Reading – Somewhere it Snows

Somewhere it Snows*, written by TC McCarthy (website, Twitter), is a $0.99 short story that I first mentioned way back in May before my trip to China (first mentioned here). Well, as promised I took the story with me and read it on the flight, and now I’m going to take a few moments to share my thoughts on what turned out to be an enjoyable, semi-depressing sci-fi story.

Welcome, Lev

Our protagonist, Lev Sandakchiev, is a human merchant who has been taken to an alien world where he has been forced to work resupplying an alien force. For decades now Lev has worked for the Alaed, an alien race traveling from world to world and battling those they deem worth opponents.

Humans were not deemed worthy.

One Last Journey

Lev has visited many worlds, several twenty-five years as a merchant supporting the Alaed efforts, and he is dying. McCarthy’s story is less-than-happy, but as I read I wanted to see how Lev’s final journey would play out. You see, human merchants — in fact, from what I can tell even merchants from other worlds — are considered without names by the Alaed until enough resupply missions have been successfully completed. And if Lev can complete this final journey then he will earn a name from the Alaed . . . and with that name, a chance at a better life. By the end of the story, Lev secures something very important, but what he gains may not be enough for humanity to survive what is coming.

A Sense of Alien

When I read McCarthy’s novel, Germline*, last year I was impressed with how he placed the story in another country which helped the sci-fi story feel just a little more alien than it would have if the story was based nearer to a place I knew and understood.

In Somewhere it Snows* McCarthy uses a similar trick by making our protagonist a Polish man who adds to the story a bit of foreign flavor that helps make it all feel bigger and more detailed than if Lev had been named Jim and come from some midwestern American town. It’s a small detail, but is has a big effect on the story. McCarthy has either spent a lot of time in eastern European countries that I have never visited or he has done a lot of research. Either way, I appreciate the effect that the details and other-worldliness that his efforts add to the story.

Closing Thoughts

Somewhere it Snows* is a short story that you can read in a single sitting without trouble, and if you’re a fan of sci-fi short stories which are a little depressing and promise only pain for the characters (and entire worlds) in the future then I think you’ll want to give this a shot. After all, it’s only a $0.99 download.

Or, just maybe, you’ll find that it costs far more than that when you read it and enjoy it enough to buy more of McCarthy’s work. I know I’m off now to give The Legionnaires* a try.