Tag: Jocelyn Koehler

Review of Jocelyn Koehler, “A Sky Without Smoke,” Luna Station Quarterly 20 (2014): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Steven and his brother Kevin live in Williamsburg, not far from the spaceport that sends regular rockets to Mars with all the luxuries that could only be obtained on earth. This story traces two days in their lives, and it is a beautiful mixture of the mundane — daily life, brotherhood, rivalries — and the momentous — when their life shifts and nothing is as it was before.

Really enjoyable!

Review of Jocelyn Koehler, “Ten Thousand Sleeping Beauties”, Luna Station Quarterly 30: Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

My first reaction was that I straight up love the title, with its evocation of both European fairy tales and 1001 nights. And while the story itself is not a fairy tale, it certainly involves one, albeit a darker, scarier one than we normally tell our children (even in Grimms’ grim tales, there is always a prince’s kiss to awaken the sleeper).

My second reaction was “how am I going to explain what is so poignant in this story without spoilers?” Let me try: Despite evidence to the contrary, despite the perennial moans throughout the ages that youth aren’t what they were like in our day, humanity as a whole is remarkably optimistic: We persist in thinking that, eventually, things will get better, they have to get better; or at least that they won’t get worse, not really. For example, the entire industry of cryogenics is based on the idea that the future will be better than the present.

But one day, the future will be the present. What then?

My third reaction was that the ending made me cry.