Recommended Story: "Special Guest Stars"

The latest issue of Flurb, the SF magazine by Rudy Rucker, is out. It contains a strange and haunting story by Kris Saknussemm about a disease that seems to be the opposite of Alzheimer's, and is brought on by extended lifespan.

The final, locked-in pattern was for a deepening and intensifying of the disparity between the personal relevance of the original source memory and the power and impact of the resulting vision. Usually a particularly sharp disjunction would trigger a dissociative crisis that would precipitate either severe depression or a manic rush of deluded insight, and then the subject would slip irrevocably into a dream loop. To an unaided observer it would appear that the sufferer had become catatonic, but with the benefit of sophisticated brain scan imaging, the truth would be digitally displayed in all its awful glory--the subject would be undergoing a far richer and more involving mental state than any phenomenon experienced prior to the onset of the disease.