Swift is an absolute virtuoso of the science fictional short story, and ‘Saga’s Children’ is an example of her ability to craft hushed speculative realism. The story focuses on the – entirely ordinary – offspring of the Solar System’s most daring explorer, the titular Saga. It is a story about adjacency: what it means to be the child of celebrity; the unwilling participant in someone else’s narrative.
Although naturally in conversation with more classic science fictional narratives, it has immense contemporary relevance. What is it like to be ordinary in a world that only celebrates the extraordinary; human in the shadow of the superhuman? It sounds trite, but short stories excel at providing new perspectives on assumed narratives. Without knowing Saga, we know Saga. She is an archetype, and her adventures and heroics can be easily inferred. What we don’t know is the human cost of her passage, the emotional toll of growing up in her wake. Swift brings humanity a myth, and gives voice to the humans around the myth as well.
First published in The Lowest Heaven, Jurassic London, 2013. Collected in The Best British Fantasy, Salt Publishing, 2014. Find it online here
A Personal Anthology 