"Bread and Circuses," by Genevieve Valentine

[Scott H. Andrews]

This thread is to discuss "Bread and Circuses," by Genevieve Valentine, which appears in BCS #55 (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/forums/../toc.php?s=55) from Nov. 4, 2010.

Feel free to post a comment even if you haven't yet registered on the BCS Forums--you can reply to the thread as an unregistered Guest.


And if you post a comment about the story here in this thread, you will be entered in a drawing to win a free signed copy of Ann & Jeff VanderMeer's new anthology Steampunk Reloaded (http://www.amazon.com/Steampunk-II-Reloaded-Ann-VanderMeer/dp/1616960019), which includes stories by Daniel Abraham, Cherie Priest, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Margo Lanagan, Catherynne M. Valente, and Margaret Ronald (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/forums/../author.php?a=20)'s BCS story "A Serpent in the Gears."

(You do have to be a registered member of the Forums in order to be eligible. The full rules for this giveaway are here (http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/forums/showthread.php?t=600). It ends Wed. Nov. 17. Enjoy the story and good luck!)

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[DgB]

Interesting story. Excellent pacing. Well done!

[corry]

This was a fun read. I found the short scenes disorienting at first, but once I got used to them, it made the story seem to move quite quickly.

[Sue Curnow]

It was a story you knew was going to end 'badly'. At the same time it did what a good short story should, and left the reader thinking.

Good job.

[parhelion]

A very interesting read. :)

As always, I love the variety BCS brings with its short stories. ^^

[A Johnson]

What an odd and enticing tale.

I like the way the old fairy-tale-style elements like the bread and circuses of the title are built into the setting, so the constraints of the walls and the society, the lack of resources and the lack of freedom, make those old symbols particularly powerful and relevant to the characters. Most pleasing. Ditto the way the fantasy isn't treated as sparkly magical magic and shown off to the reader: some things are just there, even when they're odd. The kid with the metal legs, for instance, is great. The world is as it is, and these things are part of it.

Nice style, too - brings across character and manages to fold in detail and emotion without being overelaborate. Loved the bracketed sections.

Actually quite tempted by the novel, now...

[gatetree]

Excellent work, as always.

[Merc]

I always like Gen Valentine's tales of despair... this one was fabulous. (I kept wondering, the whole time, 'okay, how much of a kick in the teeth will THIS ending deliver?') I keep thinking about the story since I read it several days ago. Excellent work, as always.

I can't wait for the novel!

[BrigidsBlest]

Okay, that was kickass. What a great way to wake up in the morning -- this story and a cup of tea!

~Jen

[Asakiyume]

What a tense-making story--as much happening between the lines as in them. The desperation of the situation from the very start, when you read that ash obscures everything . . . but like our narrator Tom, I was willing to think just about the circus, about getting to know Valeria--though my heart sank when she started mixing dirt in with the flour.

Still, there's a breath of hope at the end of story (maybe vain hope?), given the comparison with the acrobats.

cool world, cool story.

[wolfjack]

Dark but enjoyable story. I felt at the end,Tom was at last free from the prison of the walls of the city.

The short scenes, I think, made the overall tapestry of the drudgery of the citizens' existence seem more real to me, that so much could be expressed in such small jumps covering only a year or so of time.

And what dark tale would be complete without a despot like Crane to make a reader feel that injustice never ends in some worlds, just becomes greater or lesser in scale to an observer. Though really only the original baker and Tom are mentioned victims, a reader can quickly see that the whole city is just one corral for the 'sheep' that Crane preys upon.

The only free spirits that escaped were a smith-turned-baker and a former dancing girl.

[bookmole]

I like post-apocalyptic tales that do not tell you what caused the decay / fear / troubles in the world of now.

At first, I was not sure about this story. Not until Crane killed the first baker. That was when I realised this was in fact a kick-ass piece of writing, to convey so much with so little.

What I really liked was how the story wove the threads of Circus and City together, like the braid the baker cut short.

Not a world I would want to live in. No resources do make for frightening times.

[colmmc]

Nice story. A great ending. I was flying there, too, for a while.

[steffenwolf]

Well-written, but not one of my favorites. With "circuses" right in the title I was hoping for more circus happenings. And I've seen so many stories where the solution is suicide, a story's got to be really special to pull it off. For me, this one didn't.