​First off: I wanted to slip some SF in here, and I almost included "Bloodchild" by Octavia E. Butler. Go read the story! Or anything else by Butler! Then come back and read my thoughts on Kelly Link's story and read everything by Link.
You're back? See, isn't "Bloodchild" an awesome story?
But we're talking about Kelly Link here. Link is one of those wonderful writers whose next story will be something you totally don't expect. There is no typical Kelly Link story. There is no consistency other than excellence.
"Two Houses" is, in essence, a clubhouse story. Once upon an old-timey day, the sensibility was that the actual first-hand horrors would be too much for the genteel reader to bear, so the horrors were framed by gentlemen in a safe and fancy and genteel club trading ghastly tales over their hot toddies.
Add a century or two, and Link transposes the setting into a spaceship and transforms the characters into men and women passing the time after being called out of a cryogenic sleep by their ship's AI.
It's an interesting effect that the tales we're told by the astronauts - tales which are illustrated and enhanced in holographic form by the AI - are generally the same as might have been told in one of the old-timey gentlemen's clubs. Only the setting in which the stories are related is futuristic, and yet, since this is the not-too-far future, maybe only one generation removed from now, in terms of the characters if not time itself - they've been in sleep-stasis, after all - is futuristic.
There's usually a twist or literary trick or two up a Kelly Link story's sleeve, and "Two Houses" is no exception. Without being too spoilery, suffice it to say the spaceship itself might also be a haunted house and it has everything to do with the AI.
Multiple stories, layer upon layer, in fact, each well told within its genre and traditions all in one spooky tale. What more could you want?
You're back? See, isn't "Bloodchild" an awesome story?
But we're talking about Kelly Link here. Link is one of those wonderful writers whose next story will be something you totally don't expect. There is no typical Kelly Link story. There is no consistency other than excellence.
"Two Houses" is, in essence, a clubhouse story. Once upon an old-timey day, the sensibility was that the actual first-hand horrors would be too much for the genteel reader to bear, so the horrors were framed by gentlemen in a safe and fancy and genteel club trading ghastly tales over their hot toddies.
Add a century or two, and Link transposes the setting into a spaceship and transforms the characters into men and women passing the time after being called out of a cryogenic sleep by their ship's AI.
It's an interesting effect that the tales we're told by the astronauts - tales which are illustrated and enhanced in holographic form by the AI - are generally the same as might have been told in one of the old-timey gentlemen's clubs. Only the setting in which the stories are related is futuristic, and yet, since this is the not-too-far future, maybe only one generation removed from now, in terms of the characters if not time itself - they've been in sleep-stasis, after all - is futuristic.
There's usually a twist or literary trick or two up a Kelly Link story's sleeve, and "Two Houses" is no exception. Without being too spoilery, suffice it to say the spaceship itself might also be a haunted house and it has everything to do with the AI.
Multiple stories, layer upon layer, in fact, each well told within its genre and traditions all in one spooky tale. What more could you want?