"Ghostweight"is a 2011science fictionnovelette[1]by American writerYoon Ha Lee,first published inClarkesworld Magazine#52 (January 2011).[2]An audio version read by Kate Baker is also available.[3]
Plot summary
editIt 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 withorigami.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 calledjerengjenof 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 novelFlatland.[6]
Reception
editThe story was a finalist of the 2012Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awardnominations.[7]
It was nominated for 2012Locus Awards[1]and received honors of 2014Carl Brandon Awards.[8]
It was selected byGardner DozoisforThe Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection.
The story was reprinted in Yoon Ha Lee's collectionConservation of Shadows,The Humanity of Monsters(ISBN1771483601,2015), and in the 2017 collectionGalactic Empires(ISBN159780617X,a selection byNeil ClarkeofClarkesworld).
Paul Kincaidnotices that while the story is fast-paced and the reader is not left confused, the story lacks a clear resolution.[9]
References
edit- ^abLocus Awards 2012
- ^Ghostweight,the text inClarkesworld
- ^Ghostweight,Audio version
- ^""a review inStrange Horizons
- ^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
- ^"Interview: Yoon Ha Lee, Author of Conservation of Shadows, on Writing and Her Attraction to Space Opera".SF Signal. 30 May 2013. Archived fromthe originalon 10 June 2017.Retrieved27 March2017.
- ^"Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award 2012"
- ^Carl Brandon Awards 2014 summary
- ^"The Widening Gyre: 2012 Best of the Year Anthologies",inLos Angeles Review of Books