Immersion by Aliette de Bodard - A brilliant short story

I just read a short story called Immersion by Aliette de Bodard and it really is an amazing tale.

Its about something called immersers which disguise what you truly are and fit you into whatever culture you are currently in.

The immersers are a sort of Google Goggles on steroids. They tell you what everything is so that nothing in an alien culture remains unknown. They tell you what the socially acceptable behaviors are and make you a part of the cultural setup. People get addicted to them especially the ones from the not so dominant cultures. It really is a great story, well written and the more I think about it the more it blows me away.

The more you use it the more it gains control of the way you think making you dependent on it. The irony is that the inventors themselves use it at the lowest power but the buyers use it at the highest setting and this makes their addiction even worse.

The writing is brilliant and subtle. Like most great work, the second reading is even more rewarding than the first. Its the sort of science fiction that takes a small piece of technology, a what if question and examines what their ramifications could be. A great read.

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