(The short story “The Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell, was featured in the October 11th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)
SPOILER ALERT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! AND I RUN LONG ON THIS ONE!
The New Yorker published science fiction! I was really excited about that fact when I started reading “The Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell. For all I know, TNY has been publishing sci-fi for a while, but this is the first time I saw that type of story published here. Science Fiction can be a tricky beast; it can be great for adventure and melodrama, and when done very well, can highlight the best of humanity.
In “The Ghost Birds” we get a future world of global ecological collapse; Wildfires out of control, limited resources, toxic environment, and mass extinctions, especially of all the birds. The story is told by Jasper, who is in search of ghost birds in Oregon, where the story takes place. A violent group called the Surveillers controls these lands and the airspace, for which they kill trespassers. Jasper takes his teenage daughter, Starling, into the dangerous Oregon area to search for these birds
Creating a complete universe in a short story is a difficult task. The author has to explain how this place works and the logic to this world, while also keeping the flow of the story natural, and not coming across as spoon-feeding, or plot clunky. Russell does this very well in the first two thirds of the story. This world is a desolate and unfriendly place, but also captivating in how people are finding ways to survive in it.
When the climax of the story starts, the logic and cohesion of the story starts to falter. At this point I refer to what a professor in college taught, which is the Chekhov Maxim; If you introduce a gun in your story, you have to fire the gun. The Surveillers are that gun in this story. They are given enough examples of how dangerous they are, yet they never show up. The climax of the story is that Jasper and Starling get trapped in a furnace smoke stack, which Jasper tries to climb out of, but falls and breaks his leg. That leaves Starling to climb out, and get help from their friend’s airship, which lead me to ask why where the Surveillers introduced? The smoke stack scene is climatic enough, and the threat of the Surveillers plays no part in it. Also, Jasper couldn’t use communication devices because the Surveillers could hear, but somehow, they could get in and out using an airship, even though it is mentioned that the Surveillers patrol the sky. See, the logic started to fall apart. Then, I also had issue with Jasper not having a heroic act. He becomes injured, and witnesses the ghost birds, which makes him passive to the situation.
I ended up feeling very conflicted about this story. I was really rooting for it, as I liked that this story was about ecological disaster, and that is an issue that I care greatly about. But this sore thumb stuck out at the end that I couldn’t shake or ignore.
Good effort, just didn’t stick the landing.
