"This is How You Disappear" By Dale Bailey
THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Jan/Feb 2013

I knew within the first few sentences that this story was going to be a hard one for me to like. Much of this is because of elements well outside of the writer's control: it is a darkly introspective story and I am in the depressive swing of the euphoria/depression pendulum that comes of being on Prednisone; it starts with a very literary tone, which if I can admit this and still be taken seriously as a writer, tends to bore me which is entirely on me; and it is cold and I am sore and cranky.

However, there were some craft choices made that I feel might alienate readers other than my own curmudgeonly self. This story is told both in present tense, a choice that is, I believe becoming more common but is still jarring for many people, and it is told in second person, a thing done, I believe, less frequently in writing that the arrival of Halley's Comet.

To me the combination was not as successful as might have been hoped. It contributed to the sense of literary pretension that I'd already decided I disliked. More importantly it made it very hard for me to engage in the actual character and tale.

Now, to be fair, this is a story that depends on making the reader feel as though they are experiencing the disappearance with the main character and the use of second person might have been extremely successful in doing this for other readers.

Readers that already had a way to relate to a protagonist that is male, stagnant in his career and marriage, and raising kids that are growing up and drifting away. Perhaps it would have worked for people who shared any two or three of those traits.

But, I am female, working as a writer and thriving in my productivity if not my publishing, married to a man that challenges me in good ways every day, and childless by choice. There was very little for me to cling to as this alien 'you' of the second person was being thrust upon me and so it pushed me farther away instead.

This is not to say that Dale Bailey is completely unsuccessful even for a reader such as myself. Using this one specific template of a life he does manage to tap into a very universal experience. Everyone, or at least everyone I know, has at one time or another felt as though their life is not enough. Not empty, but not complete either. I know I have looked back and said "This is not where I thought I would be at this age." Others just wonder sometimes what they are accomplishing with their life, if anything.

This feeling of vague and aimless discontent comes through extremely well. (And did not help with my drug-induced mood so may be an element in my problems with the story.)

The other way in which this story was brilliantly successful was in making me consider venue much more seriously than I have before. Because "This is How You Disappear" is a fantastic story about what it is like to be depressed. I don't mean sad, but truly and deeply clinically depressed.

I am not currently in such a state, even with the Prednisone, but I have been before, not so deeply as this protagonist, but enough to recognize it, and this story relays that sense of surrender and longing and apathy better than anything else I have ever seen.

Seriously, if you know someone dealing with a depressive family member this would be a wonderful story to have them read. It might allow them some insight into the struggle of their loved ones.

If it were published somewhere else. Because for this to have been published in F&SF it can't be read as a metaphor of a man struggling and losing himself in depression. If it were there would be no speculative element in the story at all.

No, to be a fantasy story the reader must believe that this man is not just mentally disengaging, his mind and soul being buried in the mire of his illness while his body continues, but that he is actually, physically vanishing from reality, forgotten by his family, his work, his life until there is nothing left.

Which is a much, much less interesting take on the story as a whole, not to mention one that is undercut by choices the author makes which, at least for me, implied that the protagonist who believed himself at home being forgotten was, in fact, still toiling away at the life he'd lost the ability to engage with anymore.

Out of context this story can be interpreted either way. I am sure some will argue with me that even in context this is true. They may be right. But, it seems to me that the decision of where we choose to place our story is as valid a concern as what we decide to write because it will have an impact on how the story is read.

Because I saw this in a magazine dedicated to speculative fiction, I expected that element, and I read with a bias towards finding it. I read this as someone that actually disappears and it fell completely flat for me.

Then I read it again. This time, knowing what was coming, I tried to divorce myself of expectations, and it was only then that what I felt was the stronger resonance came through for me.

If it were not in F&SF I'd say it is a brilliant literary story that succeeds in the goals it sets. In F&SF I'd say it is problematic speculative story that falls flat. In either case I still wouldn't much like it for all the reasons already given which mostly amount to I am the wrong reader for this narrative.

Venue matters.

Please do not take this to mean that fantasy and science fiction should not strive for literary or contemplative or esoteric stories. They should and do so brilliantly. Personally I thought this was one of the many ways in which the last story I reviewed excelled. However, "Iphigenia in Aulis" managed to be thought-provoking and intricate, deeply literary and erudite, while also being unapologetic about its place as a science fiction story.

"This is How You Disappear" waffles, and to me, that is the biggest reason why it fails.