{"id":5262,"date":"2018-06-22T13:24:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T13:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5262"},"modified":"2018-06-23T20:25:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T20:25:04","slug":"uncanny-18-september-october-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=5262","title":{"rendered":"Uncanny #18, September\/October 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ISFDB link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:
\nGreg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank<\/a>
\nCharles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews<\/a>
\nRebecca DeVendra, Tangent Online<\/a>
\nVarious, Goodreads<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editors, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; Managing Editor, Michi Trota<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nHenosis <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by N. K. Jemisin \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nClearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Fran Wilde
\nThough She Be But Little<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by C. S. E. Cooney \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nDown and Out in R\u2019lyeh<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Catherynne M. Valente \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nFandom for Robots<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Vina Jie-Min Prasad \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nAt Cooney\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Delia Sherman \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nGhost Town<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Malinda Lo \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Ashley Mackenzie
\nPoetry <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Jo Walton, Brandon O\u2019Brien, Ali Trotta, Gwynne Garfinkle
\nThe Uncanny Valley <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas
\nMy Voice-Over Life<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Sophie Aldred
\nLet Me Tell You<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Cecilia Tan
\nI\u2019m Not the Only One: Why Wonder Woman Doesn\u2019t Need to Stand Alone in Order to Stand Tall<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Sarah Kuhn
\nResistance 101: Basics of Community Organizing for SF\/F Creators and Consumers\u2014 Volume Four: \u201cDon\u2019t Let Him Catch You With Your Work Undone\u201d\u2014Activism for the Long Haul<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Sam J. Miller and Jean Rice
\nChangeable Skins, Consummate Catchphrases<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Sabrina Vourvoulias
\nInterview: C. S. E. Cooney<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Julia Rios
\nInterview: Delia Sherman<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Julia Rios<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Henosis <\/em><\/strong>by N. K. Jemisin is an initially promising story with a time-sliced narrative (Chapter 4 if followed by 2, then 1, then 5, etc.). It starts with a popular writer on his way to an award ceremony when he realises the doors of the limousine are locked. He then notices that the driver is not his usual one and, after questioning him, the writer realises he is being kidnapped to stop him winning an award.
\nThere follows a discussion about writers\u2019 legacies in general and, specifically, the looting of Vonnegut\u2019s grave for his body parts (which presumably puts the story either in a parallel world or the future).
\nThe resolution (spoiler) has the writer losing the award while the winner is taken away\u00a0to be dismembered. There are some interesting parts to this but it doesn\u2019t really work.
\nClearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand<\/em><\/strong> by Fran Wilde has\u00a0the narrator leading someone through a strange exhibit:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re keeping the lights low. Any brighter hurts our eyes, bounces off the mirrors. You can still see the finer details, if you lean really close. We\u2019ve left the glass off the fronts, just for you. Touch the sutures, the pins, if you like. Try to push aside the velvet skirting to see the workings below. We\u2019re all like dolls here, with some spare parts. Interchangeable. May I take your hand?
\nThat\u2019s right. Good. Let me catalog our alphabet of differences for you. Here are the heads, the horns, the holes where they tried to let out headaches. Here are the spines, curved like serpents. Here, the jars of jellies with heads too big to be human. A pair of burly palms like beetle\u2019s claws, skin tight over bone.
\nHere are the doubles and triples, the cephalics, their two legs supporting so much thought. The twins, wrapped around one another like trees. Here is the stone baby, we found him in the trash. See his marble skin, worn away where someone had been touching him too much? We\u2019ve been teaching him his letters.\u00a0 p. 20<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have no idea what the point of this is (and I read it twice), and am amazed that it got through to the Hugo finalists ballot.
\nThough She Be But Little<\/em><\/strong> by C. S. E. Cooney is an original fantasy about what happened to Emma Anne after the sky went silver (although it is a story that takes a little getting in to). We find out about her, and Captain Howard (who was originally her neighbour Margo before the \u201cD\u2019argenting\u201d but is now a pirate), and the scary Loping Man. Emma fears for her safety if the latter finds her, and this plays out in the second half of the story. The passage that follows, where Emma talks to two stuffed animals who are now \u2018alive\u2019, will give you a flavour of the story:<\/p>\n

When the sky turned silver, Potter Hill became . . . Something else. Just like everything.
\nShe craned her head over her shoulder, glancing back at the smokestack. The entrance to her hideaway was too high to climb to without assistance from the three-legged chair haphazardly stashed in a nearby bush. Both Captious and Bumptious had poked their noses out of the hole to stare at her with their plastic eyes. They never moved when she was looking.
\n\u201cYou really ought to take us with you,\u201d advised Captious with a look of cunning. \u201cYou know the Loping Man is lurking.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat can you do?\u201d Emma Anne asked.
\n\u201cProtect you!\u201d Bumptious asserted stoutly. He was good at assertion.
\nEmma Anne ignored him. \u201cAnyway. He won\u2019t be around right now. The Loping Man\u2019s not into daylight hours. He\u2019s more crap\u2026\u201d She paused. The word she wanted was vanishing at the edges. \u201cCrap\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cCraptastic?\u201d guessed Captious.
\n\u201cNo, creep\u2026 Crep\u2026\u201d
\n\u201cCreepissimo? Creepilicious! Creepo-mijito?\u201d
\n\u201cNo! Stop! I know it\u2026 It\u2019s\u2026 He\u2019s\u2026 He\u2019s crepuscular!\u201d She paused, grinning. \u201cYou know\u2026 Like deer? And rabbits?\u201d Weasel and tiger stared as only stuffed animals can stare. They often chose to desert their sentience as a kind of consequence whenever they thought Emma Anne was getting above herself.\u00a0 p. 26-27<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Parts of this read like Peter Pan<\/em> on acid, but I mean that in a good way.
\nWhile we are talking about literary comparisons, Down and Out in R\u2019lyeh<\/em><\/strong> by Catherynne M. Valente feels, I think, like William Burroughs channelling H. P. Lovecraft:<\/p>\n

Pazuzu was my eerie from the minute I gibbered out of the spawn-sac and into this trashbin world. Out of one bitch, into another. He ate his mom when he was little, so me and Shit pretty much adopted him into\u00a0the Niggurath brood. Who would notice one more? Even if he was a Ghast and not a whatever-the-fuck-we-are? Mama Shub strangled Zuzu as lovingly as any of us. These days he\u2019s another regular denizen of\u00a0Shit\u2019s couch. He kind of looks like a walking, talking, noseless scab on kangaroo legs. Straight up f\u0153tid, was Pazuzu. All the squirmy young shubs hungered him. But my man didn\u2019t have a cultist then. Didn\u2019t care\u00a0about getting off. Mostly what Zuzu slavered after was to get squamous and hunt himself some gloons. Not THE Gloon. Not the guy named Gloon. You don\u2019t hunt that dank little piece of slug-ass. Not that Elgin\u00a0marble-looking motherfucker. The slug-god Gloon slithers out the eyes of that effulgy Greek statue it rides around in like a john sliding out of a rented prom limo and it hunts you. Naw, Zuzu hunts posers. Barely\u00a0larval yuppie scum with Old One pedigrees who gibber around trying to look like Gloon and talk like Gloon and corrupt the mortal world like Gloon when they\u2019re nothing but a bunch of shoggo fuckboys who couldn\u2019t corrupt a goddamn gumdrop without daddy\u2019s protective runes. They\u2019re so fucking dun that when we call them gloons, they think it\u2019s a compliment. But I get Pazuzu. Always have. He kicks those kruggy\u00a0pukes in the face and feels like he\u2019s making a difference in the world. He isn\u2019t, but, you know. Let a scab dream.\u00a0 p. 43-44<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story as such is about a group of the younger ones out and about in R\u2019yleh one night, before (spoiler) they burn down Cthulhu\u2019s house.
\nAlthough I thought this an okay piece it will\u00a0be impenetrable to some because of its style and Cthulhu Mythos references. It could have initially done with much less of the former, and a more obvious narrative arc (it\u2019s late on in the story before anything much happens). It could also have done with a few more scenes like this one, where the younger ones walk (or slither) past Cthulhu\u2019s house:<\/p>\n

We three eeries gawped up at His porch, the columns, the stonework, the yawning height and depth and intellect-shearing ostentation of that naffgoth wedding cake of a house. That neighborhood was so eel even Azathoth and Hastur got priced out in the Neolithic Era. We hissed at the flowers. No one but no one in R\u2019lyeh could afford a garden\u2014but all around the C-Man\u2019s squalor, millions of black lilies and sicksilver roses writhed and runnelled and strangled each other, gibbering up into empty cottages and walk-ups all around the joint, puking out the windows, living rent-free in houses me and mine could only dream of.
\nA big, blousy fart-bubble belched up from Cthulhu\u2019s veiny chimney. Oily colors wriggled on its surface as it rose up through the oceanic ultramarine night. We watched as it burst into a polluted rainbow beneath the black lozenges of ships moving silently through the airy, idiot mundworld.
\n\u201cBest squamous going, I heard,\u201d Shax gurgled. I\u2019d almost forgotten she was there. I\u2019m not much of a cultist when you get right down to it. I know that about myself. I\u2019m trying to work on it.
\n\u201cI\u00e4, me too, I heard that,\u201d Zuzu growled, still stung, pride still snakestomped. \u201cOnly you gotta be 100 percent goat. Quiet like a misko in a library. If you disturb the man\u2019s slumber, it\u2019s bad fhtagn news. He\u2019s cranky when he first wakes up.\u201d
\nSo that\u2019s how we ended up on a rickety rooftop huffing Cthulhu\u2019s farts. Highly recommended; would huff again.\u00a0 p. 55<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An interesting, if not quite successful, experiment.
\nThe highlight of the issue is the other Hugo nominee, Fandom for Robots<\/em><\/strong> by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. This concerns Computron, a robot who has just discovered a Japanese anime show called Hyperdimension Warp Record<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record<\/em> (\u8d85\u6b21\u5143 \u30ef\u30fc\u30d7 \u30ec\u30b3\u30fc\u30c9). After all, Computron does not have any emotion circuits installed, and is thus\u00a0constitutionally incapable of experiencing \u201cexcitement,\u201d \u201chatred,\u201d or \u201cfrustration.\u201d It is completely impossible for Computron to experience emotions such as \u201cexcitement about the seventh episode of HyperWarp<\/em>,\u201d \u201chatred of the anime\u2019s short episode length\u201d or \u201cfrustration that Friday is so far away.\u201d
\nComputron checks his internal chronometer, as well as the countdown page on the streaming website. There are twenty-two hours, five minutes, forty-six seconds, and twelve milliseconds until 2am on Friday (Japanese Standard Time). Logically, he is aware that time is most likely passing at a normal rate. The Simak Robotics Museum is not within close proximity of a black hole, and there is close to no possibility that time is being dilated. His constant checking of the chronometer to compare it with the countdown page serves no scientific purpose whatsoever.
\nAfter fifty milliseconds, Computron checks the countdown page again.\u00a0 p. 62<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After binge-watching the entire series, Computron discovers the series\u2019 associated fanfic forums and is sucked into that world:<\/p>\n

While \u201cfanfiction\u201d is meant to consist of \u201cfan-written stories about characters or settings from an original work of fiction,\u201d Computron observes that much of the HyperWarp fanfiction bears no resemblance to the actual characters or setting. For instance, the series that claims to be a \u201cspin-off focusing on Powerful!Cyro\u201d seems to involve Cyro installing many large-calibre guns onto his frame and joining the Space Marines, which does not seem relevant to his quest for revenge or the retrieval of the hyperdimensional warp unit. Similarly, the \u201chigh school fic\u201d in which Cyro and Ellison study at Hyperdimension High fails to acknowledge the fact that formal education is reserved for the elite class in the HyperWarp universe.
\nMost of the fanfiction set within the actual series seems particularly inaccurate. The most recent offender is EllisonsWife\u2019s \u201cRosemary for Remembrance,\u201d which fails to acknowledge the fact that Cyro does not have human facial features, and thus cannot \u201ctouch his nose against Ellison\u2019s hair, breathing in the scent of sandalwood, rosemary, and something uniquely him\u201d before \u201ckissing Ellison passionately, needily, hungrily, his tongue slipping into Ellison\u2019s mouth.\u201d
\nComputron readies his styluses and moves the cursor down to the comment box, prepared to leave anonymous \u201cconstructive criticism\u201d for EllisonsWife, when he detects a comment with relevant keywords.<\/p>\n

bjornruffian<\/strong>:
\nOkay, I\u2019ve noticed this in several of your fics and I was trying not to be too harsh, but when it got to the kissing scene I couldn\u2019t take it anymore. Cyro can\u2019t touch his nose against anything, because he doesn\u2019t have a nose! Cyro can\u2019t slip his tongue into anyone\u2019s mouth, because he doesn\u2019t have a tongue! Were we even watching the same series?? Did you skip all the parts where Cyro is a metal robot with a cube-shaped head?!<\/p>\n

ellisonsWife<\/strong>:
\nWho are you, the fandom police?? I\u2019m basing Cyro\u2019s design on this piece of fanart (link here) because it looks better than a freakin metal box!! Anyway, I put DON\u2019T LIKE DON\u2019T READ in the author\u2019s notes!!! If you hate the way I write them so much, why don\u2019t you just write your own????<\/p>\n

Computron is incapable of feeling hatred for anything, as that would require Doctor Alquist to have installed emotion circuits during his creation. However, due to Computron\u2019s above-average procedural knowledge, he is capable of following the directions to create an account on fanficarchive.org.\u00a0 p.65-66<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the story is a really funny, deadpan account about Computron\u2019s further online interactions with other fans, attempts at writing fan fiction, and eventual collaboration with a human on a comic book.
\nParts of this are excellent but it comes off the boil a little at the end (and it doesn\u2019t have the \u2018knock it out of the park\u2019 ending I was hoping for). Still, it is a very good piece overall, and deserves its place in the Hugo Award finals.
\nAt Cooney\u2019s<\/em><\/strong> by Delia Sherman is about a woman who travels in time from 1968 (where she has an unrequited love for another woman) to the prohibition era (where she has\u00a0an encounter with a cross-dressing woman).\u00a0This story has some good characterisation and scene-setting but no real plot (she slips back in time and then forward\u00a0again in a fairly arbitrary way).
\nGhost Town<\/em><\/strong> by Malinda Lo (Defy the Dark<\/em>, 2013) is a slightly predictable but effective and atmospheric Halloween ghost story about two young women going to check out a haunted house where two women died. It turns out (spoiler) that McKenzie, the young woman who has invited the narrator, has lured her to a cruel hazing:<\/p>\n

The moonlight shines through the window, which is hung with lace curtains. The room has a rusted metal bedframe in it, the mattress long gone. A chipped pitcher and basin rest on a bureau that\u2019s missing half its drawers. A rocking chair is pushed into the corner, the woven seat eaten through in the center. McKenzie trains her flashlight on the wall over the bed. A word is scrawled there, red letters dripping down the peeling wallpaper.
\nDYKE.
\nA shock jolts through me, hot and cold all at once. I become aware of a dim buzzing in my ears as I stare at the word. The whole effect is, I have to admit, very well done. The drips look just like blood, and it ties in perfectly with the story McKenzie just told me, although I know that the word isn\u2019t about Ida and her maybe-girlfriend Elsie. It\u2019s for me.\u00a0 p. 97-98<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next part of the story shows the narrator turning the tables on her tormentor, and the rest of the narrative telescopes back in time to show the set up.
\nThis is an effective piece until the last few paragraphs which are slightly disorientating (spoiler: after the scene above the narrator takes the tormentor down to the basement where the ghost of one of the women who died in the house delivers an effective scare. However, the last paragraphs show two ghosts in the house, one of who appears hostile to the narrator. This last part somewhat muddies the water.)
\nOne other point: this is the second story in a row about a gay person coming out or struggling to come out. Apart from the fact that there are only so many stories about this subject that anyone wants to read (and I\u2019ve read many more of these than I\u2019m interested in1<\/sup>), why would you put one straight after the other in the magazine?<\/p>\n

The Cover<\/em><\/strong> by Ashley Mackenzie has a neat idea but is, to me, one of the magazine\u2019s blander offerings.
\nThere is the ususal Poetry<\/em><\/strong>. I appreciated the sentiment of Too Much Dystopia?<\/em><\/strong> by Jo Walton, but as a poem I found it a little wooden. I didn\u2019t care for the O\u2019Brien or Trotta poems (I didn\u2019t understand the former), but thought the Garfinkle okay.
\nThe Uncanny Valley<\/em><\/strong>, the editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, starts with a section about the editors\u2019 family\u2019s imminent house move. This is then followed by a page and a half of award wins and nominations for the magazine and its contents (you can barely move for awards nowadays, so a page and a half is pretty concise). The last section is a page of waffle about the contents, but just before that there is this:<\/p>\n

One more thing.
\nFuck Nazis. Fuck racism. Fuck misogyny. Fuck antisemitism. Fuck Islamophobia. Fuck homophobia. Fuck ableism. Fuck all of the fascist white supremacist hate groups and the politicians who represent them, especially the American fascist conman president and his entire corrupt, treasonous regime.\u00a0 p. 8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose the glib response to this is that, yes, moving house can be stressful. More seriously, I find it profoundly depressing to find this kind of partisan political rant in a SF magazine, especially one expressed in such an intemperate and vulgar manner.
\nThe best of the articles is My Voice-Over Life<\/em><\/strong> by Sophie Aldred (perhaps best known in the SF field as the seventh Doctor Who<\/em> companion, Ace), which is an interesting piece about her career as a voice over artist. It starts with this:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved to read stories to her brother. She liked to put on funny voices for all the different characters and found that she was rather good at mimicking accents and odd vocal characteristics. Sometimes her brother would beg her to stop reading as he had had enough; sometimes she listened. The little girl also liked listening to the radio programmes that her Mummy had on in the kitchen while she was making supper for Daddy who came in hungry and tired from the office (it was the 1960\u2019s after all). Although she didn\u2019t understand any of the so-called jokes, she loved a man called Kenneth Williams, whose strangulated vocal gymnastics she tried to imitate, and another one called Derek Nimmo, who you could tell was rather vague and very posh just by the tone of his voice.
\nThere were also some precious LPs for the record player. Johnny Morris read Thomas the Tank Engine<\/em> stories and made up different distinctive voices for all the engines that sounded somehow just as she\u2019d imagined they\u2019d speak. She and her brother practically wore out a series of brightly coloured Magic Roundabout<\/em> 45\u2019s, learning every word to replicate the stories as Florence, Brian the snail, and Dougal the dog, for the delight of Auntie Flo (who smoked 60 a day, had fascinating nicotine stained fingers and a raspy laugh) and Uncle Nigel (who wore a three-piece suit and a gold watch on a chain) when they came for Christmas sherry.\u00a0 p. 112<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This shows that, as well as acting, singing, and directing, she can write as well.
\nThe rest of the articles made my eyes glaze over to a greater or lesser extent. Let Me Tell You<\/em><\/strong> by Cecilia Tan starts with \u201cshow don\u2019t tell\u201d and works its way to imperialism in fiction (I think\u2014with most of these I started skimming); I\u2019m Not the Only One: Why Wonder Woman Doesn\u2019t Need to Stand Alone in Order to Stand Tall<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Kuhn starts with the subject of the title and segues into her Asian American identity. Resistance 101: Basics of Community Organizing for SF\/F Creators and Consumers\u2014 Volume Four: \u201cDon\u2019t Let Him Catch You With Your Work Undone\u201d\u2014Activism for the Long Haul<\/em><\/strong> by Sam J. Miller and Jean Rice has a ridiculously long title which has little to do with the contents (mostly Miller\u2019s interview with another activist, which is little more than a list of political platitudes).
\nChangeable Skins, Consummate Catchphrases<\/em><\/strong> by Sabrina Vourvoulias does not start promisingly:<\/p>\n

I usually find outrage columns super easy to write, and as an older woman who didn\u2019t start writing in speculative fiction until 50, I have a deep well of indignities to draw upon.\u00a0 p. 137<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You cannot conceive of the magnitude of the sigh I\u00a0emitted on reading that.
\nThat said, it turns out to be a piece about ageism that isn\u2019t as bad as those opening lines would suggest, and it was one I could mostly follow, although I\u2019ll have to admit that some of the cultural references (the Overwatch RPG) and the language (\u201cQuiltbag\u201d) lost me (apparently it\u2019s an LGBT+ \u201cco-ordinate term\u201d).
\nOne of the potential problems of us living in our own little echo chambers these days is the development of a specialised vocabulary that outsiders won\u2019t understand, and probably won\u2019t bother to look up.
\nInterview: C. S. E. Cooney<\/em><\/strong> by Julia Rios is a bit off the walls at the start (it’s essentially two friends gibbering at each other) but they eventually calm down and the piece has some useful information about the writer\u2019s other work that encouraged me to seek it out.
\nInterview: Delia Sherman<\/em><\/strong> by Julia Rios goes over the coming out stuff that is in Sherman\u2019s story again<\/u>.<\/p>\n

There is some good fiction in this issue but, as before, the political stuff is a massive turn off (almost to the point of making me avoid further issues\u2014or at least until the temper tantrums are over).\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. This comment applies to all\u00a0solipsistic stories. Everyone has their struggles in this life: I don\u2019t particularly want to read about yours as I am, ironically, more interested in my own.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

Uncanny is available from Google Play<\/a>, Amazon UK<\/a>\/US<\/a>, and Weightless Books<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Other reviews: Greg Hullender and Eric Wong, Rocket Stack Rank Charles Payseur, Quick Sip Reviews Rebecca DeVendra, Tangent Online Various, Goodreads _____________________ Editors, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas; Managing Editor, Michi Trota Fiction: Henosis \u2022 short story by N. K. Jemisin \u2217\u2217 Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand \u2022 short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncanny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-1mS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5324,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5262\/revisions\/5324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}