The Forgotten Ones...
One of my favourite authors of all time is Karin Lowachee, author of a brilliant series of books, Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird. She has also published two short stories (that I know of), one in the anthology Mythspring and one in the anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy.
And I happen to think So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is one of the worst book titles I've ever come across. Really. For one thing, it's a mouthful. For another, it reeks of academic pretensions. (Maybe it was necessary, to get grant money?) You have to decode it to discover the theme of the anthology: Canadian SF with an ethnic slant.
The Karin Lowachee story is The Forgotten Ones. It's beautifully written. It isn't as heavy on plot as her other works, but it's full of mood and tension. It begins: "In the twilight, my brother Hava's eyes glow red."
A few other comments about it:
- This is the only story of Lowachee's I know of to feature a female protagonist and a female point of view. She usually writes about troubled young men. I wondered if this story would be different if the narrator, Ara, were male. I don't think so.
- The story is about identity and perception, especially as they relate to war and fear.
- It's an interesting set-up for a story, but it didn't feel complete in itself. Perhaps if Hava's people had been looking for the secrets of their past, the end would have felt conclusive. As it is, the story felt like a beginning. Is the story a triumph or a tragedy? Am I supposed to be able to tell?
- I particularly loved the references to Ara's unborn children.
- I like the way Lowachee gives significance to visual things: Hava's red eyes, the drawing of maps, the likeness of people in spacesuits to hominoid beetles.
- It's written in the present tense. Normally I don't like that, but perhaps fanfic has inured me. Or perhaps it added to the otherworldly, primitivist mood. It reminded me of one of my favourite short stories, "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet. This story has similar themes, though it isn't exactly post-apocalyptic. Or maybe it is.
Nalo Hopkinson is the co-editor of this anthology, but she doesn't actually have a story in it, which disappoints me. I've been wanting to read her work. She does have some interesting things to say in the introduction: I ... was struggling with what seemed like the unholy marriage of race consciousness and science fiction sensibility.... To be a person of colour writing science fiction is to be under suspicion of having internalized one's colonization. I knew that I'd have to fight this battle at some point in my career, but I wasn't ready.
... What you hold in your hand is the result; stories that take the meme of colonizing the natives and, from the experience of the colonizee, critique it, pervert it, fuck with it, with irony, with anger, with humour, and also, with love and respect for the genre of science fiction that makes it possible to think about new ways of doing things.