“Knitting Weather” – Wendy Nikel
This is a perfect little exemplar of science fiction. It is a precisely-cut, perfect cameo of how modern literary science fiction works, breathes, and executes. If any of your friends ask “what is science fiction?” or, more precisely, “what is short science fiction?” then show them this story. Like it or don’t, they will understand.
The story is about Mary, last resident of Dusty Creek, AZ. Dusty Creek has been slowly clearing out because while cities like Phoenix and Albuquerque can buy weather machines, giving them tourist weather and perfect crop-growing seasons, the pent-up weather dumps on little places who can’t afford their own weather machines. Places like Dusty Creek.
Mary refuses to leave, either in the face of the common sense (which is neither) of the townspeople or the appeals of her Aunt Bea. Mary keeps thinking of her grandmother, the “tornado in size five boots,” what Gran would have done, how Gran would have responded, how Gran would have had the personality and the will to bring the town back from the dead. Gran had helped build this town.
Until Aunt Bea silently reminds her that Gran had come from somewhere else. Mary looks up from her furious, stubborn knitting to look on the photo of Gran and Aunt Bea in the refugee camp, over across the sea, from whence the two women had come to Dusty Creek. She looks down in her hands, at the ugly, too-tight stitches on the sock she’d started, and goes to join Aunt Bea on the road to Flagstaff and a new life.
What I love about this story is twofold. First is that it is a true science fiction story – the story would not work without the super-science of the weather machines wreaking havoc on the American Southwest. Second is that it is a true character story – the turning point of the story isn’t the flipping of a switch or the punching of the one Big Bad, it’s looking at a photograph and realizing the world was bigger than she thought it was. It’s the main character seeing the world differently.
The fact that the details of the photograph require us, the reader, to reevaluate Gran and Mary in the light of the new revelation of Gran’s refugee status is just icing on the cake.
I gave “Knitting Weather” seven rocket dragons when I read it, a rating I dole out maybe once a year. I’m keeping an eye out for Wendy Nikel both in Daily Science Fiction and elsewhere. I can’t wait to see her next story.
Recent Comments