Hopeful Science Fiction: Overlay

Click on the tag “hope” at this bottom of this post to read about all of my suggestions for hopeful science fiction. If you have recommendations for future instalments of this series, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment below or send me message about it on Twitter.

Last winter I discovered the Better Worlds series, a science fiction anthology of short stories and films about hope that was published at The Verge two years ago. This is the eleventh and final story from this anthology that I’ll cover here.

Overlay

In Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Overlay, two parents undertook a dangerous mission to save their captured son.

I know you all probably want more details than that, but this was one of those tales that’s so fast-paced and filled with twists that I have to mind what I say about it in order to avoid spoiler territory.

Setting the opening scene in sewer drains of all places was a good choice. It showed off Ray and Cass’ personalities nicely, especially when it came to just how far they’d go to rescue their kid.

I did have trouble putting all of the pieces of this story together due to how non-linearly they were arranged. The characters jumped from past to present to future and back again. While this is a storytelling device I’ve enjoyed in the past, I found it confusing for these particular characters because of how wildly different the various periods of their lives were from one another.

There was also something included in the story that I can’t mention specifically that made it even more confusing due to how little time was spent explaining what it was supposed to mean and how many different interpretations of it I came up with.

I’ll refrain from going into detail about it, but anyone who reads the first few paragraphs will spot it immediately. It was quite creative, but I sure did wish it had been explained more thoroughly. All of the interpretations I came up with were fascinating, and I’m sure there were other ways to understand it that other readers could have added as well.

All of these issues together made this story feel rough around the edges to me. I loved the initial concept of it and thought the opening scene couldn’t have been written better. It had such an urgent tone that I had to remind myself to keep breathing as I waited to find out if Ray and Cass would be able to save their son.

There were other moments like this later on in the plot. When they happened, they reminded me why I was so drawn to it to begin with. I only wish that the scenes between them had been better able to tie them all together in ways that pushed the storyline forward and kept up the high energy of the beginning. This tale had a lot of promise and I really wanted to like it more than I did.

With that being said, it definitely still does belong in the Hopeful Science Fiction sub-genre. The ending was satisfying and I’m glad I stuck around to find out what happened to everyone before, during, and after the daring rescue attempt.