Seeing

Short Story by Genevieve Valentine

Text and Audio from Clarkesworld, read by Kate Baker

A beautiful story about a girl who is basically drafted into becoming an astronaut, on another dying world with a water shortage (same one?) She's a bit of a screw-up, but she goes into space, and ends up part of the crew on a mission to scout a new planet that humanity can colonize as they try to flee Earth.

It is a strange, gorgeous, falling-apart world these characters inhabit, and between that, the descriptions, and the constant parenthetical commentary/foreshadowing/authorial musing, Valentine takes a rather pedestrian (though emotional) Hard SF Fix-this-shuttle-malfunction story and makes it something worthwhile. Not like anything that was being published when these stories were common (or in Analog).

The characters aren't the most well realized, and the plot is nothing new, but this is still a gorgeous little story with a different background (which does help). It's all in the style here though.

3.5 broken fingers out of 5.