Yesterday I went swimming in the ocean for the first time in months. I'd almost forgotten what that's like in south Florida in the summertime.... The water temperature's so warm that there's no transition coming either in or out. No going a few feet further in at a time to get used to it, no forcing yourself to just plunge in. No being cold when you finally yank yourself out of the water. As far as I can tell, the water is, I don't know, maybe five or ten degrees colder than the air, maybe not. It's nice.

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Oh, and before I forget to blog about this, my Clarion West classmate Meghan's story Shift is up on the Asimov's web-site, and I was really pretty blown away by it. More so since it was actually written *pre-Clarion.* Even the gender/p.o.v. problem--90% of readers will automatically assume that the protag in any first person story written by a female author is female, and vice versa, unless told otherwise--is handled nicely, with the maleness of the p.o.v. character inserted fairly seamlessly less than half way down the first page. Not the kind of prosey style that usually goes with my saying I was blown away by a story, more transperant and direct, but perfect for the kind of story it was.

I loved the conceit of the story--quirky, cool and compelling--and I was just really impressed by the story-construction chops. The opening hook is fantastic--"I stopped playing. 'Fuck!' The hot water only cut off when the Pile, our home, shifted dimensions."--and the transition from that kind of goofy fun to something much more serious and emotionally involved is handled deftly.
Probably in terms of the primal Maureen McHugh wisdom about "putting things on the line," my sense is that this is the story I've read from Meghan where her personality shines through the most.

The way that story-object-symbolism is manipulated to tell the emotional understory is done really nicely and thoughtfully, and all this at the same time as giving us the kind of lovely SF premise that makes me want to read a lot more stuff set in this world(s).*

Anyway, read it.










*A couple of weeks ago, when this first went on-line, I called Meghan to let her know--she's not much on-line these days--and suggested that this would be a good premise for a series of novels. She wasn't quite up for that, but she did say she'd thought about writing a couple of loosely linked short stories. I hope she does.