Amor Towles

You Have Arrived at Your Destination

rumbledethumps

Really good SF short story that uses an SF trope as a jumping off point to explore character. This is the second story of the Forward series I've read, and just went and downloaded the rest of them.

Nessa Luna

I liked the concept of the Vitek company, but honestly, I think I would have enjoyed it more in a full-length novel. This just felt way too short and it kind of lost me near the end.

C. J. Daley 

This is part of the Amazon Original ‘Forward Collection’ curated by Blake Crouch. This is my first experience with the author, and as I believe they mostly write historical fiction, this kind of fit right in for them as a futuristic version of history. These are available through prime for free on kindle or audible! 

Imagine in the future that gene altering has gotten to the point where you can literally choose the directional beats your child’s life would go down. Fertility companies can do more than just pregnancies, they can give you glimpses of the life your child may lead, give you options, and let you even choose which you’d prefer. But would you be able to watch a programmed sample of 30 years of their life and just accept that you chose it all for them? 

This one was deeply thought provoking, challenging the reader to think about their own lives, or that of their children (future or existing). How would you feel taking the steering wheel for someone else? Or finding out that it had been taken from you? I’ll be thinking about this one for quite a while. 

Personally a 5/5*. Chilling in its near future feels.

Nature vs. Nurture, the perennial debate. Genetically engineered children is not a new concept for speculative fiction. This story feels very much like it is possible now, and the science could probably do it if society made it legal. A man goes to an appointment at a top-tier fertility clinic and is presented with projections of possible children with outlines of their future lives to choose from. The tone is reflective. I found it interesting until the third act. It lost me. The characters feel like cardboard cut outs, but that is not unusual when ideas are the focus. But this did not do enough with the ideas in the end. Felt very much like a retread full of stereotypes.

Cheryl Hedlund

Midori Kobayashi

3.5/5stars

One of the spookier ones from the Forward Collection, which has 6 short stories. They are all set in a kind of futuristic world and are mostly sci-fi. 

But this book is not so impossible, in fact it seems like the very thing people might do just a few years down the line. Creepy? Def. 

“we are looking at aggregated biographic histories to predict individual biographic outcomes. Drawing from a wide array of sources, we’ve assembled a database on three generations of Americans that includes not only their gender and ethnicity but information on the environments in which they were raised—like their parents’ religions, educations, professions, and political identifications. Then we have traced how the lives of the subjects actually unfolded. By mapping the foundational information of this large population alongside their eventual experiences, we can start to identify meaningful patterns that help us clarify how nature and nurture have combined to shape the lives they’ve led.


So this book is about genetic engineering. and no not just the eyes and color of your hair but everything from your temper to what your personality will be like. One could adopt a child as per their "wants". 


We use the detailed profiles you’ve given us on yourselves to understand the environment in which your child will be raised. Then, by using those elements as a filter, we can identify within our proprietary database a significant cohort of people with a similar genetic makeup who were brought up in a similar environment and, based on their actual experiences, begin to anticipate—within a margin of acceptable error—the shape of the life that your child will lead.


I listened to this as an audiobook and the narration is so good, it almost felt like I was there, seeing it all play out with my own eyes. Def recommend checking that out. And it's a really small book (barely 50 pages I believe?) you could finish it in one sitting!!

Jeff James

I’m not sure what to think of the Forward Collection so far. This is the second story I’ve read from the collection, and although it was perfectly cast with David Harbour as the audiobook narrator, there wasn’t a whole lot to the story.

The narrator goes to an advanced fertility clinic that provides extrapolated dramatized versions of his potential child’s future life (warts and all), but it doesn’t go well, as you might have guessed.

The most interesting thing about this story is the idea of extrapolated futures based on genetics, but it doesn’t come to any conclusions about this development more complex than “that would be bad”, which is a song as old as science fiction.

Cindy Lieberman

The future of baby engineering is not simply selecting the gender, eye and hair color of your future offspring. In this short story, couples can select personality traits that will predict the contours of the child’s life, given a nudge in the right direction genetically and based on the parents’ “nurturing.” No space ships or CRISPR science details — this story should be easily accessible to people who say they don’t read SciFi. (Free download for Amazon Prime members as part of their Forward series.)

Olivera Mitić

Delovalo je da sprema ne znam kakav kraj i baš onda kad je trebalo da se desi više nije bilo strana.

Michelle Xu

The Forward Collection Overall, 3.5 stars.

It's hard to give the overall collection a rating because some stories were hits and others were misses.

You have Arrived at your Destination - 2 stars
This was my second least favorite story. It started out so promising. I was really intrigued by this Black Mirror-esque story. The beginning shows Sam going to a new, state-of-the-art fertility clinic to essentially pick out his future baby. The three future scenarios were such a cool concept and seeing how Sam reacted to them was also interesting. After that point, however, the story went downhill for me. It felt like the author ran out of time and had to submit something before the due date, so he finished the story in 3 paragraphs and called it a day. I felt like it had so much potential but then dropped the ball in the second half.

Ruth Parker 

An interesting and valuable look at how science is influencing and could further influence reproduction. What rights do we have to play God? Seriously thoughtful, made me consider a lot about fertility and about test tube babies and right and wrong.

Juliana Matias

So we have officially left the apocalypse behind and have clearly entered Black Mirror territory. This story freaked me out a bit.

It is all about a man who has decided to try genetically-enhanced IVF, and who is seeing the 3 options pre-chosen by his wife for their son could be. The idea of how much of one’s life can be predicted is scary, but it sounds so real that it got under my skin.

Again, this is very short so I do not want to give any more away, but this story was pretty good. I was a little confused with the ending, but I still enjoyed it very very much.

You Have Arrived at Your Destination

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