Rachel Swirsky has collected
several stories in the book How the World Became Quiet, including a
three Hugo nominees, a Nebula nominee, and a Nebula Winning novella.
The stories range from the fantastic past to the science fictional future,
demonstrating Swirsky's versatility as an author as she juggles rats,
robots, and humans to explore the universe.
The collection begins with Swirsky’s
Nebula Award winning novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath
the Queen's Window.” The
story opens with Naeva,
the titular narrator, being killed, but having her essence trapped so that
her queen can still consult her. Swirsky
develops a complex magic system that allows Queen Rayneh to consult with
Naeva and an even more complex society for the Land of Flowered
Hills. However, cultures
don’t last forever, even if semi-disembodied souls do,
and Swirsky shows glimpses of several of those cultures as they
summon Naeva for consultation, as well as Naeva’s own reactions to the
changing culture, especially when her matriarchal society begins to give
way to more androcentric or even gender equal cultures. Naeva eventually
winds up being summoned by Misa, a scholar and magician and spends quite a
bit of time in the human world which is so different from her own.
Although the two form a relationship, it is fraught with the
different cultures into which each woman was born as well as by the simple
fact that Misa is a human born into that world while Naeva is a
“Sleepless One” brought into that world by Misa.
A foreign princess arriving in a
kingdom and marrying the local prince is a common enough theme in many
fairy tales and fantasy stories, but Swirsky turns the trope on its head
in “Monstrous Embrace,” in which an outside force brings its own
jealousy and knowledge of the princess’s past to paint a picture which
is much less cheerful than the “happily ever after” one would normally
expect to come after the prince marries the exotic princess.
Swirsky takes an interesting take on
pirate stories with “The Adventures of Captain Blackheart Wentworth: A
Nautical Tail,” a story of vicious pirates who are out for whatever
booty they can get, with a good measure of bloodthirstiness thrown in.
What sets Swirsky’s pirates apart is the fact that they are rats.
The story would not have been out of place in Brian Jacques’s Redwall
series and provide excellent swashbuckling charm.
“Heartstrung” is a sort of coming
of age story told from the point of view of the young girl’s mother, who
is guiding her daughter through the process.
Swirsky focuses on the ritualization of the coming of age process.
In this case, a look at the empathy that one acquires with age by having
the young woman’s heart literally sewn onto her sleeve.
At the same time, the weakness of empathy is demonstrated by the
mother’s own reaction to her daughter leaving behind childish things.
“A Monkey Will Never Be Rid of Its
Black Hands” is the story of a bitter, somewhat misogynistic man whose
uncle and father chopped off his hand as a cruel punishment for what they
perceived as cowardice. The
story examines, albeit obliquely, the ideas of forgiveness and redemption
as Momodo comes to terms with his life, the way people perceive him, and
the few relationships he has. While
Momodo does not come across as a sympathetic character, despite the
cruelties inflicted upon him, he also is not one to be reviled despite his
personal failings.
Following Dennis’s death, he finds
himself in Heaven where he meets not only all the people who were
important in his life, but also several famous people.
In “Fields of Gold,” he learns about rumors concerning his
death, a possible murder by his wife, as well as reacquaints himself with
his long lost cousin, for whom he has long had a crush, not always
unrequited. His exposure to
all of these people and the rumors allows Dennis to reevaluate his own
life and the role he played in the lives of those with whom he interacted
with, a strange sort of posthumous It’s a Wonderful Life.
“Diving After the Moon” is a
strange mix of science fiction and fable as it follows the first
expedition to the moon by Qinghai, long after the fall of America and
China. Sopa Norbu yearned for
the moon from a young age and now that he has reached it, the Moon may
turn into his grave as global tensions meant that his team may not be able
to leave the Moon. The story
looks at a legend his mother used to tell him about a group of monkey
trying to reach the Moon’s reflection in a well, which in turn becomes
an impossible attempt to rescue the stranded taikonauts, or possibly
simply be an hallucination.
Many of the other stories in How the World Became Quiet offer a
variety of discussions on the meaning of being human, comparing humans to
gods, robots, strange hybrid creatures, or aliens completely unlike
humanity. Taken together, they provide their own discussion, much as
science fiction generally has done over the years, and not coming to any
one conclusion, but allowing the reader to consider Swirsky's
interpretations of the human condition.
