“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 58, May/June 2024 by Eugenia Triantafyllou
Narrator: Matt Peters
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 58 May/June 2024
Pages: 30
Length: 50 minutes
Published by Uncanny Magazine on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The May/June 2024 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Arkady Martine, Sarah Rees Brennan, Tia Tashiro, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Rati Mehotra, K.S. Walker, and John Wiswell. Essays by John Scalzi, Amy Berg, Dawn Xiana Moon, and Cara Liebowitz, poetry by Angela Liu, Ali Trotta, Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan, and Fran Wilde, interviews with Arkady Martine and K.S. Walker by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Zara Alfonso, 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:

The title does give the theme of the story away, as this is very much a story about loneliness, being alone and being unable to connect with those closest to you. The way the loneliness works in this story, as soon as Neferi even GETS somewhat close to someone, they then become utterly inaccessible to her.

Except through social media, which may or may not be the cause of the loneliness in the story. Behind the story, social media may be one of the possible triggers for the ‘why’ of the story being written, although there are plenty of other possibilities for THAT, ranging from the isolation of the pandemic to being ‘too busy’ with life and work to connect in the moment to the people who are closest, to the isolation of depression, of the feeling that one can’t connect or that no one will understand or shame over the diagnosis or the feeling that one is not worthy of connection because of the depression.

And it could be because so many of us move away from our birthplaces and our families because of work or opportunities or whatever, and keep moving, that we lose connections with those held most deeply in our hearts. Or the multiverse is just playing tricks on everyone.

Or, of course, all of the above. The reasons behind the story – and the reason the disconnect happens within the story – are in the mind of the reader.

What happens IN the story, from Neferi’s increasingly isolated perspective, is that her attempt to get back in touch with her oldest and dearest friend, a person she hasn’t seen in years, results in the universe drawing away from her or Neferi being pulled out of it.

She and Cara are in the same place, at the same time, but they can’t see or talk with each other. They can only make contact through increasingly fraught texts, as each thinks the other is playing a trick, while Cara gets angry and Neferi panics.

She panics even further when she returns home to the Athens apartment she shares with her brother to discover that even though they are in the same space, they can’t see each other. They can only see the evidence of habitation that each leaves behind. Like empty food containers and ‘missing’ bags of chips.

Which is where things get both interesting and very, very weird. For this to be happening to just one person, Neferi, means that it could be all in her head – as horrible as that thought is. It’s also EXACTLY what all of Neferi’s family and friends believe is happening, no matter how much she tries to explain things through her one medium of communication with the ‘outside’ world – social media.

At least, not until the same phenomenon happens to every single one of them, leaving them each isolated in their own bubble, only able to reach out through some form of social media – or through a game which they all share.

Where they build, anew, the connections between them all.

Escape Rating B: This is explicitly NOT a comfortable story. Whatever one might think about the increasing isolation of contemporary society, the idea of being forcibly removed from it completely is chilling in this interpretation.

And we see Neferi get, well, chilled in multiple different ways as she passes through something that looks a lot like the seven stages of grief. She’s alone, her family doesn’t believe her, her attempts to make new connections in the world she has left result in heartbreak and further isolation. If her isolation isn’t the result of depression then depression absolutely is one of its results.

The craft of the story is fascinating. This is a story where sight and sound and direct vocal communication have ALL fallen away. All that’s left is social media, so texts, DMs and similar methods are all that Neferi has to work with – and all that the story has to work with as well. It’s LIKE an epistolary story updated for the 21st century, and it works well in the way that it blends what communication she does receive with her thoughts and feelings – even when those have practically shut down.

I kind of expected the game she and her family are playing to be the road back to unity, but it both is and isn’t. It’s a temporary stopgap but not a solution. Which makes the story even more uncomfortable for the characters AND the reader. We WANT a happy ending – or at least a firm resolution, but neither is to be found.

There’s a readalong for all of the Hugo nominees on reddit, and I’m mentioning it here because one comment in the discussion thread  for this story is “This hit me right in the gonna have to talk about this one with my therapist spot” which might constitute a trigger warning for some readers. If you’re already having a ‘down’ period, this might not be a good story to start. I listened to it late at night in the dark and it made the whole thing even sadder and a bit creepier. Your reading and listening mileage may vary.

But speaking of the audio, while the narrator did a good job, his voice didn’t match her character and it was a bit jarring at first. If the story had been told from her brother’s point of view this narrator would have been excellent.

This has turned out to be the penultimate – meaning next-to-last – entry in my Hugo novelette nomination readings, because I’m now officially on the fence about how I’m going to vote. Not about first place, but the order in which my other votes go. (Because of the voting system used for the Hugos, it actually does matter.) Which means I DO need to reread Lake of Souls to see how it stacks up to the others. So I will do just that in the weeks ahead.