The Infinite Assassin - Greg Egan
Short Story
Number of words : 5900
Percent of complex words : 10.8
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 16.7
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.0
Flesch : 60.9
Flesch-Kincaid : 8.9
PEOPLE
Assassin
Tasked with eliminating the producers of S drug-induced whirlpool effects throughout universes.
Blue-haired woman
Offers the assassin assistance in this particular task and universe, but has other motives.
TECHNOLOGY
S
A reality altering drug. "S grants dreamers the power to live vicariously in any parallel world in which they have an alter ego - someone with whom they share enough brain physiology to maintain the parasitic resonance of the link... For one in a hundred thousand, though, dreams are only the beginning. During their third or fourth year on S, they start to move physically from world to world, as they strive to take the place of their chosen alter egos."
Tritium/phosphor
Type of light globe.
ORGANISATIONS
The Company
The assassin's employer.
CONCEPTS
The Whirlpool
Reality shift focus of increasing power caused by mutant S users.
Cantor dust
A fractal set, uncountably infinite, but with measure zero. Assassin is mapped into this by the locals.
Superspace
Higher levels of reality.
PLACES
Leightown
Site of a job for the assassin, and of a whirlpool cult.
Fifth floor Apartment 522
The assassin's S using target lives here.
MEDIA
Fat Single Mothers Must Die
A band.
PLOT
The assassin's job is to put down users of the drug S who develop reality altering superpowers and cause devastating whirlpools that can grow to affect all their infinite lives. These might harm rich people's existence, so he gets called in when wealthy areas are threatened. He has to do this across all the realities they might exist in, in a probabilistic fashion. Chosen as an extremely stable individual, his latest target has help. A whirpool cult there employs their ability to co-ordinate across infinite lives to negate the assassin's skills. This shakes his sense of identity, which he has to rethink at the end.
4.5 out of 5
Number of words : 5900
Percent of complex words : 10.8
Average syllables per word : 1.5
Average words per sentence : 16.7
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 11.0
Flesch : 60.9
Flesch-Kincaid : 8.9
PEOPLE
Assassin
Tasked with eliminating the producers of S drug-induced whirlpool effects throughout universes.
Blue-haired woman
Offers the assassin assistance in this particular task and universe, but has other motives.
TECHNOLOGY
S
A reality altering drug. "S grants dreamers the power to live vicariously in any parallel world in which they have an alter ego - someone with whom they share enough brain physiology to maintain the parasitic resonance of the link... For one in a hundred thousand, though, dreams are only the beginning. During their third or fourth year on S, they start to move physically from world to world, as they strive to take the place of their chosen alter egos."
Tritium/phosphor
Type of light globe.
ORGANISATIONS
The Company
The assassin's employer.
CONCEPTS
The Whirlpool
Reality shift focus of increasing power caused by mutant S users.
Cantor dust
A fractal set, uncountably infinite, but with measure zero. Assassin is mapped into this by the locals.
Superspace
Higher levels of reality.
PLACES
Leightown
Site of a job for the assassin, and of a whirlpool cult.
Fifth floor Apartment 522
The assassin's S using target lives here.
MEDIA
Fat Single Mothers Must Die
A band.
PLOT
The assassin's job is to put down users of the drug S who develop reality altering superpowers and cause devastating whirlpools that can grow to affect all their infinite lives. These might harm rich people's existence, so he gets called in when wealthy areas are threatened. He has to do this across all the realities they might exist in, in a probabilistic fashion. Chosen as an extremely stable individual, his latest target has help. A whirpool cult there employs their ability to co-ordinate across infinite lives to negate the assassin's skills. This shakes his sense of identity, which he has to rethink at the end.
4.5 out of 5