Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is the discussion of the 2014 Nebula Award nominated short story:


A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide by Sarah Pinsker

You can read it free on-line @SarahPinsker.com.
Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2014.

Well, dang. When I saw this title on the list, I thought I knew what story it was, and was looking forward to rereading it. Alas, not the story I thought it was.

The story centers on a small-town Manitoba farmer who loses an arm to the harvester and has it replaced with a new, experimental bionic arm. Except the arm keeps telling him it's a stretch of highway down in Colorado. Clearly there's some giant metaphor in play here, whatever that might be. I'd like to think I've missed the point, because otherwise I'd have to take exception to it.

I didn't get it, either.

4 stars.

Synopsis: Washington farmer Andy lost his arm. It was replaced with a prototypical bionic prosthetic. He gains control over it when it suddenly turns out that his arm thinks it is a road in Colorado:

"He struggled to communicate with it. It worked fine; it was just elsewhere. Being a road wasn’t so bad, once he got used to it. People say a road goes to and from places, but it doesn’t. A road is where it is every moment of the day."

Review: A surreal, unique piece with beautiful prose, literary style, and a very well done character study. Pinsker captures the arm’s landscape to the point, it feels very real like Andy himself, his restlessness and desires for what you can’t have.

"People say a road goes to and from places, but it doesn’t. A road is where it is every moment of the day."

This reminded me of the old New England joke about the visitor touring rural Maine who stops to ask directions from the quintessential old codger sittin' on his front porch.

Tourist: "Excuse me, does this road go to Bangor?"
Codger: "Road don' go nowhere at'all. Stays right where it is."

(Works best if codger is voiced in a down east accent.)

Andreas wrote: "his restlessness and desires for what you can’t have. ..."

Can't have? Or won't?

I see a guy who lost an arm farming, got a newfangled bionic arm, and went right back to farming, while his friends went to college or to jobs in the big city. So he gets injured again, and he no longer has that restlessness? Seems to me an exhortation get out of town.

I like the style of this story, good prose writing, smooth and enjoyable to read. The setting appealed to me too. The concept of a prosthetic/bionic limb that has a mind (or something) of its own is not a new concept, I'm sure it has been done a lot before, though I found the idea that it thought it was a road bizzare and mildly amusing.

What I didn't like though was the story. There wasn't really much of one. Neither was there much character development. A guy loses an arm, gets a new one, it doesn't work right, eventually he collapses, wakes up, all is fine. There's no real conflict, no difficult decisions, nothing really. I also wanted there to be more to the whole 'arm thinks it is a road' than some unexplained software glitch that is easily remedied by getting a replacement chip. At one point it had this mysterious, spooky feel to it, almost like the opening to a Stephen King novel. Then it ended.

It's also one of those stories (and there are quite a few of them) where I feel like I've missed the point, there's some hidden meaning I'm just not getting. But if I am missing the point, at least I'm not alone!

Steve wrote: "What I didn't like though was the story. There wasn't really much of one....
It's also one of those stories (and there are quite a few of them) where I feel like I've missed the point, there's some hidden meaning I'm just not getting."

I get that "missed the point" feeling a lot, though usually whle reading those hoity-toity magazines like Asimov's or Clarkesworld, not Fantasy & Science Fiction, which tends to be more old-fashioned straightforward stories. :)

I think the author is trying to say that the stretch of highway and Andy were a perfect match, because they're both content to stay right where they are doing the same old thing, while watching others go off elsewhere.

My first reaction was but this was disparagement of rural life by the big-city crowd. (I mean, they can't imagine anyone would want to life in a small town.) But Pinsker's biography in Fantasy & Science Fiction pointed out she's a traveling folksinger/songwriter who is performed in all 48 continental US states. So maybe I'm taking it wrong, and she's not criticizing her Andy for staying down on the farm. Or maybe I give folk singers too much credit :)

I do like Pinsker's seemingly easy way of creating "real" characters, imbuing them with little tics and quirks and details of there every day life and thoughts. But I did prefer her Nebula Award-nominated story last year, In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind, though that had even less science fiction in the plot than this entry.