Sixteen light-years from Earth, a black hole spins inthe darkness, gravity and rotation flattening it into a Kerrsingularity. In Colombo, Sri Lanka, a suicidal man signs up for theultimate one-way trip: to be frozen, sent light years away from home,and shot into the black hole itself.

I was the wrong reader for this short story. 

I should have paid attention to the title. It really was a slow, sad suicide. It felt slow. Even at only thirty- five pages, I felt I’d been wrapped in this story for too long and needed some air. It was sad because this rich, genetically enhanced, privileged man could think of nothing better to do with his life than to end it and even then, he made a mess of it. It was a suicide: pointless, terminal, irrevocable, achieving nothing but ceasing to be.

I should also have paid attention to the warning that opens the book. It says:

“Warning: this short story contains alcohol, suicide, religion and wonky physics. It’s best enjoyed if you can appreciate at least three out of the four.”

It turns out that I don’t appreciate alcohol enough to have empathy for an alcoholic, and I don’t appreciate suicide when it is simply a petulant rejection of life. The religion and the wonky physics I was fine with, but I didn’t enjoy being forced to view them through the eyes of a narcissistic, self-pitying alcoholic.

The story is clever, well-written, and packed with interesting ideas. Even so, I did not enjoy it. I will remember it though. Which is why I’m sure that the problem lies with the reader, not with the story. .