Cosmic Static
What do you think about if your consciousness never leaves your dead body? Terrifying to even think about, isn’t it? The concept of this one is fairly simple: an astronaut has been sent out to try to find another habitable planet in the universe. It didn’t work out, and he ended up dying and then drifting through space for who knows how long. But the company he worked for didn’t want those valuable memories to disappear if the astronaut died, so they implanted a chip to keep his memories intact. This chip also kept his consciousness intact, which, you know, yikes. The human brain can go to all kinds of dark places in this sort of helpless constant awareness, and it’s grimly fascinating to see and read through it. Let’s just say that you’re unlikely to end up with a good opinion of a species that would leave you in this state, especially since the whole point behind it was because they had already ruined their original planet. Still, there’s not much of a story here without some forward momentum, so we get to witness the orbit decay for this poor sucker and we get to see what happens next. And hey, if you’re curious about that, this is the part of the review where I tell you to read it for yourself. As a concept, it’s entirely too plausible that a future corporation would force their workers into this situation, and it’s more than a little plausible that several corporations are already working on it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, so give this one a shot why don’t you. $8 (and it comes with a sticker, in case you want an image of a corpse drifting through space on your backpack/book/whatever)
