"Hazelnuts were from before."

November 7, 2021 2:34 PM

Vivid imagery about the future of our relationship with ecological surroundings in these three melancholy speculative stories. "The Wild Inside" by Angela Penrose: "We had to close up another building that day—bolt the doors shut, board over the windows, stop up the chimney and all the vents with concrete". "Packing" by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon): "Today is not the day I wanted to do this, but we aren’t always given choices. It’s time to pack for the new seasons." And "The Last Ride of the Polaris" by Carmen Peters, in the Apocalpyse issue of Black Cat Magazine (download the PDF), has interiority, two guys, and a waterslide. [Content note: includes a homophobic slur.] "That’s how you needed to talk nowadays, in the past tense."
posted by brainwane (6 comments total)

I don't fully grok the Penrose story. Is the Wild actually a threat and this is a post-apocalyptic cautionary tale type story or are we to believe the town is just delusional and misguided (with the town as a sort of synecdoche for our misguided society)?
posted by Wretch729 at 6:31 PM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

The latter, I prefer to think. There’s a delightful indefiniteness to what’s going on, but it reads as a society that has so lost touch with wild nature that it fears it, with only the children, with their new eyes, able to see through and reject that social conditioning that demands concrete and the end to growing things.

Yet, even embracing that interpretation, part of me wonders…maybe there’s something about the wild…
posted by darkstar at 7:30 PM on November 7, 2021

This line in the third story:

“Collin, I just don’t want to be scared anymore.”
posted by greycap at 4:40 AM on November 8, 2021

Yeah, that was a little too ... on the nose? ham-handed? Something.
posted by timdiggerm at 6:12 AM on November 8, 2021

Your recent posting has been first rate! Thanks so much for the story recommendations, and please keep them coming!
posted by TheCoug at 7:21 AM on November 8, 2021 [6 favorites]

I'll echo TheCoug, thanks for posting this kind of stuff. I may not always react or comment, but know that it's appreciated. Thanks Brainwane.
posted by LegallyBread at 8:58 AM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]