Lucy

by Susan Forest

Co-Winner (with Robert Walton’s VIENNA STATION) of the first Galaxy Project Long Story Contest, Forest’s novelette is (as Judge Robert Silverberg writes) a rigorously worked novelette in the grand tradition “which would have delighted Galaxy’s great editor Horace Gold”. Humanity has dispersed throughout the cosmos in post-apocalyptic space flight; the colony on the planet Faela has terraformed the planet unsuccessfully, an indigenous biological virus has over the generations shrunk the numbers of the settlers and threatens their further existence. How the protagonist scientist, comes to terms with this seemingly ordained doom, and what this struggle implies for the continued, wider perpetuation of humanity are at the center of this carefully paced and brilliantly logical extrapolation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Forest, a Canadian, has published science fiction intermittently since 1990...a Y,A fantasy published that year won recognition in her country. Subsequently, she has been a finalist for Canada’s Aurora Award (for the best work of short fantasy or science fiction by a Canadian) and has recently sold to Analog and Asimov’s Magazines. A retired teacher, she is presently writing full time and is an active blogger and member of several writers groups.

ABOUT THE SERIES

Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.

The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.

Genres: Science Fiction

59 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2011

About the author

Susan Forest grew up in a family of mountaineers and skiers, and she loves adventure. She also loves the big ideas found in SF/F, and finds fast-paced adventure stories a great place to explore how individuals grapple with complex moral decisions. Aurora Award winners, Bursts of Fire and Flights of Marigold, first books in her Addicted to Heaven series, confront issues of addiction in an epic fantasy world of intrigue and betrayal.

Susan is also an award-winning fiction editor, has published over 25 short stories (Analog, Asimov's, BCS, & more), and has appeared at many international writing conventions. She loves travel and has been known to dictate novels from the back of her husband's motorcycle. http://speculative-fiction.ca/

Reviews

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An unsuccessful terraforming attempt leads to starving colonists making a difficult decision about their future.

"Lucy" is a fascinating novelette by Susan Forest which asks us to consider what it is that makes us human.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story about colonists still struggling to survive on a partially terraformed planet centuries after the first settlers arrived. Apparently having lost contact with Earth, they are threatened with starvation, the breakdown of their machinery, and other problems.... including human nature! A great story, really well done.