"Driftwood"

In the days before their world shattered, crumbled, and finally fetched up against that cluster of old realities known as Driftwood, they were called the Valraisangenek.

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As soon as I get around to finishing and selling a couple more of the incomplete stories currently languishing on my hard drive, this story and "A Heretic by Degrees" will move out of the "Other" category and onto their own page. Driftwood is and always has been a setting I mean to work in long-term.

It is, as I say on the page for that other story, where worlds go to die. Everything there crumbles and fades in the end, in a post-apocalyptic apocalypse -- everything, that is, except one man. "Driftwood" does not give the full story of Last, previously seen in "A Heretic by Degrees," but it gives a piece of it, and in time I will write more.

This story appeared in the online magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, in their fourteenth issue, and can be read there for free. (That page also includes a download link for BCS's audio podcast of the story.)

Reviews

Lois Tilton, IROSF -- The story is told in alternating points of view, by Last himself, and from the point of view of a survivor from a newly-shredded world. The emphasis on racial/cultural identity and purity can definitely be read as a metaphor for life in today's Earth, where local traditions have been shredded by the inexorable grinder of the global economy.and who of us can claim to comprehend that?

Fabian Lyraud, BCS forum -- I enjoy baroque universes. The worldbuilding is incredibly rich. I hope this story belongs to a cycle. I want more.

therinth, BCS forum -- This is a fantastic story. More, please.

stabeest, on my LJ -- "Driftwood" is brilliant and beautiful. I loved it. I wish I could give a better critique than that, but the ending was just so damned perfect that I have no good words.

Rich Horton, Locus/The Elephant Forgets -- (recommended story, Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2009)