{"id":25127,"date":"2025-07-13T19:49:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T23:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=25127"},"modified":"2025-10-12T17:43:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T21:43:02","slug":"rillas-and-other-science-fiction-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/rillas-and-other-science-fiction-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Rillas and Other Science Fiction Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{5\/5} &#8220;&#8216;But you&#8217;re no longer on the ship,&#8217; he found himself whispering, so softly he actually heard the stiff rustle of the alien&#8217;s garments as he moved closer to the other door out of aural necessity. &#8216;You&#8230; you were only doing what was essential&#8230; it went beyond a matter of choice. If you&#8230;&nbsp; your kind&#8230; didn&#8217;t&#8230; all of you would&#8217;ve died. Surely, there had to be a reconciliation among all of you, afterward&#8211;&#8216;&#8221; (from &#8220;Etamin at East 47th&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8216;Rillas and Other Science Fiction Stories<\/strong> by A. R. Morlan, published in 2012<\/p>\n<p>In &#8220;Robin Willams, Speaking Spanish&#8221; a social worker goes aboard ships to make sure that the Savant-Contingents &#8212; who stay in their rooms all the time and have one job &#8212; are being treated well by their fellow crew. In &#8220;What Falls from the Life&#8221; aliens land in Japan and spend their time watching figure skating and Bill Murray movies &#8212; but since they can&#8217;t communicate, no one really knows what they&#8217;re thinking. In &#8220;Etamin at East 47th&#8221; a Japanese man whose ancestors were from the unclean class lives next door to an alien who did similar type of work aboard a ship. In &#8220;&#8216;Rillas&#8221; after an apocalypse a family struggles to keep themselves fed and clothed, while the kids confuse &#8220;gorillas&#8221; with &#8220;guerillas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This collection includes two stories we published in <strong>Challenging Destiny<\/strong>. Two stories were written with <span class=\"Formatted\">John S. Postovit<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>These stories show Morlan&#8217;s astonishing use of language, her insight into the human condition, and her boundless imagination.<\/p>\n<p>This is the 2nd book I&#8217;ve read by Morlan. I previously reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/smothered-dolls\/\"><strong>Smothered Dolls<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{5\/5} &#8220;&#8216;But you&#8217;re no longer on the ship,&#8217; he found himself whispering, so softly he actually heard the stiff rustle of the alien&#8217;s garments as he moved closer to the other door out of aural necessity. &#8216;You&#8230; you were only doing what was essential&#8230; it went beyond a matter of choice. If you&#8230;&nbsp; your kind&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,27,5,8,44],"class_list":["post-25127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-collections","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25127"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25182,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25127\/revisions\/25182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}