‘The robot is the Godot of practical science.’
TANK is a robot with a job. He has had a lot of jobs – he once worked for NASA – but wasn’t very good at any of them. After a string of demotions, TANK now works as a receptionist at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. At least, this is what he’ll tell you.
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Steven Hall on the internet, writing from memory and Ian the Cat.
‘I see a gull in a car park and they can see the place where it metabolised water into feathers, food into energy, oxygen into blood.’ Stephen Rutt on what isotopes can tell us about birds.
‘You don’t understand. The country where I used to live is now gone.’
‘She is well-behaved, as icons go, she toes the party line.’
Short fiction by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea.
An extract from Guest House For Young Widows by Azadeh Moaveni, nominated for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020.
