Review of Louise Hughes, “Look to the Future”, Luna Station Quarterly 47 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.
I love the premise of this story: In a world where ordinarily everyone can see the future, the narrator is one of those who can’t. The entire shape of people’s lives is different on such a premise, and the distress and bafflement at the narrator’s plight is genuine and believable: How can you plan for your future if you cannot see it? “Everyone worried. They narrowed their brows and clenched their teeth and fretted that I was making a Terrible Decision that would Ruin My Life Forever.”
What can you possible decide to do about your future when you cannot see it? Why, study history! And that decision is when the real magic in this story begins.
This story hit the perfect balance of making it all about the characters and their own world and story but leaving enough space within it to “read” the real world into it, almost allegorically. Big thumbs up from me.
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