In Signs of Life, Sarah Pinsker tells a tale of finding yourself and mending relationships. Veronica Maxwell is a news reporter who hasn’t spoken to her younger sister in over forty years. When she finally plucks up the courage to call her, she is invited to come visit her sister in the county. Slowly, she learns things about her sister that just don’t fit.
Reconciliation plays a dramatic role in this story as the two sisters attempt to move past their contentious history. The task grows ever more difficult, however, as Veronica discovers secrets about herself and her sister that threaten to close the door between them for good.
Pinsker creates an unexpected turn in a story that starts off feeling predictable. It’s rare to read a plot twist that is both strange and shocking, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that very thing in this story. Pinsker wraps everything together rapidly and, in the end, ties it up neatly.
With strong character development and good pacing, the story seems to fly by. “Signs of Life” is a great read, being well reasoned and compelling.
The Cursing of Herman Willem Daendels - A.W. Prihandita
One person can change the world. It’s something you often hear as an inspirational saying, maybe on a fortune cookie. And we tend to believe that. Positive acts can create a ripple effect that can change our world. What we tend to spend less time thinking about is the pessimistic side of that. How much evil can one person spread? And can you trace the evil back to one person, to the root? This is what A. W. Prihandita asks in her short story The Cursing of Herman Willem Daendels. After the death of her son, the main character Ni Darti, wants someone to pay. She goes to a shaman for help enacting a curse, but the shaman needs to know about the soul of the man he is to curse. This story examines the nature of grief, of revenge, and responsibly. As an added bonus it draws a powerful parallel to current political figures. It may just cause you to examine the ripples of your own actions.
CW: Death of a son, a mother’s grief, colonization, slavery, violence
Every Hopeless Thing - Tia Tashiro
Tia Tashiro’s Every Hopeless Thing follows a girl named Elodie in a time where Earth is nothing more than a dead planet. Pollution and ultraviolet radiation has destroyed all traces of civilization, leaving groups of spacefarers. Elodie is a lone traveler, breaking free from the ranks of spacefarers. The only company she has is her skipper, whom she has named Skip. Elodie occasionally lands on Earth to search for artifacts in the hopes of finding something worth selling.
It is during one of these brief trips to the abandoned planet that she runs into a small child. She soon comes to find out that, though it was deemed impossible, people are living under the surface. The child leads Elodie to whole towns underground, kept out of ultraviolet radiation and pollution. Everything changes for the runaway Elodie when she realizes what this could mean.
Throughout the story, there seem to be many ‘hopeless things’ that Elodie encounters. Through Elodie, Tashiro writes about perseverance. Nothing is ever hopeless in Elodie’s eyes, and with her determined attitude, she is able to shed light on things the spacefarers never could have dreamed of.
Much thought has gone into each character in the story, and it seems to pull the reader in with every paragraph. Tashio has created a sensational story in an almost unbelievable future.