15) ‘Astrophilia’ by Carrie Vaughn
Stella is an accomplished weaver, living and working at the family co-operative of Greentree homestead. When repeated cycles of drought render the micro-economy of Greentree no longer viable, Stella travels two hundred miles to take up a new position at the more prosperous homestead of Barnard Croft. This homestead has proved so successful they have been allowed to ‘put in for a baby’, the lively Bette. If the homestead’s prosperity continues, they may even be green-lighted for a second. Stella quickly adjusts to life at Barnard. She likes her new co-workers, and begins to form a special attachment to Andi, with whom she shares living quarters and later a bed.
But Andi is at odds with her father Toma, who also happens to be the head of the homestead and responsible for all hands. Toma’s grandparents lived lives of regret, desperately missing the world they grew up in, the world before the fall. Toma, staunchly proud of Barnard Croft and the life they have made for themselves, is terrified of a future that threatens to repeat the mistakes of the past. Andi insists that progress is essential, that the desire for knowledge is what makes them human. It is not long before Stella finds herself caught between them.
“I know disaster can still happen. I know the droughts and storms and plagues do still come and can take away everything. Better than anyone, I know. But we have to start building again sometime, yes? People like Andi have to start bulding, and we have to let them, even if it seems useless to the rest of us. Because it isn’t useless, it – it’s beautiful.”
I’m afraid I found this story a bit of a make-weight. There’s a lot of overlap here with both the Lucy Sussex story and the Ursula Le Guin – post-collapse world, harsh life on a remote farmstead, even the weaving – and yet ‘Astrophilia’ lacks either the caustic edge of the Sussex or the literary accomplishment of the Le Guin. The prose is perfectly adequate but it bears no distinguishing features. The story is perfectly pleasant but there is nothing remarkable about it. Indeed, it felt old-fashioned to me – swap Andi for Andrew and this could be a John Wyndham story. (It reminds me of the end of The Chrysalids.) Nothing wrong in any of that, and this is definitely a feelgood story – it’s just that for me at least ‘Astrophilia’ doesn’t seem to bring much in the way of originality to the anthology as a whole.