Wonderful story published at Strange Horizons
Heather Lindsley’s short story Mayfly is one of those stories that stems from a concept–that women can be born and live their entire lives in the span of a week–and then branches off into the many sociological implications of such a life. The character literally has the life-span of a mayfly, only in this case, the memories of her ancestors are implanted in her brain before she’s ever born. This allows Lindsley to skip past the question of how a character can have so much self-inflection after only being alive for a week.
This condition only exists within her family tree, so the reader watches how the world reacts to someone of her kind, how she and her ancestors are forced to kind of blend in, and because they grow and mature so quickly, nobody really notices that something isn’t right. In order for their lineage to go on, each woman must find a mate to impregnate her after only a few days of life–usually on the third or fourth day.
Like most stories of this kind, the backdrop allows for a deep characterization that is quickly realized. The character must struggle against the notion that her life is so short and must find some sense of worth within the span of a week. There’s a scene where she briefly considers picking up and reading a Tolstoy novel to add a cultural inheritance to future generations, but at the same time realizes that the book is too long to justify reading it. Instead, she goes to see Hitchcock marathons and visits art museums. All so future generations can call themselves cultured.
The presiding theme here is selflessness. On the one hand, she realizes that her life is so short and that she wants to do the most with it, but on the other hand she knows her time is very limitted and she has to prepare for future generations. This creates an internal conflict that works well with Lindsley’s writing style.
This really is a wonderful story. I highly recommend it.
Related posts: The solution to the Harlan Ellison problem, Interview with Chandrahas Choudhury from The Middle Stage, A really good short story I read today
