Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

Gillian writes a couple of months ago about an idea for a science fiction story she wanted to write: “I hadn't thought about this story of mine in a while, but it came up the other day. I was thinking about how easy it is to remove people from your life who are making you unhappy. Disregarding family and workmates, it's not all that much effort to just stop seeing some people. It's almost too easy, in fact. You could push out everyone.”

I've written this elsewhere, though I forget where, so here also works: in the science fiction I've read, the science was just the plot device. Authors whose work is arguably science fiction include Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke, and Cory Doctorow—which is pretty limited considering the amount of good science fiction I haven't read, and skewed 100% towards male writers—and only with Clarke and Asimov were attempts to predict a future more obvious than the others and with Doctorow technology takes center stage, but human drama is still pretty important. Adams was a comedy writer, Asimov (at least with the Foundation trilogy I read) wrote about politics, Heinlein about sex and politics.

Gillian's unwritten story—though her article about it works as a sort of post-modern short-story told from the perspective of the author writing it—the science (or the unlikely ability to make those one touches disappear) is the device she uses for commentary about how easy or hard it is to end friendships or acquaintanceships. In a follow-up, she writes about how hard it was and how easy it now is for her.