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Troubled Waters: Five SFF Works About Rivers

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Troubled Waters: Five SFF Works About Rivers

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Troubled Waters: Five SFF Works About Rivers

Stories about rollin' on a river, featuring vampires, faeries, goddesses, and more.

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Published on January 16, 2025

Photo by Martin Sanchez [via Unsplash]

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Photo of a river in Iceland, bordered by grassy shores and cliffs

Photo by Martin Sanchez [via Unsplash]

Rivers are generally useful: for irrigation, transportation, fishing, also as territorial borders and waste disposal (including inconvenient bodies)1. It is no surprise that rivers appear over and over in human fiction. Speculative fiction is no exception! If fantasy and science fiction characters are not rolling corpses into the reeds, they’re poling their way up river, or scowling suspiciously through fog at half-seen figures on the far side.

Here are five works featuring rivers.

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin (1982)

Cover of Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

An unusually cold winter left Abner Marsh’s steamboat fleet a collection of wrecks. Enter Joshua York, who has both the money to fund Fevre Dream, a splendid new steamboat built to Marsh’s specifications, and a need for the means to venture up and down the Mississippi. As the alternative is bankruptcy, Marsh accepts York’s offer of partnership.

Why does York avoid daylight? How has he remained so youthful, when his anecdotes suggest great age? Why do people die violently wherever Fevre Dream visits? The answers raise a more important question: is there any way for Marsh to survive the attention of vampires?

The big bad in this is not York, who is a cuddly marshmallow by vampire standards, but a vampire named Julian. Julian is surprisingly incompetent, on par with the cast of What We Do in the Shadows. You might think that would make Julian less dangerous. Not so. If anything, his flaws make him even more of a threat.

Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson (2004)

Cover of Trash Sex Magic by Jennifer Stevenson

Atlas Properties executive John Fowier is determined to sell every unit in the as yet-unbuilt Foxe Park Townhouse complex. The project should proceed like clockwork, provided only that Atlas can secure title to the Fox River-adjacent land required. The site is currently occupied by people he dismisses as no-account trailer folk. Fowier is confident he can bribe or bully them into leaving.

As Raedawn “Rae” Somershoe and her mother Gelia could warn Fowier, the impediment isn’t the people—although they are not the pushovers Atlas expects—but the ancient tree slated for removal from the site. The tree is an ancient guardian responsible for managing the otherwise rambunctious Fox River. Removing it will be challenging. Surviving the consequences even more so.

Sometimes the answer to “if it’s so easy, why hasn’t someone done it already?” is simply “because nobody thought to.” Sometimes it isn’t, so it is always a good idea for visionaries to carefully consider that question.

“The River Judge” by S.L. Huang (2024)

A young person drinks from a bowl of red liquid as around them, waves crash into ships, flames burn at the edge of a village, and ghostly figures rise from a river of blood.

Li Li’s father’s inn is conveniently situated, close enough to a river to ensure a steady flow of travelers, but far enough from imperial centers of power to discourage nosy officials. Foolish functionaries who make the mistake of visiting the inn discover that Li Li’s father’s other vocation is murderer, and soon join his other victims underground. As far as the government knows, the river monsters are to blame.

Li Li’s father is a man lacking in all virtues. Thus, when her father flees the village, Li Li does not miss him at all. Li Li pragmatically assumes the family business, conducting it with far more diligence and professionalism than her father ever managed. And should officials discover what’s going on, or should her father decide to return? Li Li will be able to deal with that as well.

It wasn’t until this novelette presented the idea that it occurred to me that one plausible explanation for the prevalence of legendary river monsters is that a river monster is a terribly convenient explanation for regular disappearances. If people are routinely murdered along a vital transportation route, authorities might investigate. However, if the issue is just some supernatural creature beyond mortal ken, maybe the law will decide that prudence demands turning a blind eye.

Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel (2024)

Cover of Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel

Heeding human prayers, Shiva bound the goddess Ganga to the river named for her. Still divine, Ganga extended her protection to the eight playful Vasus godlets. Her reward is to be included in the curse hurled at the mischievous Vasus by an irate sage. The eight will be born, live, and die as humans. So will Ganga. She will be the eight’s mortal mother.

Mortal Ganga agrees to marry the besotted Raja of Hastinapur. Father of her children, sorted. Now all she need do is hurry through eight pregnancies, killing each baby at birth to free it (and eventually herself) from the chains of mortality. It’s an almost perfect plan… whose failure helps trigger catastrophic civil war.

This Mahābhārata-inspired novel features idealism, self-deluding pragmatism, and self-centered hedonism, all of which have catastrophic short-term and long-term consequences. There do not seem to be any winning scenarios. To quote the American sage WOPR, “the only winning move is not to play”… but that does not appear to be an option.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (2025)

Cover of The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Thistleford’s proximity to Faerie delivers prosperity. If mortals wish for magical goods, and many do, Thistleford is the gateway through which trade with Faerie passes. Sisters Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn play an integral role in this, tending the magic willows along the river that flows out of Faerie. Pretty and rich, Esther and Ysabel would be fine brides for any ambitious man—so thinks their neighbor Samuel Pollard.

Pollard is determined to marry Esther. Esther finds him repugnant, preferring her faerie lover, Rin. As pragmatic as he is self-centered, Pollard sees the obvious solution: drown Esther in the Liss and woo Ysabel instead. What could possibly go wrong with drowning someone with a faerie lover in a magical river?

This is the stuff from which murder ballads are made. If you’re familiar with murder ballads, you can’t know the specifics of what must follow, but you will be able to make an educated guess about Pollard’s fate, given how the songs generally end for the murderers2.

Usually, I assume characters in genre fiction have never read or heard examples of the genre in which they are characters3. However, Ysabel is a fan of murder ballads so Pollard surely must have heard them. Why oh why did he do what he did?


Humans being perhaps even more riverine than they are estuarine or lacustrine, rivers appear over and over in science fiction and fantasy. The above are a very small (and for me, largely surprisingly recent) assortment of examples. I certainly don’t mean to imply these are the only examples. Feel free to name others in the comments below. icon-paragraph-end

  1. We are all looking at you judgmentally, Willie. ↩︎
  2. Waves my copy of Lomax’s impressively heavy Folk Songs of North America as evidence that I know all about murder ballads. ↩︎
  3. We are all looking at you judgmentally, Tom Dooley. ↩︎

About the Author

James Davis Nicoll

Author

In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, current CSFFA Hall of Fame nominee, five-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
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