Wind Will Rove, by Sarah Pinsker

Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sarah Pinsker has two strong pieces up for awards this year. And Then There Were (N-1) is perhaps the more imaginative of the two, but Wind Will Rove is emotionally powerful.

The story itself is about preservation of memory. The protagonist is a teacher of history on a generation ship heading for a distant star. Early on in the voyage, a disgruntled IT tech erased all their cultural history from the ship databases. The physical survival of the ship was not in doubt, but the loss of the history panicked people and nearly ended the mission anyway. They became hyperconscious of the past, and attempted to preserve as much of their history through their own memories as possible.

Some are simply depressed by the story, thinking it either didn't make a point or the point was too obvious. They would be rewarded by trying again. Yes, the rebellious children are kind of silly. They usually are. What adults who actually care about them do is try to reconcile with an eye to having them learn something from the rebellion, and keep their original ideas. Pinsker's protagonist is trying to do this, and on the face of it this is a harder road than simply kicking the kid's ass and telling him to get with the program. The just-barely-spoken acknowledgement here is that whatever tactics are used to reconcile the discontented have to work for seven or more generations without a break. Simple oppression is more likely to get you another disgruntled IT worker. And you can never plug all the holes.

The story illustrates the importance of memory in spite of, and eventually because of, its imperfections. Faulty memory begets evolutionary creativity, which is just as important as sui generis creativity, even if the young have not figured that out yet. Or the old.

Great stuff, and she could sweep the Hugos and Nebulas for both novella and novelette this year.



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