TBSFotY vo1 - Miller "Calved"

 The second story in Clarke's "The Best Science Fiction of the Year" is Miller's Calved, which originally appeared in the Sept 2015 edition of Asimov's - you can read the text here.

This wasn't actually my first time reading this story, although I don't recall being as moved as I was with this second reading.

This story is a tragedy par excellence - it seems to literally fit Aristotle's notion that tragedy is the reversal of fortune (in this case, the narrator and his improved relationship with his son being demolished) particularly because of his so called harmartia which is something like a character flaw or a mistake.

The overall effect of the piece certainly evokes pity.

 

I'm not going to recount the details of the story here, you should read it. But I'd like to point out a few things that jumped out as kind of awesome.

First, it's a story about distance and mis(sed)communication. Particularly between father and son, but not only. This shows up at almost every level of the story. Dom, the father, is a kind of climate refugee from New York, with a less than rudimentary grasp of the languages of the space he finds himself in. He orders fries and coffee and is misunderstood. He misunderstands what's going on with his son, why his son is hurting. Ultimately it's misunderstanding and miscommunication that leads to the tragic turn in the story.

Once you start looking for it, it's clear that this is leitmotif. This story is riddled with miscommunication.

What's important here, though, is that at no point is there any trickery - Miller plays it completely straight with the reader - we know what Dom knows. I don't feel duped or lied to. The reversal of fortune is earned, as it were. This is the kind of writing I love. 

Second, I thought Miller did a wonderful job of showing the pain that everyone was feeling, and capturing the dance of emotions involved in strained relationships. Really impressive - the characters, in the short space we have to get to know them, are shown to be complex beings.

Third, the worldbuilding was spectacular. Again, read it.

Forth, the tragedy was foreshadowed brilliantly, and subtly.

Finally, and I think this was an important point -- there's a more general tragic "reversal of fortunes" displayed. The RSR review of this pointed out that this story doesn't necessarily need the "speculative element" and could be written as a straight up literary piece. I agree with that -- however, this misses something important. Dom is a representative of, arguably, the most important city in the world -- which has been absolutely decimated by climate change. I think that this reversal on a grand scale is a useful mirror of the personal tragedy playing out between Dom and his son.

There were two things that struck me as odd, though, about the way this story was told, as much as I enjoyed it. They both have to do with the perspective. The narration is first person, from Dom's perspective. Dom, in his narration, shows himself to be a genuinely intelligent and caring and deep thinker. He just isn't what Thede thinks he is - some macho bonehead. At least, that's the feeling I got reading the piece. There was something odd in the characterization of the act -- the beating of the young man -- that didn't quite work for me. Dom planned it like a sociopath, went out of his way to find a weapon, and then waited 45 minutes in the darkness in order to strike.

I know this was essential, but it was kinda weird when I thought about it.

 Still, I loved the story and thought it was brilliantly done.