Review of Phoenix Mendoza, “Peace,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 197-201 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
Content warning: War.
The narrator (who’s name we never learn) and her partner, Lorna, are trapped in a war that seems unwinnable, fighting ever since the aliens arrived, three years ago. Despite this, Lorna still believes in peace, and tells the narrator that one day, she will too.
Reading such a story in the present climate, where there is so much war but the participants involved are ourselves and not aliens, was a strange experience. There’s something that feels almost safe about imagining battling against aliens: They are alien, after all, it’s okay for us to read about fighting them, killing them, murdering them. But the very fact that this feels okay, just because they are aliens, is a deeply uncomfortable feeling, because that’s exactly the same excuse people use for making war against other people.
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