You Have Arrived at Your Destination

by Amor Towles

eBook, 54 pages

English language

Published Sept. 17, 2019 by Amazon Original Stories.

ISBN:: 978-1-5420-0434-3
ASIN:: B07VBCYTGR
Goodreads:: 49665863

(38 reviews)

Nature or nurture? Neither. Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.

When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Amor Towles’s You Have Arrived at Your Destination is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

2 editions

Martijn Reintjes reviewed You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles (Forward Collection, #4)

Review of 'You Have Arrived at Your Destination -- Private Edition' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

How much say should we have in shaping our offspring?
We are now able to tweak genes, so designer babies are an option.
But what if you could choose your child's whole life by combining genetic engineering and big data statistics?
What line is the one that is too far?

~~

our genes don’t merely express who we are. They contain all manner of talents from previous generations that we may not benefit from personally but that can be passed on to our progeny.

AJ Kerrigan reviewed You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles (Forward Collection, #4)

Review of 'You Have Arrived at Your Destination -- Private Edition' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Amor Towles was not on my radar, but after reading this I want to hear more from him. Sci-fi short stories can be heavy on ideas at the expense of characters - not the case here!

Jonathan Arnold reviewed You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles (Forward Collection, #4)

Review of 'You Have Arrived at Your Destination -- Private Edition' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Another novella in the Audible / Amazon Kindle "Forward" series, this one tells the story of a man who is getting the spiel from an artificial insemination tech lab. And it surely is advanced! His wife has already picked out 3 possible "futures" for their child, all of which actually weigh pretty heavy on our protagonist.

A story that was interestingly written and excellently narrated but, in the end, I have no idea what it means. It's funny - there was a point where it seemed like a perfect spot to end on a cliff hanger and I was saying "Noooo, you can't end there - I don't know what it means!" and then I was happy there was another chapter. Unfortunately, that chapter only made things more confusing! I hope someone can explain it to me some day.

So more of a 3.5 star story, but I will round up because it was well written. I really need to get to Towles' [b:A Gentleman in Moscow|34066798|A Gentleman in Moscow|Amor Towles|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551480896l/34066798.SY75.jpg|45743836]. It's been at or near the top of my "Must Read" (as opposed to the 1500 Want To Read) books for a while now. And this does make me want to read it even more, so that's worth .5 star, right? Still feels bad taking credit for a "book" read for this, but you get some gimmes and you work through some monstrosities, am I right?

unsquare reviewed You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles (Forward Collection, #4)

Review of 'You Have Arrived at Your Destination -- Private Edition' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I’m not sure what to think of the Forward Collection so far. This is the second story I’ve read from the collection, and although it was perfectly cast with David Harbour as the audiobook narrator, there wasn’t a whole lot to the story.

The narrator goes to an advanced fertility clinic that provides extrapolated dramatized versions of his potential child’s future life (warts and all), but it doesn’t go well, as you might have guessed.

The most interesting thing about this story is the idea of extrapolated futures based on genetics, but it doesn’t come to any conclusions about this development more complex than “that would be bad”, which is a song as old as science fiction.