Life on the Moon by Tony Daniel (Asimov’s SF, April 1995) opens at a party where Henry, a poet, meets Nell, an architect. They start dating:
Those first moments were so abstract, urban and—formed, as Henry later recalled them. Like a dance, personifying the blind calls and pediments of nature. That was what it felt like to be alive in the houses of people you didn’t really know, of living hazy days in parks and coffee shops and the chambers of the university. Nell and he met the next day for espresso like two ballet dancers executing a maneuver. Touch lightly, exchange, touch, pass, pass, pass.
But something sparked then and there, because, of course, he had asked her to drive out to the Ozarks to see the flaming maples, and Nell had accepted. And in the Ozarks, Henry could become himself, his best self.
Nell had found one of his books, and when they stopped to look at a particularly fine farmhouse amidst crimson and vermilion foliage, she quoted, from memory, his poem about growing up in the country.
They kissed with a careful passion. p. 233
Well, at least they didn’t tell each other, “You complete me.”
They get married, and Nell begins a two year building project, a major construction in Seattle called the Lakebridge Edifice. They are given an apartment on the Alki-Harbour Island Span and, while Nell plays with her cement mixer, Henry writes his nature-based poetry:
In the nucleus of our home, my wife draws buildings
in concentrated silence, measured pace
as daylight dapples through the walls and ceilings
of our semi-permeable high arch living space.
While I, raised young among the cows and maize,
garden the terrace by my hand and hoe
and fax her conceptions out to their next phase,
she makes our living—and your living too.
Near twilight, I osmose from room to room
feeling vague, enzymatic lust for her p. 234-235
The project is a triumph, and Nell then is offered a commission to build a lunar colony. Nell asks Henry to come with her, but he is concerned about what the lack of nature on the Moon will do to his poetry:
Henry had almost turned to go when the sun broke out from behind the clouds, and shattered the falls, and the surrounding mist, into prismatic hues.
This is as loud as the water, Henry thought. This is what the water is saying. It is talking about the sun. The possibility of sunlight.
The light stayed only for a moment, and then was gone, but Henry had his poem. In an instant, I can have a poem, Henry thought, but I look at the moon, and I think about living there—and nothing comes. Nothing. I need movement and life. I cannot work with only dust. I am a poet of nature, of life. My work will die on the moon. There isn’t any life there.
He must stay.
But Nell.
What would the Earth be like without Nell? Their love had not been born in flames, but it had grown warmer and warmer, like coals finding new wood and slowly bringing it to the flash point. Were they burning yet? Yes. Oh, yes. p. 241
The agonies of being an artist compel Henry to stay on Earth while Nell goes to the Moon, and he moves to his grandfather’s log cabin to write. He passes up the chance to make a yearly visit, but this is something he agonises about after their regular VR calls. Then, one day (spoiler), he gets a call from her boss saying she has been killed in an accident. He also tells Henry that she left something for him in a crater on the Moon, but that they don’t know what it is. When Henry goes up there he sees it is a sculpture of a garden animated by micro machines (obviously not a very good one if the others couldn’t figure out what it was).
Okay, it’s probably pretty obvious by now that I wasn’t a fan of this: I found it a ponderous and pretentious piece (see above), and one in which the protagonist’s problems are not only self-created, they aren’t that believable (I can just about understand why he didn’t want to go to the Moon for an extended period, but why would you pass up the yearly visit?) What makes the story even more tiresome is that there are screeds of Henry’s really, really bad poetry used as interstitial material (see above for an example) And when we aren’t being exposed to that, we get extracts from Nell’s dry as dust architectural essays (I’ll spare you an extract from those—you’ve suffered enough).
I’m baffled as to how this was both a Hugo finalist and the winner of that year’s Asimov’s poll for Best Short Story.
* (Mediocre). 6,500 words.