fertile down in that corner next year.
> >
> > I dunno. I have trouble seeing a story whose protagonist solves his
> > problem by mass murder as a laff riot. Maybe it's just me?
>
Yeah, this bothered me too. But this was (will be? Would be?) an ongoing
problem, and Farmer Joe has to do *something*, or he's toast. He did try
threats first....
> If the options are narrowed down to "it dies", or "I and all my friends
> and family starve to death"...
Still. It would have been *nicer* if Joe & Maddie could've run the thing
off without killing it. Presumably Charlie was trying for max
heartstring-tugging for the twist-ending...
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
"I have recently come to believe that the consistency of quantum
field theory requires that it should be possible to convert up to
100 kilograms of ordinary matter into pure energy via this process
using a device that could fit inside the trunk of a car..."
Frank Tipler, http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_4.html
sigi...@yahoo.com
Peter D. Tillman wrote:
> > > [spoiler follows]
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> > .
> >
> > .
> >
> > .
> >
> > .
> >
> > .
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> > > The farm was obnoxious, annoying, and potentially dangerous.
>
> More than potentially -- the story explicitly stated that, when the
> stage-trees are fired, the surrounding 100 ha go up in smoke. And that
> this had happened to other people in the near-past.
Yeah, but is there no way to deal with it other than killing it? It's
been a while since I read the story, but I remember being bothered by
that point being left unclear.
Also, the motivation of the farms was not very clear to me. I mean,
it's a superintelligent group mind, but it behaves in a deeply stupid
manner. First it sets up its Cape Caneveral on inhabited land, then it
fails to recognize that the farmer could be a threat.
I suppose you could interpret this as "yes it's superintelligent, but
it's an adolescent -- selfish, self-centered, and deeply
irresponsible." I could buy that. But then, most societies figure out
ways of dealing with obnoxious adolescent behavior short of killing
them. (Tempting though it may be sometimes.)
There's a social context in that story that is not clear to me.
Cheerful but obnoxious monsters are blowtorching large plots of land on
a regular basis, and nobody's doing anything about it? The government
has collapsed, and there are no cops or Army? Not even libertarian
rent-a-cops? There's nobody to help Farmer Joe but himself? That
implies pretty much complete anarchy, but I don't recall the story
giving us the social clues that would make this plausible.
> Still. It would have been *nicer* if Joe & Maddie could've run the thing
> off without killing it.
I don't require niceness in my short stories; for reference, one of my
favorite of Charlie's works is "A Colder War".
But I do like thematic consistency. As you say, it's jarring. It's
like, imagine a nonSF story where the first 90% of the narrative is the
conflict between the conservative farmer and the wacky, drugged out
hippies who have set up camp on his south forty and are threatening to
burn the whole place down. Wackiness ensues, right?
Then the last 10% is "the farmer takes a shotgun one night, slaughters
all the dirty hippies, and buries their bodies under a thin layer of
soil."
> Presumably Charlie was trying for max
> heartstring-tugging for the twist-ending...
That could have worked too, but then you'd want the farm to be more
sympathetic. As it was, it was just goofy.
-- I've discovered from grim experience that this NG is full of people
who are willing to espouse lethal violence for remarkably little
provocation. So, to make it clear: my issue is not so much with the
morality of the story (though I'm not wild about that) as with the
craftsmanship. Sorry, Charlie. But I just see a clunky thematic
mismatch between "how the problem is presented" and "how the problem is
solved". It's not so much that the ending is bad per se, as that it
doesn't fit the rest of the story. Or vice versa.
Doug M.