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This is our discussion of the story:


"Shadow Flock" by Greg Egan

This story originally appeared in Coming Soon Enough Six Tales of Technology's Future


This story is part of the The Best SF&F of the Year, vol 9 (2014) group anthology discussion.

★★�

Synopsis: A tense SF heist thriller centered around the idea of using drones to pick up wallets containing authentication keys for bitcoins. Main protagonist Nathalie is an expert in programming drones. She is blackmailed into service by a group of criminals.

Review: Resourceful female protagonist, nicely flowing tension arc, fine enough setting. It would have fit in Twelve Tomorrows 2014 with its near future topic. Nothing experimental, straight narration.

Oh, good, a nice straightforward story involving near-future technology, old school style with new tech. I was only a few minutes reading this story when it started to feel really familiar, drones being used to rig an improvised zip line over a river. Turns out I read it in Coming Soon Enough: Six Tales of Technology's Future, an anthology I guess I forgot I read last year.

In the future, drones can be used for a variety of tasks besides annoying neighbors, and there are whole libraries of pre-programmed activities they can undertake, including reacting to anticipated changes in their surroundings. Natalie is an expert in improvising such activities, usuallyfor emergency services. She gets coerced into aiding some criminals in one of those elaborate, masterminded super heists like we see in the movies. Possibly the plot for "Oceans 15" or "Mission Impossible 5".

In the context of this future technology, Egan gets to postulate on use of drones not just for rapid delivery and surveillance, but also for potential crimes such as theft. Discounting that arch-criminal "Lewis" and his co-conspirators seem to have remarkable prescience in setting up their complex caper, the story unfolds predictably. It provides a scaffold for Egan to imagine various uses for drones, and introduce some paranoia about a future of drone surveillance, theft and assault.

★★�

Liked the story w/it's details ( though not quite as many as I expected from the opening stage-setting) on programming seemingly ordinary but complex tasks. Thought the protagonist was maybe a little overly blasé about the whole situation...

Not sure how I felt about the last line -- great fodder for discussion but kind of undercut the story's internal stakes for me