{"id":857,"date":"2021-03-28T13:23:03","date_gmt":"2021-03-28T13:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=857"},"modified":"2021-03-28T13:23:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-28T13:23:08","slug":"the-lincoln-train-by-maureen-f-mchugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=857","title":{"rendered":"The Lincoln Train by Maureen F. McHugh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Lincoln Train<\/em><\/strong> by Maureen F. McHugh (F&SF<\/em>, April 1995) opens with the young female narrator and her mother on a train station platform waiting to be transported to Oklahoma in the mid-1800s. As the narrative unfolds we learn that, in this alternate world, Lincoln didn\u2019t die but was seriously injured and incapacitated. Subsequently, his deputy Seward ordered that \u201crecalcitrant Southerners\u201d be deported (although it seems that the narrator and mother\u2019s offence was to allow their slaves to remain living with them after emancipation).
When the train arrives there is a crush during which the narrator\u2019s mother dies, but she is told by a soldier to leave the body behind and get on the train. On board she is befriended by a young woman who, when they arrive at their destination (spoiler), secrets her away through a door, but only after a madwoman runs down the platform screaming that the deportees are being starved on the reservations.
The narrator subsequently learns she has been saved by Quakers, who are running a version of the Underground Railroad for deported Southerners. They tell her they will help her get to her sister.
The final paragraphs of the story have her offer to help their organisation, but she is refused as she is a \u201cslaver\u201d and thus \u201cevil\u201d. I wasn\u2019t entirely convinced that the Quakers would have been so explicitly judgemental about her.
This is a predominantly descriptive, slow-paced story, and feels a little like an extract from a longer work. It\u2019s fairly good, I guess, but I\u2019m mystified as to how it won a Hugo Award.
*** (Good). 5,500 words.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lincoln Train by Maureen F. McHugh (F&SF, April 1995) opens with the young female narrator and her mother on a train station platform waiting to be transported to Oklahoma in the mid-1800s. As the narrative unfolds we learn that, in this alternate world, Lincoln didn\u2019t die but was seriously injured and incapacitated. Subsequently, his […]<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[5,24,25,243,12],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maureen-mchugh","tag-5","tag-3-2","tag-fsf","tag-maureen-mchugh","tag-short-story"],"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\/857","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=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":861,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}