#371, December 15, 2022“Half-Spent Was the Night” by Gretchen Tessmer
“On the Way Home” by Laine Perez
Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf
Two stories that resemble mainstream fiction, but with greatly different narrative styles, appear in this issue.
In “Half-Spent Was the Night” by Gretchen Tessmer, a married couple and their infant child have escaped a spell cast by the mother’s brother, who died as he cursed the land to extreme cold. Now, in a safer place but one still deep in winter, they wonder if spring will ever return. The father shows his wife an extraordinary natural phenomenon.
The question of whether winter will end is never resolved, nor is the mother’s concern that her brother’s evil will pass down to her child. What the man shows the woman does not involve magic in any way, and many readers will have observed it for themselves.
The story is beautifully written, with extraordinarily vivid descriptions of the bleakness of the winter landscape and the glory of the natural phenomenon. However, one might wish for more of a plot. Nearly the same tale, which is little more than an anecdote, could be told without any fantasy content.
“On the Way Home” by Laine Perez features three main characters. The first is a woman whose mother, a healer, has recently died. The second is a widowed man who builds and repairs robots. The third is a robot that the man gives to the woman to aid in her daily tasks. The woman brings the robot to the man every day to return the favor, and it goes back with her every night. This daily ritual brings the two humans closer together.
The text is written in very simple language, and takes place in a setting that would not be out of place in a fairy tale, despite the science fiction premise. As with the first story in this issue, it would be possible to imagine a very similar plot without the speculative content. The robot might be replaced by a human servant that the man hires for the woman, for example. In any case, the resulting work is charming and makes for pleasant reading.
Victoria Silverwolf showed up for work at the wrong place this morning.