Ryman, Geoff: "What We Found"
What We Found (2011)
Written by: Geoff Ryman
Genre: Short Story/Science Fiction
Published by: Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Rating: Excellent
I read this a week ago and made the mistake of not writing up my review right away. At the time, I was so thrilled to have pretty much all of my reviews planned for the week that I didn't think it'd be a big deal. Trouble is, I never did get around to writing the review until now, so a bit too much time has passed for me to be appropriately critical.
But the truth is, even after reading this story, I didn't have a lot to say about it. It's an excellent piece, and it's made it difficult to decide which novelette I'll vote for in the Hugos: this or Charlie Jane Anders' "Six Months, Three Days," which is also fabulous. I may need to re-read before submitting my final ballot.
"What We Found" isn't my first story by Ryman. I've read his work in the past, discovered him through short fiction magazines and short story anthologies. I've even got a novel of his waiting and languishing in the TBR, and it's a novel I look forward to. "What We Found" is probably the favorite of his that I've read so far. The ideas fueling the tale, the way the narrative goes between the here and now and what used to be, and the writing style is just utterly engaging. Most of my notes were highlights of passages with the simple notation of "good." Let me share those with you, especially since this is the one story that isn't available for free online:
I can't sleep because alone in the darkness there is nothing between me and the realization that I do not want to get married.
We learn why as the story unfolds. Here are some more excellent passages:
The night bakes black around me.
Love this description to pieces.
My great-uncle Jacob -- it is a common name in my family -- repaired cars with the patience of a cricket, opening, snipping, melting, and reforming.
Passages like the one above is what elevates some writers over others. Because that's just one of those descriptions that is so keen, so vivid, and yet so different. It's one of those that's so good I wish I'd thought of it first.
And here, we get to the crux of the story, the science fictional-ness of it all:
These equations described, he said, how the act of observing events at a quantum level changed them. He turned the page. Now, he said, here is how those same equations describe how observing alters effects on the macro level.
He had shown mathematically how the mere act of repeated observation changed the real world.
In layman's terms, Ryman boils it down to this:
People needed to know why everything was shifting, needing to explain both the climate-change debacle and the end of miracles.
Simply put, science found the truth and by finding it, changed it. Science undid itself, in an endless cycle.
Some day the theory of evolution will be untrue and the law of conservation of energy will no longer work. Who knows, maybe we will get faster than light travel after all?
And now to make it personal:
I think of my future son. His Christian name will be Raphael but his personal name will be Ese, which means Wiped Out. It means that God will wipe out the past with all its expectations.
If witchcraft once worked and science is wearing out, then it seems to me that God loves our freedom more than stable truth. If I have a son who is free from the past, then I know God loves me too.
I love how this story takes a single thing, the Observer Effect, and crafts a family tale that is so closely linked to the science explored in the story. A tale that explains why the old ways of magic no longer work, why some studies can't be duplicated, and what it means for the personal life as well as the world and universe at large. I can see why this won the Nebula.