Lost and Found

Title: Lost and Found
Author: Sandra McDonald
Published: Strange Horizons, 2003
Genre: Science fiction, short story
Url: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030526/lost_and_found.shtml

Rating: 9/10

Thoughts: I stumbled onto this short story accidentally, looking for some more information about Sandra McDonald. The story is quite short and its premise is that a father of a family builds a search engine. He builds the sort of search engine that finds things in the physical world. "Where are my car keys?", "Where are my stud diamond earrings?" asks the family first. The machine always answers. Eventually the questions become harder, more important, more significant. Until the final question is asked...

The story is really heartfelt and the speculation opens up even more questions than it answers. I like the way the story is written, it plunges the reader into the family atmosphere almost immediately. Overall, a very nice short piece of fiction, I definitely recommend it.