[On May 10, 2021 Strange Horizons officially expressed its political support for Palestinian solidarity. The views of Tangent Online reviewers are not necessarily those of Strange Horizons. Fiction critiqued at Tangent Online is, as much as is humanly possible, without prejudice and based solely on artistic merit.]
Strange Horizons, October 7, 2024
“The Aquarium for Lost Souls” by Natasha King
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
“The Aquarium for Lost Souls” by Natasha King is set in a future universe where a ruined Earth has finally been abandoned and the star-travelling survivors dwell in space habitats. We are introduced to the first person female narrator as the only survivor of a serious space-accident. It appears that her spacecraft has had a deeply improbable collision with an ancient space ark from the last inhabited days of the Earth. This ark is an aquarium for otherwise extinct marine species from old Earth, all curated by an apparently sentient AI built with an unusually advanced technology from that long-lost past.
Or perhaps not!
The assumption that this is a simple SF story of physical disaster and heroic efforts leading to a subsequent recovery fails to survive beyond the first paragraph when the reader is informed that this is our narrator’s 95th death aboard this aquarium-ship. Thereafter, the evidence slowly accumulates that our narrator has multiple issues to resolve that are only partly related to the physical situation that she sees around her.
This story is SF, but the true essence of the story could easily have been told in fantasy or mainstream genres with minimal alteration. Both the conceptual framework and the writing style of this story are complex and the editors have included warnings for Abuse, Disregard for Personal Autonomy, Cruelty, Violence and Dysphoria (profound psychiatric unease). It is unlikely to work if your style is to quickly skim-read but may repay the attentions of a slow and careful reader.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for gibbets of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.