REVIEW: “Flightcraft” by Iona Sharma

Review of Iona Sharma, “Flightcraft”, Luna Station Quarterly 25 (2016): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

There was a lot I liked about this story — the central idea of lexical engineering, wherein words once written down must become true, meaning a trained lexical engineer can make a plane fly simply by using the right words — but a lot that also didn’t quite work for me. There were abrupt shifts in focus from one character to another, and also inexplicable shifts in tense. In the end, I was left with a feeling that it was a great idea that could have been better.