REVIEW: “A Vision” by Art Ó Riain

Review of Art Ó Riain, “A Vision” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 233-237 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story, originally written in Irish and newly translated by the editor, is ostensibly a story of the Professor and a new-fangled device that he has modified so that “you can see anything you want” through it now. His friend, the narrator, is the first to see the results.

But the story is less about the technology and more about…I guess I’d describe it as being about the futility of life. That no matter how far we move forward, we always come back to where we began. It’s the circle of life, but not in an uplifting, positive, Lion-King sort of way.

(Originally published in 1927.)