Jaffa Kintigh's Reviews > Oral Argument

Fictional voices emulate the voices of many forms: journals, letters, notes, scientific treatises etc. As the title implies, this vignette is an oral argument to a court case and a one-sided one at that, as they are.

The lawyer is cagey about his representation of his clients that aren't present and surprisingly familiar and increasingly sassy with the justice trying the case. It's through the lawyer's interrupted argument that the judge's comments can be reasonably puzzled out.

The case involves a patent sought and later rejected for a human experiment in photosynthetic tattooing. Barely any of the science fiction undertones to the nature of the case comes to light in the argument. Nor do the ramifications of the experimenting that has landed the case in court, though the lawyer admits that deaths have occurred. The lawyer keeps his argument on the legal standing of the patent providing precious little story.

This tale appears in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 10 edited by Jonathan Strahan. I received this new anthology from Netgalley.