If you’re going to start your SF story with a quote from Cordwainer Smith’s ‘Scanners Live in Vain’, you’re setting yourself a big ask to live up to that standard.

I’m pleased to report that DeVito does so, in spades. Inappropriate for younger readers, or anyone who doesn’t like explicit descriptions of the sexual act! Fortunately, I’m by no means a younger reader, and by a similar margin nor am I put off my explicit descriptions of the sexual act!

I had a bit of a dig at an Adam-Troy Castro story in Lightspeed Magazine recently (‘Her Husband’s Hands‘) which postulated a far future war veteran being returned home in the shape of just two hands linked to a backup of his final uploaded memory backup. DeVito covers similar ground, but in a much more believable manner. He looks, up close and personal, at a husband and wife relationship that is struggling after the husband had died, but is returned to life by the technology of the day. The story is seen through the eyes of his wife, who is struggling to adjust to the new relationship, the subtly changed nature of her husband.

DeVito handles her PoV well (inasmuch as I can imagine a female PoV), and gets some real passion and tension and believable tension in the story. It builds up to a climax (!) as her world crashes in around her and…