Mysterion, May 2020

“Gordon’s Knot” by Jennifer Milne

Reviewed by Kat Day

“Gordon’s Knot,” by Jennifer Milne, tells the story of a young girl who is gifted a “Time Knot” with the power to turn back time, allowing the user to change one event in their life. A fairly early incident felt rather predictable to me, to the point of being somewhat trope-ish, but the story quickly veered in a different, interesting direction. This tale addresses an interesting philosophical point: we’ve probably all wished we could go back and change a decision we’ve made, and we tend to believe our actions are so pivotal to our own lives that, if we could, it would utterly alter our history. But would it, really? A beautifully-told story with a fairytale quality; this will leave you with lots to ponder.

Kat Day is an associate editor at pseudopod.org, writes a mixture of both fiction and non-fiction, and can be found generally hanging around on social media. You can follow her on Twitter @chronicleflask.