Artificial Continuum


Friday, June 11, 2010
So the other day, I ran across this oldie-but-goodie from everyone's favorite author, George R.R. Martin. It's a short story from a collection of short stories by Martin, come across by COMPLETELY LEGAL means on the internet
Here's a short description from fanfiction.co.uk
"When Simon Kress returned to his home planet of Baldur from an offworld business trip, he was amused to find that his tank of Earth piranhas had cannibalized themselves into extinction, and of the two exotic animals that roamed his estate, only one remained. Now, in search of some new pets to satisfy his cruel pursuit of amusement, Simon finds a new shop in the city where he is intrigued by a new lifeform he has never heard of before ... a collection of multi-colored sandkings. The curator explains that the insect-like animals, no larger than Simon's fingernails, are not insects, but animals with a highly-evolved hive intelligence capable of staging wars between the different colors, and even religion--in the form of worship of their owner. The curator's warning to Simon about the regularity of their feeding, unfortunately, was not taken seriously...."


I personally thought these short stories of Martin's were better than his long Song of Ice and Fire series. It has Martin's classic narrative style, but kept succinct and fast-paced, where his several thousand page tomes of Ice and Fire can sometimes drag on (dragon (see what I did there?)).

Original source of quote: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/george-r-r-martin/sandkings.htm

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