Letsee. Career-minded women are evil vain creatures who’ll steal everything, apparently hate children so much that we’d eat them (If they were on our diet of course because we need to be pretty and vain here) We also apparently covet the husbands of dumpy housewives, who are secretly much smarter than we are. Of course, they know that we secretly really just need to be barefoot and pregnant. Then we’ll understand how brilliant mommies are. In fact, mommy is SO smart that she rapes all the silly vain ‘smart’ women, forcing them into pregnancy or death. It’s a wonder she isn’t up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I take it back. Even Limbaugh isn’t quite at one-sided and hateful as this story was.

And I agree with the person who said the combined with “Nano Comes to Clifford Falls” (which I did very much enjoy), some kind of creepy attitudes to those who choose not to have children–or even who choose to have children but not be focused on them 24/7–come through.

Two male characters, both with serious flaws regarding their relationships with women. One, the prof who fires a valuable scientist because (it’s implied) the woman he is sleeping with told him to, and of course he is wrapped around her little finger. Then there is the obligatory absent father. This one hasn’t just left his wife holding the baby (a common enough occurence, to be fair) but left after shagging her sister.

Not that anyone comes across as good in the story (a schemer with the standard animal-torturing childhood and a murderer) but there is something about this author’s attitudes to us men which really sticks in my throat.

If this story had not been written by someone with an axe to grind it might have been very entertaining. A realistic attittude to the effect of tech on the people who encounter it which avoids the extremes of utopia and dystopia. A genuinely surprising and shocking ending. Like a hilarious stand-up who turns out to be a racist, this story leaves me with a sense that this author has bags of talent which are unfortunately wasted.

Need more like this – although maybe a little less self righteous about single mothers.

I’m a little surprised by the comparison to “Nano Comes to Clifford Falls,” which I really liked, maybe because the narrator came across as so much more morally neutral.

On reflection, I can see where the perception of bias comes from, but I think the conclusions being drawn are a bit strong. If someone writes a story about, for example, a corrupt police officer it doesn’t follow that the author believes all police are corrupt. In this tale the stay-at-home sister just tailored her revenge to her sister’s particular lifestyle and beliefs to have the maximum impact.

Well, I enjoyed the story anyway.

As fiction, “Error” worked much better than “Clifford Falls.” The sibling rivalry was more true and deliciously diabolical, I thought, than the back to the rustic simplicity.

“Margin of Error,” like other twisted stories of its type, presents a selfish and devious character who is overtaken by a plot hatched by someone who turns out to be far more diabolical. I don’t believe that either side is meant to appeal to the reader’s sympathies.

I’d love to carry on this discussion on the official Escape Pod Forums, once Steve has anointed his hand-picked team of moderators and deputy administrators to clear away the thicket of spam that has grown there.

There’s another horrible assumption here that had me snarling at my iRiver while listening: if she’d wanted/had children, obviously the older sis wouldn’t have been a backstabbing, husband-stealing, frog-torturing, totally selfish b****. WTF?! Can you say Sledgehammer of Here’s-the-Bad-Guy? I think a more believable character would have made a more interesting conflict.

Also, I still don’t think that engineering the future murder can be excused. What if the younger sis died (even in childbirth)? Then all the CF folks who had received the treatment years after her evil older sister would develop this cancer. The younger sister wouldn’t be around to publish the cure, which we can’t be sure she even intends to do from the end of the story.

I’m a CF(childfree) female scientist, let my bias be known. I’ve met several examples of the kind of self-centered academics this story assumes; some had kids, some didn’t. I’ve met great scientists and human beings who don’t have kids, too. This over-the-top Hitlerization of the CF lifestyle is just another slap in the face, but it still stings.

I normally like Nancy Kress, but this is horrific. This goes beyond revenge for screwing over your sister in the sciences, it’s punishing her for having a different lifestyle choice as well. WTF?

I rationalized this by thinking medical science would cure her. They flush her blood and get rid of the nanobots, then the cancer stops or gets cured.
So she wasn’t killed, just serious pain and life distruption.

I’m not sure how I should react to this story. I was thrilled that the older sister got her come-upence, yet still…. murder? Why am I ok with this?

Sibling rivalry can be completely brutal in and of itself (remember Cain and Abel), especially coupled with professional rivalry.

Thanks and keep up the good work!

Nicely done for a conversation story.

Apparently I have been asleep under a rock–I’ve missed whole swaths of stories and novels by Nancy. Just on the strength of the two nano stories that I have heard so far, I can tell that I’m going to have to catch up on some reading. And it will be a pleasure.

One suggestion, if you are going to take older Nancy Kress sci-fi, get the short story, “Beggars in Spain” It spawned a whole series, but the short story was the best part.

Kudos to Christiana Ellis on a great reading.

It reminds me of Hamlet’s monologue on the subject of the treachery of his two schoolmates, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

There’s letters seal’d: and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang’d,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, ’tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.