NYX

Played: 7/27/24
Playtime: 5min, 3/3 endings

Back before the internet enabled pervasive access to, euphemistically, “externally authored texts”, students had to work much harder to find shortcuts for research papers and book reviews. (Well, maybe just ‘harder.’) Cliff’s Notes were the legendary black-and-yellow pamphlet size books of sweet, sweet relief from hundreds of pages of droning on about, I dunno, whaling practices. While indispensable for adolescents that wanted a social life, they could be… clinical. They described plot beats, explained literary flourishes, notable prose characteristics, historical context. Great for impressing English teachers (who, in retrospect, were probably not as fooled as we kids believed). Not so great for actually EXPERIENCING the celebrated prose, thrilling to plot beats, or watching the author’s mind unveiled in its idiosyncratic glory.

NYX is a repudiation of Cliff’s Notes cold distillation. “I’m not gonna EXPLAIN (Spoiler - click to show)Alien to you,” sez NYX. “Imma speed run it for you.” Framed as a last transmission from a doomed spaceship with a single player choice, it packs an entire dramatic arc into an insanely tight time frame, with an earned choice of diverse denouments. To me though, this was not the most interesting thing about it.

I am a fan of this genre, this story’s most obvious inspiration, this subculture, and this author. There was NO chance I wasn’t going to like this. What I found most noteworthy though was the prose. Here’s why. Early on, the protagonist makes the well-known observation ‘we should send poets, not engineers, to space.’ Leaving aside the driveby on engineers there, have you READ THIS AUTHOR BEFORE? I mean, there is no one else I would send into space!! They have got to be on the launch shortlist, once NASA validates the poetry priority. Which made it so impressive to me that the voice for this work was exactly as aliterary as the work claimed. Chameleon-like, the author delivers a protagonist’s voice that is consistently, believably workmanlike and technical, which sold the story that much more solidly. It’s almost unfair and, given how DISTINCTIVE their most flourishing prose is, astonishing it is done this well. So sure, delivers punch in tight package, interesting alternative arcs, bla bla bla. Still, the RANGE of authorial voice is the compelling part. That was my big takeaway.

That, and the importance of self-destruct subsystems.