{"id":211,"date":"2020-12-30T21:23:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T21:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=211"},"modified":"2021-01-29T13:36:56","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T13:36:56","slug":"for-white-hill-by-joe-haldeman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=211","title":{"rendered":"For White Hill by Joe Haldeman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For White Hill<\/em><\/strong> by Joe Haldeman (Far Futures<\/em>, edited by Gregory Benford, 1995) opens with the (unnamed) narrator stating that he is writing this memoir in English, a language from \u201can ancient land of Earth.\u201d In the story\u2019s leisurely opening chapters we find that he and a woman called White Hill are part of a group of twenty-nine artists that has gone to Earth to take part in a competition to design and build a commemorative artwork that will serve as a reminder, after the Earth is reterraformed, of the devastation caused by the Fwyndri. This alien race, with whom humanity are still at war, released a nanoplague on Earth which turned most plant and animal DNA into dust.
All this background information is given in little snippets though, and initially the story is mainly concerned with the developing relationship between the two characters, their sexual attraction, and the differing sexual mores of their two cultures (although, to be honest, they seem pretty much like an ordinary 20th<\/sup> Century couple1<\/sup>). There is also quite a lot of discussion about art as they wander around their base in Amazonia (and this is the kind of thing you would find in endless 1970\u2019s artist colony stories):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She scraped at the edge of the sill with a piece of rubble. \u201cIt\u2019s funny: earth, air, fire, and water. You\u2019re earth and fire, and I\u2019m the other two.\u201d
I have used water, of course. The Gaudi is framed by water. But it was an interesting observation. \u201cWhat do you do, I mean for a living? Is it related to your water and air?\u201d
\u201cNo. Except insofar as everything is related.\u201d There are no artists on Seldene, in the sense of doing it for a living. Everybody indulges in some sort of art or music, as part of \u201cwholeness,\u201d but a person who only did art would be considered a parasite. I was not comfortable there. She faced me, leaning. \u201cI work at the Northport Mental Health Center. Cognitive science, a combination of research and . . . is there a word here? Jaturnary. \u2018Empathetic therapy,\u2019 I guess.\u201d  p. 215 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

White Hill\u2019s occupation surfaces again at the end of the story.
After a couple chapters of these two mostly just talking to each other, the story finally gets going when they get a visitor who helps them plan their travel itinerary, at which point the story changes from an extended conversation into a travelogue. They go to Giza and the pyramids, and then by airship to Rome (which is now encircled by a wall of bones collected by the local monks). Then they learn they have to go back to Amazonia because \u201cthe war is back.\u201d
At this point the story changes direction completely, and the pair return to discover that the Fwyndri have tampered with the sun\u2019s internal processes and that it will become progressively hotter\u2014eventually turning into a red giant. Earth will become increasingly uninhabitable and, when the sun finally expands, destroyed. The couple also learn that there is no way off-planet as all ships have been requisitioned (and ships from elsewhere will take too long to arrive). The pair decide to stay in Amazonia and continue with their work. They eventually sleep together.
The rest of the story charts their developing relationship and their projects. While they work on these latter, terraforming machines cool the Earth so much that snow ends up covering what was originally a desert. Then, when they are caught in one of the storms that frequently occur, White Hill is badly injured\u2014she loses and eye and suffers serious facial injuries\u2014and the narrator has to tend to her until she heals enough to undertake a \u201cpurge\u201d and re-enter the safe underground areas for surgery.
After a couple more chapters about her recovery and their relationship, there is another right angle plot turn, which has him come back to find she has left to do \u201cJaturnary\u201d work for a hundred people who are going off in a spaceship to cold sleep through the expansion of the sun. There is a place for him, but he knows that the therapy she will provide to keep the cold-sleepers sane will eradicate her personality (no, me neither), so he does not go.
If this synopsis seems all over the place, it is because the story is little more than a collection of deus ex machina plot developments (which are there because, I believe, the story is handily based on Shakespeare\u2019s 18th<\/sup> sonnet2<\/sup>). There is also a considerable amount of flab here (there is endless chatter about the couple\u2019s relationship), and a kitchen sink full of SF furniture (aliens, nano-plagues, exploding suns, cold-sleep, etc.) All in all, it struck me as very much the kind of story you would expect to see in a collection edited by another writer (which it was) and where, I suspect, the brief was, \u201cwrite what you want!\u201d
There are parts of this that are readable enough, but it is a mess, and average at best.
** (Average). 16,600 words.

1. These boy-meets-girl love stories clutter up quite a lot of Haldeman\u2019s work, if I recall correctly.
2. Shakespeare\u2019s 18th<\/sup> sonnet is here<\/a>, along with explanatory notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For White Hill by Joe Haldeman (Far Futures, edited by Gregory Benford, 1995) opens with the (unnamed) narrator stating that he is writing this memoir in English, a language from \u201can ancient land of Earth.\u201d In the story\u2019s leisurely opening chapters we find that he and a woman called White Hill are part of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[56],"tags":[5,17,58,57,7],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joe-haldeman","tag-5","tag-17","tag-far-futures","tag-joe-haldeman","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":443,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}