Last year, I spent a lot of time deleting posts from my blog that I didn’t consider “important”—a tricky thing to define, as I’ve discussed previously. I was thinking about obsolescence, about the things that we leave behind, and on my most self-censoring days, I discarded scores of posts at a time. Then a couple of months ago, I tried salvaging these pieces from the Internet Archive’s (IA) Wayback Machine, regretting my impulsive deleting and blessing the readers who thought they should save my writing there.
As I explored the IA and its mission to archive everything—everything—I was forced to contemplate why we consider certain things more important than others. While my blog posts seemed trivial to me, for some people every blog post, every journal entry, every shopping list, is worth saving. These daily texts made by ordinary people are just as integral to preserving our history and culture as elaborate monuments and epics.
What other works and items, generally considered to be ordinary or banal, are worth preserving, and what approaches can we take for doing so? Here are some SFF stories that consider these questions…
The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo
Cleric Chih of the Singing Hills abbey collects stories. Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a hoopoe who, like other neixin, can remember every story she’s told, Chih travels the lands, collecting tales from people of all walks of life. These stories then become part of the archives at the abbey.
But stories are always changing. Everyone from the empress and her handmaiden to bandits, brides, tigers, and hoopoes have their own versions . They vary in little details, in the perspective from which the stories are told, and even in the events included.
As a writer who’s interested in all things related to memory, I loved Chih’s internal monologue on how to do their work well—by asking the right questions, and listening to new versions of familiar stories. Cindy Kay’s audiobook narration complements Vo’s lush prose brilliantly.
“To Walk the River of Stars” by Emily Y. Teng
Yineng culture had been forgotten and suppressed because of the Integration. Now, soon, it will be time for the girls of the present generation to go through a rite of passage and walk the river of stars. Our narrator’s mother had first discovered it, working as a janitor at the Museum of Culture and Arts, but didn’t know what the words on the plaque that attracted her notice—except “Yineng”—actually meant. Things have changed for their people since, and now our narrator’s daughter must play her part in the resurrection and preservation of their lost customs in this short, lyrical story.
“The Belfry Keeper” by S.L. Harris
The Academy was once renowned for its magic, but now there’s technology to take care of things (and turn a profit, too), so no one goes there anymore. The clockwork mechanism that has maintained the books and the garden and the corridors all this time has now been ordered by the wizard to sell the furniture and melt down the metal of the bell to pay off the Academy’s debts. But the clockwork is of the Academy, and it refuses.
However, it can only continue for so long. Will anyone ever study there again? Will everyone eventually forget the Academy and move on? Will there even be anyone left to protect the Academy from?
“The Bone-Gatherer’s Lament” by Wendy Nikel
As the Bone Gatherer wanders the desert, collecting the bones of those who have died in this hot place, hearing them speaking, praying for them, he comes across bones that, unlike his usual finds, come from someone who wasn’t of the desert, but from a place where water was plentiful. The bones have a message to share, but how will it reach the people it’s meant for? The Bone Gatherer has listened for years. It may now be time to do more.
Nikel takes an interesting look at the way we think of preserving the lives of those we loved, and what it means to take care of that which would have been lost otherwise.
“Monopticon” by Dani Atkinson
Told through a letter written to someone far in the future, this is the story of a world where every single thing every person did was always watched and recorded. Nothing is hidden from Panopticon, and so no one can recruit, organize, rebel. Even your thoughts are watched; every single thing that passes through your mind, no matter how fleeting, is recorded. How do you fight something like that?
So much of our lives today are about preserving the past and present by documenting our lives, archiving what already exists, recording the voices and pictures of loved ones. In this context, Atkinson’s dystopia makes one wonder if we should all start asking for the right to be forgotten instead.
“Song of the Balsa Wood Bird” by Katherine Quevedo
At the market, hunting for souvenirs for her cousins, Alondra finds a bird made of balsa wood that she can’t tear her eyes away from. When she takes it home, her abuelo tells her the story of who the bird is and what makes it so special. It’s a legend filled with betrayal and loss and hope. Saddened, Alondra wishes she could hear the song of this bird, said to be the sweetest of all. But wooden birds don’t sing, and Alondra refuses to forget this little piece of the forest.
A short story with a particularly stunning scene that’s imprinted itself on my mind, a tale of hope and determination, and also of loss, all at the same time.
“The Future Library” by Peng Shepherd
After the death of Katie Paterson, who conceived the Future Library (a real project in Norway), Claire, the fifty-seventh author (out of one hundred) invited to contribute to the collection, is given the responsibility of looking after the forest planted for project. Her arborist partner, Ingrid, suggests burying the ashes of the authors under their respective trees after their deaths.
When the trees are cut, at a time when the forest is the last one left in the world and Claire has passed away, the words are already written on the wood.
But that’s the only start of the end of the Future Library. Can Ingrid, who knows what actually happened, stop its destruction, as the Board pushes to keep going beyond the original hundred trees, experimenting with cutting the hundred-and-first tree to see how the words went into the trunks in the first place?
