Perfect State Annotation Two: Consequences of the Cut Cutting the last scene was not without costs to the story. For the longest time, after removing this scene, something about what remained bothered me. I had trouble placing what was wrong. The story went through editorial revisions and beta reads, none of which revealed what was…

Perfect State Annotation One: Why I Cut the Deleted Scene This story began with the idea of taking some common tropes in science fiction—the brain in a jar, the Matrix-like virtual existence—and trying to flip them upside down. In every story I’ve seen with these tropes, they’re presented as terrible signs of a dystopian existence.…