A really interesting read. A little hard to follow in places, so maybe it would benefit from being expanded out. Certainly a brilliant set up for a longer book, as well as a decent read in its own right. ( )

Confusing Jimi's Vision
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (August 2021)

so my love Catherina and me
decide to take our last walk
through the noise to the sea
not to die but to be re-born
away from a life so battered and torn....
forever... - Jimi Hendrix (excerpt from the song 1983... A Merman I Should Turn to Be (1968))

2043... , the story, was an expansion on Jimi Hendrix's sci-fi song which imagined a future apocalyptic situation where the characters Catherina and the songwriter escape to a life underwater after being transformed by a "machine." The story version packed in rather too much confusing techno bafflegab and a complicated storyline that was hard to follow.

It still had some lovely nods to its inspiration, including having a Catherina character and a nanotechnology version of Hendrix's "machine."

2043... A Merman I Should Turn to Be is the 3rd of the 6 short stories making up the speculative / fantasy / science fiction series Black Stars, released simultaneously on August 31, 2021 as an eBook by Amazon Originals and as an audiobook by Audible Originals. ( )

Short story. Black Americans using nanotech to become mer-people and live in an underwater city off the coast of the USA, where they are still occasionally subject to attacks from above by white racists. It's an interesting idea but then just peters out, doesn't go anywhere. ( )