James Nicoll wrote:
Five SFF Stories Featuring Magical Paintings
Or, how to lose yourself in fine art.
https://www.tor.com/2023/05/05/five-sff-stories-featuring-magical-paintings/
How about art antithetically losing itself in you?
Beware the Hieronymus Bosch
"Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!"
"Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life."
"To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,"
Suppose God delivers the afterlife you crave. For instance, if you don't believe in an afterlife, then your afterlife is nihility itself. You get nonexistence because you want it.
An afterlife qualifies as posthuman on a most personal level. All of
which brings us to _babylon sisters and other posthumans_ (di filippo).
Or, more specifically, to a short story in the di filippo collection
called "a short course in art appreciation."
In the story, a peptidergic pill induces a physiological, perceptual
change in users. They experience a different "perceptiverse" based upon
the pill ingested. A Dali pill delivers a Dali environment. A Vermeer
pill provides a Vermeer perceptiverse, and so on. As art aficionado
Alena enthuses:
"By taking this new neurotropin we'll be enabled to see not
/like/ Rembrandt, but as if /inhabiting/ Rembrandt's canvases!"
There's a hitch, of course. A hitch to provide story tension.
Note: This thread's title is not a spoiler. Bosch isn't in the story.
Danke,
--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``.
https://crcomp.net/reviews.php telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.
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