Hardwired Humanity
Sarah Wagner
Reviewed by Tom Morton
Sarah Wagner’s Hardwired Humanity, released earlier this year, is a
wonderful
compilation of short stories full of drama and superb imagery. With
stories as
short as two pages long, even someone with ADHD would have no trouble
immersing
themselves into the worlds Wagner creates.
In Switch, we follow a gritty,
street-wise drifter who is a mechanical
genius. This short tells us of his finding and losing a beautiful
android with
an advanced A.I. and the harrowing race to find her before she is
reprogrammed
with her memory of him erased. Along the way, he discovers a plot that
goes
right to the top of the American political ladder. Will true
man-android love
conquer all?
Venus
and the Birth of Zephyrus is a two page what-if about a satellite
evolving
into something more than a routine crime watcher.
In When Closed Eyes Open, we meet Chase—a soldier on
the front lines
of a futuristic battlefront against an alien force. When his insides
try to
become his outsides—thanks to an enemy grenade—Chase is sent to Kearns,
who specializes in “rehabilitating” soldiers to get them back on the
front
lines to defend humankind.
Canned
Man is another two page short about a man drifting through sweeping
vistas
of space in an off course, one-man ship.
The
Wreck of the Griffin is a lengthier short about Avery, a cargo
pilot who is
part human, part machine. Downed on an inhospitable planet, crew and
captain
dead, Avery must rely on the only surviving passenger to make it past
marauders, desert beasts, and the unrelenting heat of the ceaseless
sands.
Finally in Evolution of a Shadow we meet Shade, the
tough-as-nails head of an
elite group who are in the business of finding lost things. The longest
story
in this collection, Evolution is
packed with action without losing the fine
imagery that is included in all of Wagner’s other stories.
Hardwired
Humanity makes great easy reading for those who like their books to
fit
their busy lifestyle. Wagner’s use of descriptors is stunning in all of
these
stories.