horrorhouse by David D. Levine

horrorhouse by David D. Levine is, as you would expect for a story published in DayBreak Magazine, near future optimistic Science Fiction.

The story follows Ethan, one of the main protagonists in the Twitter Revolution, as he investigates a local disturbance, known as the horrorhouse. I expected from the title for the story to be horror-ish, but not at all, I was pleasantly surprised by the actual horror, which I’ll let you find out for yourselves. Instead the story has the blanket of near future technology which I love, I’m tempted to call it cyberpunk but that’s really just because it’s where I discovered that kind of detail first. Rather than noirey and dystopic the story is bright and optimistic. If I had to say who it reminded me of it would be Cory Doctorow-ish or early Accelerando Charles Stross.

I liked the way that the story dealt with the kids and the age gap to the protagonist, inventing a coolness that felt different enough to be futuristic but not ridiculous. I also liked the problem-in-a-utopia style of the story, which is the hard bit of writing optimistic SF.

All in all, very enjoyable.