Gilman, Carolyn Ives: The Ice Owl
The Ice Owl (2011)
Written by: Carolyn Ives Gilman
Genre: Novella/Science Fiction
Published by: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
Rating: Good Read
I had to laugh when I read this story on my Kindle. There's a little blurb at the start (the blurb that I imagine was at the start of the story when it was originally published) that stated, Her new F&SF story is set in the same universe as "Arkfall" (which ran in our Sept. 2008 issue), but the stories aren't directly connected. But thank goodness for that teeny disclaimer. It's letting me know there's more in this world if I'm interested, but that it's not necessary to read them in order, and that it's not even a series. So I'm grateful. And I totally want to read "Arkfall" now!
And since I've been complaining of formatting lately, let's get this nitpick out of the way: the italics in the Kindle version of this story are formatted with =these equal signs= around the word or phrase that needs to be italicized. That's just weird no matter what universe you're from! I don't know why that was used to begin with, and I'm sorry it wasn't edited out of my version, but that's a small price to pay and I can deal with it.
So, Carolyn Ives Gilman. Since I've been reading these Hugo-nominated pieces of short fiction, I've made a point to check my tagging system to see if I've read the authors before. Between short story anthologies and the year or so I spent reading the short story mags, there were a LOT of authors I read one time, really liked, and then forgot about. And it turns out Carolyn Ives Gilman is one of those authors. In fact, according to my review of August 2006 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Gilman's story was not only the best of the bunch, but I only liked three out of eight pieces anyway. That was pretty striking to me, especially since that review stated I wanted to read more by the author. Shame on me for not following up. We'll fix that now. :)
I fell hard for this story right from the start, because the opening salvo was perfectly eased me into the world.
The sound started so low it could only be heard by the bones; but as the moments passed the metal city itself began to ring in sympathetic harmony, till the sound resolved into a note -- The Note, priests said, sung by the heart of God to set creation going. Its vibratory mathematics embodied all structure; its pitch implied all scales and chords; its beauty was the ovum of all devotion and all faithlessness. Nothing more than a note was needed to extrapolate the universe.
The Note came regular as clockwork, the only timebound thing in a city of perpetual sunset.
And then we ease into meeting the heroine of our tale:
Her face was turned west, her eyes closed in a look of private exaltation as The Note reverberated through her. It was a face that had just recently lost the chubbiness of childhood, so that the clean-boned adult was beginning to show through. Her name, also a recent development, was Thorn. She had chosen it because it evoked suffering and redemption.
Yeah, I'm totally hooked by this point. I love a story that knows how to make the setting come alive and ties it to its characters in a way that you can't take said characters out without losing something.
And then there's the little science fictional ideas that populate this tale. From the actual city itself "built against the cliff of an old crater" to this wonderful and random nugget:
"My mother got pregnant without my father's consent, and when she refused to have an abortion he sued her for copyright infringement. She'd made unauthorized use of his genes, you see."
We also have a hermaphrodite in the tale, and despite the oh-so-very small role that's played. Edit: Originally, I really liked the gender-neutral pronoun used because I thought it was simple and effective, but it turns out, it's a degoratory term. Not sure what's up with that, as the author has been nominated many times for her feminist work as well as her study in gender. All I can do is assume it's intentional, and that it's not as effective as the author had hoped. Yikes. /edit
Of course, I'm not even talking about the story itself. It's hard to put it into a simple summary, and I don't want to. If I absolutely had to, I'd say a girl in a politically charged town seeks mentor, gets mentors, learns there's more to mentor than meets the eye (no he's not a Transformer), and a bitter and irony backstory unfolds that has potentially electric ramifications on the present.
You guys, it's SO GOOD. It's engaging and heart-breaking and made me wish I had more. The history parallels our own history's darker moments, and casts an uncomfortable light on the subject as well (no, I'm not revealing what and how; I don't want you to be aware of this going into the tale).
I did have some quibbles. Thorn's mom does something really careless in the story, and it bugged me because despite the argument that was had, I never heard Thorn stress the necessary precautions that would've made said careless action REALLY bad. Don't get me wrong, the action was REALLY bad, and it broke my heart to pieces, especially because Gilman writes it so well, but it could have been more powerful. The reader knew how important it was, but we didn't see the mom have the same importance imparted upon her.
I also wanted a slightly different ending. A part of me wanted a happier ending, but that's not to say the ending isn't good. It's to say I was so engaged that I wanted to protect all of these characters and give them a happily ever after. The story didn't give me that, but I don't resent it for that lack, because it never promised an HEA to begin with. But the strength of this story is why I want to read "Arkfall," which is set in the same universe, just to see how the two novellas relate and don't relate. And I really want to start digging up more of Gilman's other fiction.