Fri 11 Aug 2023
SF Stories I’m Reading: CONNIE WILLIS “The Sidon in the Mirror.â€
Posted by Steve under Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[3] Comments
CONNIE WILLIS “The Sidon in the Mirror.†Novelette. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, April 1983. Reprinted in Isaac Asimov’s Space of Her Own, edited by Shawna McCarthy (Davis, digest softcover, 1983). Also reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13, edited by Terry Carr. First collected in Fire Watch (Bluejay Books, hardcover, 1985). Nominated for both Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novelette of 1983.
Some novelettes by some SF writers are nothing but fluff and padding. On the other hand, there are novelettes by other SF writers that are dense enough to have enough story content to fill two full novels and maybe more. “The Sidon in the Mirror†is one of the latter.
Consider then the protagonist, a pianobar player with two eight-fingered hands who is also the “mirror†of the title, a man who can absorb the characteristics of others – not physically – but their thoughts and inner beings. Sidon is the third largest city in Lebanon, but that may (or may not) be important. In the story, a sidon is an animal having a ferocious unpredictable temper. It cannot be tamed; if you try, it may seem as though you are succeeding, but turning your back on it is not a thought worth considering.
A sidon is also (in the story) what the miners on the all-but-dead star called Paylay (after the Hawaiian volcano Pele?) call their taps into the similarly dangerous gas-mines through the crust and into the core below. The man (mirror), named Ruby by the proprietor of the bar slash brothel, is there (perhaps) on a mission of revenge. It is not clear, but a blind girl named Pearl whom he befriends is somehow the crux of the story.
The crust is thick enough that one can walk on Paylay, but if one stands still long enough, the bottoms of you feet will suffer severe blisters.
So, there you are. Just a hint of who and what this story is about, told in something like Gothic overtones. And at the moment you probably know as much how it all ends as I do, and I have the advantage that I’ve actually read the story. I’ll take that back. I’ve absorbed the story rather than simply read it, and so I’m wrong. I do know more than you do. Until you’ve read it yourself, that is, and I think you should. This is a good one, a story told well beyond the capabilities or visual imagery of a Stanton A. Coblentz and maybe even a Stanley G. Weinbaum.
Way beyond. Like night and day.
August 11th, 2023 at 4:08 pm
Extraordinary! Unexplained and incomprehensible aspects appear perfectly natural in the story. I only know Willis through enormous – much too enormous, I thought – time travel stories but if she brief she’s very good indeed.
August 11th, 2023 at 6:26 pm
“Unexplained and incomprehensible aspects appear perfectly natural in the story.”
Beautifully phrased, Roger. I’m not sure how Connie Willis pulled it off, but she did.
August 11th, 2023 at 7:16 pm
Connie Willis is one of the rare modern SF writers whose work I buy and read just on the basis of her name. I know whatever has her name on it will be well written and worth my time.