Ghostweight

Last updated

"Ghostweight" is a 2011 science fiction novelette [1] by American writer Yoon Ha Lee, first published in Clarkesworld Magazine #52 (January 2011). [2] An audio version read by Kate Baker is also available. [3]

Contents

Plot summary

It is a story of Lisse, a girl from a ruined world who steals a war spaceship to seek revenge. She is from the people who carry (and communicate with) actual "ghosts" of their ancestors (the tradition called "ghostweight"). [4]

The philosophy and the plot of the story are closely associated with origami. Origami serves as a metaphor for history: "It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth." [5] A major element of the plot is the weaponry called jerengjen of space mercenaries, which unfold from flat shapes: "In the streets, jerengjen unfolded prettily, expanding into artillery with dragon-shaped shadows and sleek four-legged assault robots with wolf-shaped shadows. In the skies, jerengjen unfolded into bombers with kestrel-shaped shadows." The story says that the word means the art of paper folding in the mercenaries' main language. In an interview, when asked about the subject, the author says that he became fascinated with dimensions after reading the novel Flatland . [6]

Reception

The story was a finalist of the 2012 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award nominations. [7]

It was nominated for 2012 Locus Awards [1] and received honors of 2014 Carl Brandon Awards. [8]

It was selected by Gardner Dozois for The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection .

The story was reprinted in Yoon Ha Lee's collection Conservation of Shadows, The Humanity of Monsters ( ISBN   1771483601, 2015), and in the 2017 collection Galactic Empires ( ISBN   159780617X, a selection by Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld).

Paul Kincaid notices that while the story is fast-paced and the reader is not left confused, the story lacks a clear resolution. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origami</span> Traditional Japanese art of paper folding

Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques. Modern origami practitioners generally discourage the use of cuts, glue, or markings on the paper. Origami folders often use the Japanese word kirigami to refer to designs which use cuts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kij Johnson</span> American writer

Kij Johnson is an American writer of fantasy. She is a faculty member at the University of Kansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nina Kiriki Hoffman</span> American science fiction writer

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is an American fantasy, science fiction and horror writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Watts (author)</span> Canadian science fiction author (born 1958)

Peter Watts is a Canadian science fiction author. He specializes in hard science fiction. He earned a Ph.D from the University of British Columbia in 1991 from the Department of Zoology and Resource Ecology. He went on to hold several academic research and teaching positions, and worked as a marine-mammal biologist. He began publishing fiction around the time he finished graduate school.

The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual literary award presented by the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best short science fiction story published in English in the preceding calendar year. It is the short fiction counterpart of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, which was awarded until 2020 by the Center at the same conference. The award is named in honor of Theodore Sturgeon, one of the leading authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction from 1939 to 1950. The award was established in 1987 by his heirs—including his widow, Jayne Sturgeon—and James Gunn, at the time the Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lavie Tidhar</span> Israeli writer

Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award—Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.

<i>Clarkesworld Magazine</i> American online fantasy and science fiction magazine

Clarkesworld Magazine is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. It released its first issue October 1, 2006, and has maintained a regular monthly schedule since, publishing fiction by authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Kij Johnson, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sarah Monette, Catherynne M. Valente, Jeff VanderMeer and Peter Watts.

Neil Clarke is an American editor and publisher, mainly of science fiction and fantasy stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">N. K. Jemisin</span> American science fiction and fantasy writer

Nora Keita Jemisin is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression. Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.

Will McIntosh is a science fiction and young adult author, a Hugo-Award-winner, and a winner or finalist for many other awards. Along with ten novels, including Defenders,Love Minus Eighty, and Burning Midnight, he has published dozens of short stories in magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, Clarkesworld, and Interzone. His stories are frequently reprinted in different "Year's Best" anthologies.

Lightspeed is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine edited and published by John Joseph Adams. The first issue was published in June 2010 and it has maintained a regular monthly schedule since. The magazine currently publishes four original stories and four reprints in every issue, in addition to interviews with the authors and other nonfiction. All of the content published in each issue is available for purchase as an ebook and for free on the magazine's website. Lightspeed also makes selected stories available as a free podcast, produced by Audie Award–winning editor Stefan Rudnicki.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Liu</span> Chinese-American writer

Ken Liu is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novel translations and original short fiction, which has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.

Yoon Ha Lee is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, known for his Machineries of Empire space opera novels and his short fiction. His first novel, Ninefox Gambit, received the 2017 Locus Award for Best First Novel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Skillingstead</span> American writer

Jack Skillingstead is an American science fiction writer living in Seattle, Washington.

This is a list of the published works of Aliette de Bodard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam J. Miller</span> English science fiction, fantasy and horror short fiction author

Sam J. Miller is an American science fiction, fantasy and horror short fiction author. His stories have appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Lightspeed, along with over 15 "year's best" story collections. He was finalist for multiple Nebula Awards along with the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. He won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for his short story "57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides." His debut novel, The Art of Starving, was published in 2017 and his novel Blackfish City won the 2019 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

"Rachel in Love" is a 1987 science fiction short story by American writer Pat Murphy. It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction.

Gregory Patrick Feeley is an American teacher, critic, essayist and author of speculative fiction, active in the field since 1972. He writes as Gregory Feeley, with some of his early works appearing under the name Greg Feeley.

"The Things" is a science fiction short story by Peter Watts, revisiting the universe of John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing from the viewpoint of the titular alien. It was first published on Clarkesworld, in January 2010.

Suzanne Palmer is an American science fiction writer known for her novelette "The Secret Life of Bots", which won a Hugo Award in 2018. The story also won a WSFA Small Press Award and was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

References

  1. 1 2 Locus Awards 2012
  2. ↑ Ghostweight, the text in Clarkesworld
  3. ↑ Ghostweight, Audio version
  4. ↑ "" a review in Strange Horizons
  5. ↑ Molly Brown, "King Arthur and the Knights of the Postmodern Fable"; in: The Middle Ages in Popular Culture: Medievalism and Genre - Student Edition, 2015, p. 163
  6. ↑ "Interview: Yoon Ha Lee, Author of Conservation of Shadows, on Writing and Her Attraction to Space Opera". SF Signal. 30 May 2013. Archived from the original on 10 June 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
  7. ↑ "Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award 2012"
  8. ↑ Carl Brandon Awards 2014 summary
  9. ↑ "The Widening Gyre: 2012 Best of the Year Anthologies", in Los Angeles Review of Books
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.