Originally appeared in Clarkesworld
Reprinted in Hartwell's Year's Best SF
Geeta gives people memories, experiences not their own. The memories are always fresh and experience strange worlds as if the worlds love her. Her memories are so child-like because her memories are extracted before visiting any new worlds. Although another beat follows, the story ends on a bittersweet kiss before Geeta's memory is lost. Geeta will never remember all of the kisses she's given the narrator.
This is a good metaphor for how Nina Kiriki Hoffman's fiction impacts its readers. Not that Ms, Hoffman has her memory erased after every story (although she is rather pleasant to be around--I met her at Wiscon), but that this could be--intentionally or not--a metaphor for how she works: Moving the reader to a new world, even if the situation is unpleasant, her characters often work to make the best of a bad circumstance.
APB-SAL is a blog about education, science, science education, fiction, science fiction, literature, literary stories, poetry, and anything else that strikes the blogger's fancy. NOTE: This blog interrogates art. It rarely make moral proclamations. For that attend the church or politician of your choice. This blog concerns aesthetics, not propaganda. Consider this as interviews with books where the interviewer presents interviewees, so you get what you need to do your own thinking.
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