Terraform, February 2, 2015

“Gynoid, Preserved” by Malon Edwards

Reviewed by Martha Burns

Malon Edwards‘s “Gynoid Preserved” is taut, evocative, and showcases what short speculative fiction does that long-form speculative fiction and mimetic fiction cannot. First, the plot: a grieving mother brings her daughter back to life with the help of cutting-edge technology. Her mother can afford to do this once, but to keep using the expensive technology to keep her daughter alive, she needs to resort to crowd funding. When the project isn’t funded, the daughter faces both her own passing and her parents’ grief. What makes the story so strong is the sense of the uncanny it evokes. Our culture’s inability to accept death is more than just a tad disturbing, yet that’s hard for us to experience, yet we, in effect, create zombies when we fight so hard against a natural process. Mimetic fiction cannot achieve that sense of the strange because, well, there are no zombies. Long-form speculative fiction develops character and setting. It is not a one trick pony, so that pointed sense of the uncanny is not available in the longer forms, but there is something to be said for the right pony performing the right trick. Highly recommended.