Reflections on "Acorn, Honey, Fat, and Foxglove"

I recently had a story “Acorn, Honey, Fat, and Foxglove” published at “The Literary Fantasy Magazine”.
It’s a story I’ve been working on since at least 2017. That’s almost nine years.

That’s writing at a pace that William Gass could appreciate.

This should raise a few questions.
Let’s get the most important out of the way - is it the greatest short story ever written?

Answer: hell no. Don’t be stupid, please. Some say it’s Joyce’s “The Dead”, but for my money, it’s either “Victory Lap” by Saunders, “The Specialist’s Hat” by Link, or “The School” by Barthelme. YMMV.

It’s not even my best short story, depending on what dimension you’re using to determine “best” (along almost all dimensions, number of nominations, number of translations, and number of copies - it’ll be my story “Brand new ways (to lose you over and over and over again)”, originally published in Omenana).

What I can say is that it’s by far the most personal story I’ve ever written - and this is one of the reasons it took as long as it did to write, and why, in the end, I had to let it go as it lay.

It’s also, if I’m allowed to choose favourites, the story of mine with the ending that brings me absolute satisfaction. It’s my favourite ending, by far.

The Spark

The story began with a memory I had of living in Heathwood (it’s a real place, https://maps.app.goo.gl/jbh6ZdQZgExnMvqo8). I spent a lot of time alone in this set of flats, walking up and down the stairs, riding the lift, working out little games to occupy the afternoons before my parents came home.
I had a tiny Bart Simpson figurine which I would put into the lift, as though he were riding it, I’d press the button for the lift to go down to the first floor, and I would race it downstairs, me jumping down the stairs like 8 steps at a time.
Back in 2015 or so, I was thinking about this game I’d play, and I imagined how freaky it would be if when I got down to the first floor, that the Bart figurine would be turned to face the direction opposite to how I put him in the lift.

That was the story spark. Imagine that when the lift doors closed, there was something (unspecified) that could interact with stuff I’d put in the lift.

This is actually still a cool idea, and among everything I’ve written, there may be at least one other story here.

Draft upon draft.

I have at least seven quite different versions of this story. All of them involve a building with a hidden floor, a lonely kid, and some interactions between him and something from the “other place”.

The earliest version (and several of the versions) don’t quite specify what kind of things live on the 4th floor - here is the “reveal” at the end of the July 2016 version which was called “Going up to four”:

The door slid open and he heard a shifting or a shuffling, something like sand on paper.
Dan. The voice was high, like a voice from one of his cartoons.
Then it touched him, gently, on his face. A hand, impossibly long, and hot, almost like velvet left in the sun.

The method of communications between these beings and Dan was, initially, just notes left in the lift. Dan would put a note in the lift, and one would come back, until something happens to make him ascend the lift where the invisible floor would be revealed to him (and only to him - we never get to see the creature writing the notes).
In fact, in the version quoted above, Dan can’t see them, the condition of him ascending is that he cannot look at the creatures.

I have an epistolary version of the story which involves another kid who seems to enjoy killing animals, here’s an excerpt

“Is it bleeding?” I ask.
“I think you got it in the back,” said Jeff, not taking his eyes off that bird.
“Give me the knife,” he says. And I do.
He flips it open and the next thing sticks the blade straight into the dove’s wing, right up near where it joins its body. And the bird is now just shaking in the sand, throwing up dust and I tell Jeff to stop it, and so he stands up and stomps on the bird’s head as hard as he can.

Dan and Jeff stop speaking after that and, with that, Jeff leaves my drafts forever.
But this draft is important because it’s the first time that the Angela character (called “Evie” in this draft) makes her debut.

She looks about my age, maybe a little older. Brown hair, cut into this awful bob, and the biggest forehead I’ve ever seen outside an SF movie. 

She obviously changes as the drafts progress, and here Dan is reading, rather than playing handball (we’ll get to that).


We also get the first version of what was to become the story’s proper ending:

I’m not sure what I expected to find, to be honest, but not that. A tiny room, like, maybe the size of a bathroom. There was a small table with some clothes folded on it, including Evie’s dress. A few pairs of shoes on the floor. Then, on the other side of the small room there was another door. That one looked really old. I walked over to that door and pressed my hand up against it. And the wood was freezing and felt kinda brittle, but I pushed and after a bit of sticking, it swung open.
It was another room, a stairwell. And it went up.
Once when I was standing outside school, about to walk home, I saw this girl step into the road and get knocked over by a car. It wasn’t bloody, and she wasn’t badly hurt, but in that moment I heard the tires, I smelled the tires, I saw her head knock against the bonnet, and watched her fly forward into the street, I felt a weird kind of dizziness, like something in the world had cracked for a moment and had leaked out all over normal. Standing at the bottom of those stairs, I felt that same way again. There it was, a flight of stairs, going up into the murky darkness where there shouldn’t, no, where there couldn’t be stairs.

There are several more drafts, including one where the whole story is set at the Four Seasons hotel in Durban, but these become staples. Angela/Evie just butting into Dan’s loneliness, and Dan eventually finding the stairs to wherever it is he eventually ends up.

The final bit was having the adult version of Dan be the one who returns and ascends. This seems to be introduced in an outline sometime in 2017.

Coming together

I think that I was getting close to the version that’s at “The Arcarnist” about two years ago.
I wasn’t writing, and, in fact, had mostly given up the idea that I should be writing, or that I had anything in particular to give to the world, artistically.
I was approached by another local writer who wanted someone to discuss publishing - we have subsequently become great friends - but it was him, and this story, that shook me out of my funk.
He encouraged me to start writing again, and suggested that I should send him something. This was late August 2024, and the story I sent to him was about two drafts off what is now published.
His response was polite and lukewarm, and I got the sense that he was like “oh god, I thought I was meeting with a writer?” but what he got was me and my construction site of a story.

Still, I persisted and started shaping it up into something that I could send out. And it started getting closer and closer to the published version. Even my writer friend seemed to enjoy the newer drafts (much to my relief).

Why so long? Why not longer. Also, a wound.

It’s very difficult not to read a story you’ve written and see only its faults. I have had some good feedback on this piece, and the people who read it and enjoyed it are people who I trust not to mislead me on that. So I won’t speak to what I think the story’s strengths and weaknesses are - I’m far too close for that.

Why, then, does this feel like such an important story for me? Why did I spend so much time on it? Why couldn’t I let it go?

The problem with this story is that it’s far too personal. Dan experiences a break in his life in the exact building that I did. This was the place where my family fell apart.
The drive that Dan’s mother takes him on is the same drive that my father took my sister and I on the morning my parents decided to get a divorce.
I’m not going to dive into the specifics of my life back there - it was different to Dan’s, but the loneliness I describe in the story, the kind of loneliness that makes you willing to believe anything, is something that we share. The story is relentless in its description of Dan’s loneliness, but it’s pretty much as I remember it.

And the fact that this story was so personal, that I was obsessed with paying tribute to what was one of the worst times in my life, something absolutely pivotal to the trajectory of my adolescence was the reason I couldn’t actually bring myself to commit to the story, to finish it, or to put it away.

And it was getting in the way. There were times I would sit to write, and the only thing that would come into my head was this story about ascending to the fourth floor. It completely sapped my ability to think of anything new.
 

I had to finish this story to write anything else. So I had to commit to some shape. I had to get this story out somehow.

Why this shape?

The reason why this shape is simple. It was the closest thing I had to being complete.
The problem with being a writer is that we have this platonic ideal of what we could produce, and anything that we do write tends to pale in comparison to this imagined piece of work.
Maybe this is just me?

So I had the shape, but needed to flesh it out. So I started digging in.
I knew I wanted to write a fairy story. So there’s a lot there if you look for it (which isn’t surprising, since it’s subtitled “a fairy story”). It’s also partly a kind of reverse Alice story, so you’ll find that in there too.
Perhaps the most prevalent theme is that of reflection, the story is dripping with the notion of reflection. This is everywhere in the story. Look out for it if you manage to read it.

Ultimately, it has this shape because this is the shape that was closest to hand. It was the shape that would get me submitting the thing and out of my head.

They say that sometimes you must kill your darlings. But sometimes you must just dress them up and get them the hell out of your life. Which is what I did with this story, with this version of this story.

It is a good lesson, though - how obsession isn’t always the best guide to what you should spend your time on, or that people will necessarily connect with what you’ve done with that obsession.
 

Conclusion, and where to from here?

So a few important lessons came from this.

First, other than this opening up my writing again, it turns out that there’s another story that mirrors it, of which this is just a tiny part. The father, unnamed and a monster in this story, is the protagonist in another much longer story that explores his trauma and the world of the fourth floor in far more depth (although it doesn’t take place there).

Second, I learned a fair amount about what works and what doesn’t in a longer piece. This was the first piece I’d really written and finished at the 5K length, which is a step change from what I’ve primarily written in the past (1000-3000 words). I learned a fair bit about structuring a longer piece and it seemed to have broken me through to a new space, since basically everything I’ve written since has been closer to 5k than flash. Still, this means I have much more to learn - there are pacing issues that can creep in at these longer lengths that I’ve never had to deal with before.

Finally, it gave me my favourite ending I’ve ever written. I’ve not really played with modulating language to this extent before, and not in a way that mirrors form. As Dan is ascending in the lift, his language is literally ascending too - compare the two paragraphs from the beginning and ending of the final scene, it begins:


It’s funny what we remember and what we don’t. As I stand here I can swear that there was never a button for the fourth floor in the lift’s control panel. But here it is, clear as anything. One, two, three, four. I don’t know how I could’ve missed it?


And ends:

There is no answer and no echo. But then, I think I hear something, perhaps feet shuffling on stone, much, much further above me. Maybe the whisper of a hand poised above strings, the moment before the music begins.
“Tell Dad, tell everybody. I’m here.”
There is the slightest breeze. Redolent of flowers and rain.
There’s no more reason to wait.
I put my foot on the first step and start to climb.


 

2025 Roundup

I think it's probably a good sign that I'm writing this follow up to last year's post, despite there being only a couple posts in between the two on the blog. But the distance in centimeters between these two posts on the page mirrors the compression of time between the end of 2024 and 2025. It feels as though only a moment has passed. A few words, a few thoughts, some awkward shuffling and there it is, the year is done.  

Biggest news

House 

We managed to buy a house. It's a big deal, since we've been saving for close on a decade for it. It's terrifying, to be honest. Owing the bank so much money, in a world that seems on edge the whole time, working in an industry (software) that is actively trying to automate itself out of existence (hello genAI).

 

This, essentially, took up the bulk of my extra cycles for the first part of the year - it was a nightmare of admin and organization. Buying property in New Zealand is not easy or cheap or pleasant and I'm still unsure if it was the right decision, but assuming I can pay the mortgage for the next decade and a half, we'll at least have some kind of asset of worth.

 

Writing 

 

Despite being caught up with the house, I did manage to get some writing stuff done.

Perhaps the biggest is that a translation of my story "Brand New Ways" appeared in Science Fiction World's November "translations" issue. "Science Fiction World" is, by numbers, practically the biggest SF magazine on the planet - so this is likely the biggest publication I'm ever going to get. This was quite cool, if I do say so myself.

 

 

My story "Sulky" was recorded by "Tales to Terrify" and appeared as a reprint at HAWKEYE.

And I have, as of the last count, five new stories forthcoming in 2026.

Reading

My reading started strong this year and fell off fast around June.

I think that my favourite reads from 2025 were probably

 

Liberation Day - George Saunders

 

I absolutely adore Saunders, and while this wasn't (for me) his strongest work (nothing has quite reached the sublime heights of Tenth of December), the titular novella and "Love Letter" were really, really strong pieces. Perhaps the latter, though, only seems strong because it's so timely. Either way, it sticks out on reflection. When this historical moment is passed, I hope it'll seem to be only a period piece (and yet ... and yet ... there are always wolves).

 

Thinking in Systems - Donella H Meadows

   

This was something of a surprise to me. It was a recommendation from a speaker at the Auckland Cloud Native Summit and, honestly, I thought that it was going to be another stupid business book - but honestly, the concepts and, importantly, the mode of thinking (i.e. systems thinking) demonstrated in the book are massively insightful. I'll be looking into systems thinking more in 20206. A wonderful read. 

Last year's goals

 Let's recap 

 

Pick up at least two technical certifications in areas I'm not familiar with

 

While I didn't do this per se, I think I (arguably) made some progress here. I spent some time this year considering what the highest ROI for studying might be and I settled on finance.

Finance is interesting because it it weirdly interdisciplinary - drawing on accounting, economics, decision science, mathematics, etc. It's also useful in a bunch of contexts - from personal finance through to corporate decision making.

Here I took Massey University's "Finance Fundamentals" (essentially their finance 101) - and it was fantastic.

 

I'm also (currently, over summer school) doing their "Economics for Business" course, which isn't quite as deep as their finance course, but I'm learning a fair amount (although I would've liked it to have been more rigorous and mathsy).

 

So I'll take this as a win, even if it's not technically what I set out to do.

 

Write my Grade 5 Guitar Exam

 

Nope. I barely played music this year.

 

Record an EP with my daughter

 

Weirdly, I actually did this. We participated in February Album Writing Month, and while we didn't get 12 songs done, we did enough to be considered an EP.   

 

Write at least five new short stories

 

Indeed I did! I don't have the exact count, but it's about seven in total, including those I immediately trunked. 

 

Next year's goals

 Writing

In terms of fiction, I'd like to write three or four new stories next year. I realize that that's likely my limit in terms of putting out work that I'm actually happy with. Every time I've tried to push more words than that, I've ended up writing what I consider facile.

Further, on these three or four stories, I want to focus on rewriting and reworking them until they're as polished as I can get them. I want to seriously raise the bar for myself this year by producing logically consistent, emotionally satisfying, and (above all) compelling fiction.

 

There have only been a few times when I've written something where I can truly say "this is complete, this is good" - I'm going to chase that feeling where I can find it.

 

I also want to seriously start writing philosophy related posts here on my blog. I have a number of areas I need to dig into (philosophy of economics, cog.sci, philosophy of management, computer science, etc.) and without recording them, without going through the act of writing down the chains of thought, I'm losing so much of what I'm thinking to time (and, if writing is thinking, I'm losing the opportunity to think deeper).

 

Physical

Since around 2018/2019 I have tried to live healthy, to be fit, eat well. For the most part it has worked - even during covid, I only put on a little weight, but I (mostly) stayed the course. This year, for whatever reason, I fell off the wagon hard. I'm ending 2025 not feeling good about where I am, health wise. My eating devolved to where it was pre-2019 (well, not quite as bad), and my volume of exercise has dropped to about half of where it was at its peak.

Exercise is easy - I love exercise and always have. It's just about making time, and getting over my low grade anxieties about getting to the gym.

Eating is not as easy - I have struggled with overeating since I was a little kid and struggle to this day. It's entirely akratic behaviour, and makes me unreasonably angry at myself. Honestly, these drugs that target GLP-1 seem to me to be something like a miracle - I'm not considering using them (I would, if there were no other option), but the fact that we have something now that can (seemingly safely) address this is just astonishing.

Sans drugs, though, I am planning on controlling my diet more strictly in 2026. It's something I have to do for my long term health, as well as fitting back in my jeans (I refuse to pay for a new wardrobe!)

 

Education

One of the reasons I started looking into studying finance and economics is to broaden my knowledge of things. I'm sceptical of the extreme claims made by AI hype-bros, but I can still see that these technologies are transformative for a large swathe of the work done by programmers. I think there are a number of positives here, especially if we focus on being more ambitious, rather than using these tools to eliminate workers, there's a lot of potential here (as well as DANGER - which I'm sure I'll be thinking and writing about this coming year as well).

But it seems prudent for someone like myself, a programmer first and foremost, to become informed about other fields outside that which they're specialized in in order to become more ambitious.

So I will do more serious learning in economics, finance, and mathematics - all at Massey again. This year I go into intermediate classes, so this is where things start becoming really interesting, I hope.

 

Finally, I'm going to spend some time digging into areas of engineering I'm not yet familiar with. I'm not going to commit to any one thing, but rather, simply say that I'm feeling positive I'm going to learn some cool stuff this year and will try and record it all here. 

 

Signing off

I'm not aiming for anything big in 2026 - but I hope that, if nothing else, I can be more open to the world, to friends and neighbors, than I was in 2025. This year felt lonely, and it was nobody else's fault than my own.

Writing this, being as open as I can, is my first step. 

The automation of work and the meaning of life

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that superintelligence is around the corner and it doesn't kill us? Let's say that what we see, rather, is the end of work. The end of the need for human involvement in scientific discovery (since the machines do it so much better than we do, and anyways, we couldn't understand what they're on about after a certain point, surely?). Let's say that our every need is met, instantly, and completely.

 

Then what?

 

Is that the end of human striving? The end of meaning? Where are we to find meaning when there is nothing left to explore, nothing left to discover?

I think that this worry betrays a staggering lack of imagination. 

 

There are at least two responses to this that we should take seriously (and these are just off the top of my head, so I imagine that there are far more available when we sit and really dig into the question).

 

First - this isn't new, or at least, some version of this isn't new.

Consider the Buddha before he left home - a prince who had every luxury, no material need unmet. And yet there was still something to accomplish - namely, he needed to address the question of his own existence (and through that, the question of all being, so to speak). This wasn't something that simple knowledge could address either - it's a strange mix of knowledge and subjective experience that has to be seen to be understood. This question is always with us, regardless of our environment - and in an environment of plenty, this question comes into even sharper relief than when we have to busy ourselves with attending to basic necessities.

 

Second - when there's no possibility of discovering first, there is still the pleasure of understanding and, through understanding, the perfection of the self. Yes, sure, it must be a really cool feeling to be the first to explore a new field, discover a new theorem, etc. But the majority of humanity has never done this, has never even considered the possibility of this. Most people are probably not even equipped to undertake such work, especially in the furthest reaches of mathematics and physics.

Still, there's work to do - and it has to do with the self. We can imagine new ways for us to live, lean into our particularities, our peculiarities. Our subjectivity is still wide open, regardless of how far AI pushes into areas of external exploration.

 

When all the work is done, there is so much more work left to do. And, arguably, what's left is the most important work there is. 

2024 Roundup

 Every year, I read Fogus' "The best things and stuff of 20XX" posts.

I think they're a fantastic way of rounding out the year, and I've always meant to do something like that. So I'm going to give it a go this year and, hopefully, turn it into a tradition - a way of reflecting on the year, and setting myself some goals.

This year will be a little thin, I suppose, for a number of personal reasons. But that's okay, 2025 is already looking to be, potentially, a lot better.

Best book read

Last year, by far, the best thing I (re)read was John Crowley's Little, Big. I'd been following the publication of the Little, Big 25th anniversary edition since, well, since its inception.

When I first discovered it, I was mostly broke and lived in a place where you could almost guarantee it wouldn't be delivered. Now, after like 15 years, I'm not as broke anymore, and live in a country with a pretty reliable postal service. So when it was finally released, I got myself a copy of this edition of the book.

Pictured here are the 2nd and 3rd copies I have of Little, Big, the first of which I gifted to a very good friend of mine years ago (I also have a kindle version, and the Audible version, Narrated, gorgeously, by Crowley himself).

It's interesting reading a book 15 years after the first reading of it. I thought I remembered it so well, and yet it felt as though I'd never ever picked it up before in my life. I remembered snatches of story, and certain particular lines, but the story as a whole eluded me. Reading it now, having a family, being older, etc. I felt so much more resonance with the story as a whole, I believe, than the first time I read it. Further, the ending ... what an ending. Stunning.

Best podcast

This is a tough one. I listen to two podcasts regularly, Chess Journeys (tales of adult improvement), and Very Bad Wizards.

 

As much as I genuinely love listening to the endlessly fascinating variations of how people got into chess, how they train, what their hopes and goals are (it's a wonderful podcast, and I highly recommend it) - I have to give  this to Tamler and Dave.

VBW is really listening to two really smart guys talking about cool shit like film and books and papers. I never get the sense that they're arguing in bad faith, or think that they're better than anyone. And they're funny, really funny.

More than once I've been running, listening to their podcast, and one of the guys will say something that makes me laugh out loud, and giggle spontaneously for the next half a kilometer.

Writing roundup

After, literally, years, I've started writing again. And this has been a really interesting year.

So - first. There was actually a pretty big publication. A comic/graphic novel of my story "Brand new ways (to lose you over and over and over again)" came out in October.

It's in Italian, so I can't read it - but it's pretty.

Let's just give a set of numbers for the rest, though:

 

Short stories sold: 3 (2 of them reprints)

Short stories written: 3 (none sold)

Novels written: 0

 

Goals for 2025

• Write at least five new short stories
• Write my grade 5 guitar exam
• Record an EP with my daughter
• Pick up at least two new technical certifications in areas I'm unfamiliar with.
   

Notes on Todd May's "Should we go extinct"

 I just finished reading Todd May's short book "Should we go extinct: a philosophical dilemma for our unbearable times", and thought it would be useful to me, if nobody else (really, this is just for me) to write up a short reflection before I forget everything.

It's the kind of book that one might consider to be "pop philosophy" - in the sense that, there are arguments presented, but they're not particularly rigorous. I'd love to read some of his other work on this.

The question is important, and it's an important enough question to merit this kind of treatment. The more people thinking about this, the better.

 There's a lot of focus on what we might consider environmental philosophy, or at least the kind of philosophy focused on our relationship with the environment. This seems reasonable, but it's pretty narrowly focused, and I would've liked to have seen a broader treatment.

 Given it's length, and how entertaining it is, I'd recommend the book for anyone looking for a philosophical beach read.

Things I took from the book

I think his discussions of utilitarianism and happiness in general was useful. He revisits pretty well trodden discussions about the deficits of utilitarianism generally, about how it's not obvious how we're supposed to trade off the experiences of happiness of animals (which, arguably, are of a "lower" type than those available to humanity) with ours. 

1. I do think, though, that the absolute horrors of factory farming should be enough to shock us out of our moral stupor. This is probably what I was missing from the argument - a discussion of our moral emotions (and not just because it's my interest). We should be disgusted by this.
2. To my mind, it's not really a question (or not only a question) of weighing happiness vs suffering, but rather the question of whether there's kinds of suffering that we inflict that are such that we should be ashamed of our existing. The horrors that we inflict on all animals, our environment, etc. are important.
3. I don't think that May is unaware of this though, I think it's probably a harder argument to mount in some ways. In fact, I think what I'd like to see is something that he'd likely consider as one of the ways in which we shouldn't approach the question. Still, I'd have liked to have seen more made about the question of what kind of animal we are, given we are so happy to exist in a world in which this kind of thing happens. 

 

 I also thought that he could have given a little more attention to human suffering. The kinds of evils we visit on each other, the casual violence and racism, war, indifference, etc. that's so prevalent in humanity. Still, perhaps he doesn't need to deal with this to make his case. But for me, the nature of humanity seems to be the most important thing when it comes to the question of whether or not we should continue to exist. This is related to my point above, of course, and may count as a way we "shouldn't" argue this question, according to May. Still, it's the thing that bothers me.

His discussion about Love is fascinating - different philosophical accounts, and the question of whether love would exist without humans (seems it would, given the evidence). I'd really love to dig into this a little more.

The other thing I'd like to look at is Samuel Scheffler's work on "Death and the Afterlife" - really about the significance of the continuing of humanity past our own lives, and the significance of that. If I recall correctly, Scheffler's argument suggests that the value we find in our own life is somehow contingent (or made more valuable) by the notion that there will be ancestors - that we fall in a continual chain of humanity. Something May doesn't seem to address is the kinds of continuity that might follow us and the significance that has to our lives we live now. If I know that the future will hold a utopia where all humans populate the universe Star Trek style, benevolently exploring the stars etc. etc. I will feel like the value of my own life is bolstered by such a future. But if I extrapolate from what I see now, that's certainly not the future I imagine. The character of our descendants have to matter to us.

Perhaps this last point isn't fair - he kind of does deal with this, just not in the way I would. He speaks of "attitude" of future generations - that is, it seems more justifiable for humans to continue to exist if these descendants have the "right attitude" - that they are stewards to nature, care in the right ways etc.

TBSFotY vo1 - McGuire "Hello, Hello"

 Seanan McGuire's "Hello, Hello" was initially published in the 2015 anthology "Future visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft". The text is helpfully online at Lightspeed.

I don't have very much to say about this piece, to be honest. It's not that it has anything wrong with it, I think it's a perfectly good bit of science fiction, it's more that it doesn't have the same kind of emotional resonance than some of the other pieces in the book so far. 

I do think that it presents domestic very well - I recognize a lot of what's presented as being absolutely true. That's really good stuff.

I do think I learned something from it though - there's a kind of magic to the mystery at the heart of the story (which I can't summarize without spoiling the story). Part of what makes the story interesting is the mystery that needs to be solved - but, something for writers to keep in mind is that a story that relies on this kind of reveal, where does the re-readability come from?

In McGuire's story, I think there's some compelling family dynamics that might be cool to revisit, but I'm less likely to reread it than I am Miller's "Calved" or even Shoemaker's "Today I am Paul" where the personal is, at least in my reading, explored in a much deeper way.

This may be, though, because what we're presented with in these two other stories are families at a crisis point -- whereas the family in "Hello, Hello" is actually pretty well adjusted.

TBSFotY vo1 - de Bodard "In Blue Lily's Wake"

 Aliette de Bodard's "In Blue Lily's Wake" appeared in the 2015 anthology Meeting Infinity (ed. Strahan). The text is available to read at Uncanny.

The story is, roughly, that a young girl takes a journey on a so-called "mindship" knowing that she's infected with a disease, the "blue lily" of the title (after the bruises that bloom on the bodies of the infected). In doing so, she knowingly risks the lives of the humans on the ship, but what she (and humanity in general) doesn't know is that mindships are also able to be infected.

Almost everyone, including the ship succumbs to the disease. 

The girl, Tich Tim Nghe, who has the ability to see alternate realities, devotes her life to helping others relieve themselves of the burdens of their pasts, while at the same time, being trapped in her own. Her guilt at what she did making herself a prisoner on the dead ship, she being her own jailer, refusing to consider a life outside of what she's done.

The other strand of the story is that of Yen Oanh, a member of an organization devoted to researching/understanding blue lily, on the one hand, and providing support to victims of the disease on the other. They are a kind of one-stop-shop though, seeming to also have a policing aspect to them.

She has returned to the mindship's corpse 11 years after the first time she was there. Yen Oanh was, at the time of the mindship's death, deeply affected by all the death she saw around her -- and because of her perspective at that time, when she could have helped Tich Tim Nghe by offering her comfort and support, she chose not to, as she saw the girl as deserving of punishment, or at least guilt, given the fact that she knowingly boarded the ship with the disease, and was therefore responsible for the deaths of the crew and the ship itself.

Yen Oanh is, herself, like Tich Tim Nghe, haunted by the past -- now, 11 years after she refused to help the young girl on the ship, she has returned to provide solace, or comfort, or the truth.

The truth being that without the girl getting on the ship while infected, there would be no vaccine for blue lily -- despite the fact that she had inadvertently killed the passengers and ship, this also prevented the death of countless others.

The story is really about two characters, both haunted by the past - both needing to make things right.

What I thought, what worked, what I learned

I've yet to isolate it, but there's something about the prose that I find difficult to parse. To be clear, this isn't that I didn't like the writing, it's genuinely beautiful, but there was something about it that my brain found difficulty in parsing. It may have been the unfamiliar world, but I had to slow down to really understand what was going on. It also didn't help me (again, this is actually not a criticism) that there were multiple realities and memories all swirling together in the text.

BUT, I took this effect to at least be intentional - the "delirium" -- actually the seeing of alternate realities -- that blue lily victims suffer is also characterized by this kind of shifting.

What I learned from this story, though, and what really impressed me was that every single thing that was said about the world felt like it was justified by a world that was fully realized.

I felt as though de Bodard has justifications for everything they said, regardless of whether the justification appeared in the text or not.

That may have also partly explained my initial feeling of the text resisting me - perhaps something like the feeling I get when I'm reading history. Here is a real world, with substance and culture, etc.

Once I "got into it" things started going a lot smoother for me.

Brilliant piece of fiction - I'd love to read more of this world.