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Burn is the Nebula Award winning novella by James Patrick Kelly from Tachyon Books; an Asimov's regular, Kelly's magnificent novella is set on the colony planet Walden.
James Patrick Kelly made his debut in 1975, first coming to attention three years later with his short story “Death Therapy,” which was picked up by Terry Carr for his Year’s Best SF. In 1984, “St. Theresa of the Aliens” gave him the first of his nine unsuccessful Nebula Award finalists, and established an astonishing tradition of appearing in twenty-four consecutive June issues of Asimov's. While Kelly published four novels over the decade from 1984 to 1994, he is better known in the field for his short fiction, establishing himself as one of the leading exponents at shorter lengths over the last twenty years, publishing on average two or three stories a year over that period. Even Burn, his most recent ‘novel,’ is in fact a novella, weighing in at five words short of novel length, and enabling him to win his first Nebula for best novella. The difference is more than just the number of pages available to the reader. Novels are often written from multiple points of view and feature sub-plots, which are only hinted at in novellas, which have mostly single perspectives. Particularly in Burn, Kelly writes taut, lean prose, with not a single word wasted, keeping the narrative intimately close to fire-fighter Spur. Two generations before, the planet Walden was settled by technophobes who wished to embrace a simpler life, and who live an Amish-type existence broadly analogous to early twentieth-century civilization. Crucially, however, the colony’s founders failed to sever all links with the Thousand Worlds, and left the previous inhabitants – the pukpuks -- in place; their objection to the colonists desire to green the planet with forests is at heart of the conflict that runs through Burn. Convalescing from the fire that hospitalized him and killed his brother-in-law, Prosper Gregory Leung (Spur) is so bored that he types his name into the search engine in the hospital’s computer, and then dials his nearest namesake. The conversation is baffling, and the last thing that Spur expects is that the High Gregory L’ung of Kenning will come calling with his strange clan. But on the way home, Spur is called off the train and given the news that he is to guide his visitors around the village. The events that follow illuminate how alien the aliens are, but merely act as a prelude to what is to come. The land to the south of the village is burning, and Spur must confront his worst nightmares. Walden is vividly depicted and Kelly manages to give it enough strangeness that it does not simply read as Ohio, 1927 transposed to the 25th century, while Spur and Comfort have all the flaws of real people. At the same time Kelly keeps the truly alien future off-screen and instead allows us brief glimpses through the backward colony of Walden. Each chapter is prefaced by quotes from the work of Henry David Thoreau, including several apposite quotes from Walden, and the author’s Journal, and lends another dimension to a novella that is already rich and multi-faceted. Burn is a deserved award winner, and one of the best half-dozen novellas of the decade so far.
The copyright of the article Burn in Utopian/Dystopian Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Burn in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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