SandDune’s Retirement Reads - Part 1

‘To this end I have travelled as far as the Nine-Hundred-and-Sixtieth Hall to the West, the Eight-Hundred-and-Ninetieth Hall to the North and the Seven-Hundred-and Sixty-Eighth Hall to the South. I have climbed up to the Upper Halls where Clouds move in slow Procession and Statues appear suddenly out to the Mists. I have explored the Drowned Halls where the Dark Waters are carpeted with white water lilies. I have seen the Derelict Halls of the East where Ceilings, Floors — sometimes even Walls! — have collapsed and the dimness is split by shafts of grey Light.

In all these places I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead. I have never seen any indication that the World was coming to an End, but only the regular progression of Halls and Passageways into the Far Distance.’

“What do most of us think? Is it an animal or something of the tree kind?”
“Tree! Tree!” said a dozen voices.
“Very Well,” said the Elephant. “Then, if it’s a tree it wants to be planted. We must dig a hole.”
The two Moles settled that part of the business pretty quickly. There was some dispute as to which way up Uncle Andrew ought to be put into the hole, and he had a very narrow escape from being put in head foremost. Several animals said his legs must be his branches and therefore the grey, fluffy thing (they meant his head) must be his root. But then others said that the forked end of him was muddier and that it spread out more as roots ought to do. So finally he was planted right way up. When they had patted down the earth it came above his knees.
“It looks dreadfully withered,” said the Donkey.
“Of course it wants some watering, “ said the Elephant.

Shall we start with a happy ending? I made it. I rose. I escaped poverty. I escaped bad food because that’s all you can afford. I escaped threadbare clothes and too-tight shoes. I escaped drinking or drugging myself into oblivion because … because. I probably escaped the early mortality rates and preventable diseases – we’ll see. I escaped obesity. I escaped the higher rate of domestic abuse. I escaped sink estates, burnt-out houses and ice-cream vans selling drugs at the school gates. I escaped Jeremy Kyle in a shiny suit telling me my sort was scum. I escaped casual, grim violence fuelled by frustration and Special Brew. I escaped benefits queues and means assessments and shitty zero-hour contracts. I escaped hopelessness.

Rozie watched the family from a distance, with the Queen at the heart of it, her face alight with pleasure. She really did dazzle, just like Baba Samuel said. It was something about her skin, which was flawless, and also her eyes, which danced with delight whenever there was something to amuse her. The ready presence of pearls and diamonds did no harm, obviously – but Baba Samuel was right: even in her dressing gown she seemed to glitter. Now, in a silk damask evening gown and antique sparkles, she looked radiant.

‘ “The log has gone away.”

He shut his eyes and frowned at the picture of the log. It had lain in the water from this side to that, grey and rotting. When you trod the centre you could feel the water that washed beneath you, horrible water, as deep in places as a man’s shoulder. The water was not awake like the river or the fall but asleep, spreading there to the river and waking up, stretching on the right into wildernesses of impassable swamp and thicket and bog. So sure was he of this log the people always used that he opened his eyes again, beginning to smile as if he were waking out of a dream; but the log was gone.’

A reviewer wanted to make the zombies in Kelly Link’s “Zombie Contingency Plans” (in the collection Magic for Beginners) into metaphors. They’re not. They’re actual zombies. They may also be metaphors, but their metaphorical function is secondary to the fact that they’re actual zombies that want to eat your brains. Science fiction may be literalization of metaphor, it may be open to metaphorical, symbolic and even allegorical readings, but what’s real within the story is real within the story, or there’s no there there.