{"id":38268,"date":"2025-12-22T16:36:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T21:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=38268"},"modified":"2025-12-24T11:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T16:10:13","slug":"the-touch-of-an-old-friends-hand","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/writing\/short-fiction\/the-touch-of-an-old-friends-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"The Touch of an Old Friend&#8217;s Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As my optimism over the survival of our species has dwindled during these perilous times, I&#8217;ve found it difficult to write fiction which includes hopeful ends for human beings. And so I&#8217;ve found myself writing stories about how robots and artificial intelligences go on without us. That way my tales can reach a happy ending &#8230; if one doesn&#8217;t pause to think about whatever happened to all the people, that is.<\/p>\n<p>The point of view characters of my novella &#8220;The Touch of an Old Friend&#8217;s Hand&#8221; published in the anthology <em>You, Human 2<\/em>, edited by Michael Bailey, are the robotic pets humans built, and illustrate how much they miss us after we&#8217;re gone, and the lives they go on to live without us.<\/p>\n<p>While working my way through multiple possible titles for this piece, I happened upon the great Iris DeMent singing Guy Drollinger&#8217;s &#8220;The Touch of an Old Friend&#8217;s Hand,&#8221; and it clicked. When you read my story, I hope you&#8217;ll agree.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FbFSXhZXuyg?si=5DsLAI6e8OR7zTm0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As my optimism over the survival of our species has dwindled during these perilous times, I&#8217;ve found it difficult to write fiction which includes hopeful ends for human beings. And so I&#8217;ve found myself writing stories about how robots and artificial intelligences go on without us. That way my tales can reach a happy ending [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38269,"parent":13,"menu_order":125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38268","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38291,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38268\/revisions\/38291"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}