I don’t really have much more to say except read it. It is at its heart a love story, a love story that is authentic and real and that I believed. It was beautifully written and beautifully told. It will drastically change the dynamic between himself and his lover, the doctor on board the craft, a man named Ell. It is a secret that will inevitably change the way everyone most dear to him looks at him. He becomes involved in an accident where he is almost sliced in half, an accident that should have killed him, but because of the secret he has been keeping, it doesn’t. Graff is a pilot for an intergalactic space mission and he has been keeping a secret from everyone he cares about, his captain, his crew, and his lover. This is science fiction that to me is more human story than science story, though it is set in deep space. My friend Miriam recommended this story to me after I read and enjoyed Sarah Gailey’s The Echo Wife earlier this year. She is definitely an author I will be reading more of, as I liked this story and her flash fiction, a piece entitled 'Alchemy' a lot. people who weren’t raised by wolves, with positive outlooks and healthy throbbing hearts, will enjoy it more than people like me, always braced for the emotional trapdoor.Ĭarrie Vaughn is the 5th author I’ve read this month whose flash fiction I had previously read in tor.com’s “Nevertheless She Persisted” series a few years ago. This ship is full of love and I’m afraid I’ve broken it.īut no, it’s a sweet light sf/romance story and it turns out i’m the real monster. me, i’m reading that interrogation scene, waiting for the other shoe, the twist, the teeth to come out, because surely sentiments like this are insincere, right? This is a sweet, light sf/romance story about a man who is not really a man, and for wholesome people who were raised right, it’s probably the bee’s knees.

'What? No.” I mean, I don’t think so? Would they think I was, if I told them everything?

Steel by carrie vaughn