POLYNIA

Polynia is defined as an area of open water surrounded by sea ice; in other words, icebergs. Well, our weird fiction guru, China Mieville, has written a delightful short story for Tor.com that surprisingly is not of his usual genre. The first line in the story makes the reader continue perusing, “When cold masses first started to congeal above London, they didn’t show up on radar.” Is it possible for icebergs to form in the sky? According to Mieville’s imagination, the answer is yes. This is the story of eleven year old Robbie along with his friends Ian and Sal running underneath these ice behemoths attempting to solve the mystery, so to speak. As the masses form into dangerous icebergs dangling over London, the government and greenhorn survey teams land on the bergs to investigate. Can they figure out the conundrum? What will happen if the icebergs bump into each other while the probers are still aboard the ice? And why has coral started to form on the buildings of Brussels?

This was an enjoyable break from Mieville’s normal neologistical and dubious style. Since I’ve read four of Mieville’s novels (The City & The City , Kraken , Embassytown and Railsea ), I’m not knocking his genre. It’s just that it’s refreshing to see that he can write in other manners. The great writers, such as Mark Twain, have been able to diversify their writings. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a satire with strong colloquial language, while The Prince and the Pauper is basically children's literature. Although Mieville isn’t in the class of the above mentioned author, he has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the British Fantasy Award. So lets give Mieville his due. Anyway, savor the story, it might be the last one that you can understand.

Is this one of the sky icebergs?


RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reading Mieville’s short story got me thinking...What are the top three great American short stories? Wow, so many to choose from, but here are my choices:

Most likely number one in a lot of reviewer’s minds is The Gift of the Magi (1905) by O. Henry.Wikipedia says, "The Gift of the Magi" is a short story, written by O. Henry (a pen name for William Sydney Porter), about a young married couple and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental story with a moral lesson about gift-giving, it has been a popular one for adaptation, especially for presentation at Christmas time. The plot and its "twist ending" are well-known, and the ending is generally considered an example of cosmic irony.

  Okay, now for number two. Since I love stories by Washington Irving, I picked The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), although I could have picked his Rip Van Winkle . Wikipedia says, “The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (historical Tarrytown, New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors. The most infamous spectre in the Hollow is the Headless Horseman said to be the ghost of a Hessian Trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during “some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head".

My last pick is again because I love the author, Edgar Allen Poe. But his The Purloined Letter is considered an American classic. Wikipedia says, “The unnamed narrator is discussing with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin some of his most celebrated cases when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police, a man known as G—. The Prefect has a case he would like to discuss with Dupin. A letter has been stolen from the boudoir of an unnamed female by the unscrupulous Minister D—. It is said to contain compromising information. D was in the room, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been blackmailing his victim.”

I must thank Wikipedia for making my explanation of these classic short stories easier.