“Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 56, January/February 2024 by Mary Robinette Kowal Narrator: Erika Ensign
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: fantasy, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 56 January/February 2024
Pages: 25
Length: 40 minutes
Published by Uncanny Magazine on January 2, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads
The January/February 2024 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.
Featuring new fiction by Mary Robinette Kowal, Jordan Taylor, Jana Bianchi, Natalia Theodoridou, Ana Hurtado, Cheri Kamei, and Angela Liu. Essays by John Scalzi, Alex Jennings, Cecilia Tan, and Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne, poetry by Ali Trota, Ai Jiang, C.S.E. Cooney, and Sodïq Oyèkànmí, interviews with Jordan Taylor and Natalia Theodoridou by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Galen Dara, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.
Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 Hugo Award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo Award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.
My Review:
This entry in my Hugo Award nominee readings moves the dial from the novelettes to the short stories. I picked this one to go first in that category because the author is one that I’ve certainly enjoyed in longer forms, notably her Lady Astronaut series and The Spare Man.
Having finished this story, I have a feeling that it made the Hugo Ballot because I’m not alone in that name recognition and affection for her longer works. Because this short just didn’t gel, particularly in comparison to the novelette nominees.
Yes, I know they’re not the same thing, and the novelettes have a bit more room to work, but still, with the novelette nominees even the ones that didn’t work as well FOR ME still had very interesting things to say and/or said those things in interesting ways.
“Marginalia” is, well, the most apropos title this story could have, because that’s exactly what the story feels like – marginalia. Something that got scribbled around the edges of something bigger or more important. It’s also a bit of an academic in-joke as well as a potential explanation for the absolutely stellar giant snail monsters, but from this perspective, it captures the nature of the story a bit too well and not in a good way.
It may be that this is trying to do too many things in a very small number of pages, of which a few too many are taken up by an imperious cat (and I’m saying that in spite of how much I love cats in general and this one in particular), and not nearly enough glitter from the slime left behind by the giant snail monsters.
Those giant snails are the best part.
Overall, this is very much a typical medieval fantasy-type setting, where the main characters are Margery, a young woman caring for her dying mother, her younger brother Hugh, dreaming of adventure beyond their little farm, and the nobleman Lord Strange doing his best to keep his lands and people safe from the rampaging giant snails. And, of course, the snails doing the rampaging.
The boy disobeys his sister, keeps the nobleman safe from the snails – and the sister does the heroic thing and saves not just the day but all the lands ravaged by the snails. Not through might, but through ingenuity.
The ending falls a bit flat because it doesn’t end satisfactorily. The boy gets his wish, the nobleman realizes he knows nothing about how the people in his demesne really live, the mother dies to set her children free and Margery is left standing on the horns of a dilemma, knowing that her future has the possibility of being brighter than her past and completely uncertain which way to step to make it so.
Escape Rating C: “Marginalia” feels like a story that’s a bit of a filler. Putting it another way, the story lives up to, or more appropriately down to, its title, as marginalia are, according to Wikipedia, “marks made in the margins of a book or other document.” The bits around the outside edges of something else. Whether that something else was a bigger story, or in this case whether that something else should have been pitched at a younger audience, either way this story is fun enough for its length – or its length in audio, but no more than that.
I did listen to the podcast, I enjoyed Erika Ensign’s reading and it was the perfect length for a short drive, but there’s just not a lot of there, well, there. The giant snails were the best part and they’re just doing what their nature intended.
Meanwhile, I’m left hoping that the rest of the short story nominees rise above this one.
