Diabolical Plots #115, September 2024

“Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade” by Sarah Pauling

“Batter and Pearl” by Steph Kwiatkowski

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

“Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade” by Sarah Pauling takes place in a version of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which humans receive messages from an alien generation starship on its way to Earth. As the title implies, the text consists of letters from schoolchildren to the extraterrestrials. Written from 1967 to 2024, the letters reveal the attitudes of adults and children to the impending arrival of the aliens, and indirectly describe events on the starship.

The author writes convincingly in the style of preteens. By the end of the story, the extraterrestrials will still not arrive for many years; thus, it is really about the children’s response to the situation. There is not much plot, but considerable food for thought concerning the differences between adults and the very young.

In “Batter and Pearl” by Steph Kwiatkowski, the characters make a meager living collecting plastic from a polluted lake. The plot involves a young man who does well enough in school to leave the area for vocational school, and the possibility of discovering the more valuable form of plastic, which might make this separation from his friends unnecessary.

The method of collecting plastic is based on real technology, so the premise is believable. Despite this, the story is somewhat difficult to understand at times, as the characters refer to their activities in slangy terms. (For example, only the author’s afterward makes it clear that so-called b powder is vitamin B, which glows under black light and allows the characters to locate the plastic.) The work can be read as an allegory for the haves and the have-nots, particularly those living in poverty in polluted areas, surviving by scavenging through dangerous refuse.

Victoria Silverwolf notes that both of these stories take place in the upper Midwest of the United States.