Maybe it’s the two-volume set of Asimov stories I read, or the long history of the short story’s role in the science fiction market, but I always associate science fiction more with short stories, and I am much more likely to write a science fiction short story than a science fiction novel. Alternatively, I find fantasy doesn’t work as well in short fiction form. A significant component of that might be endings. The best science fiction endings, to me, should leave the reader with a lot to think about and few definitive resolutions beyond the immediate conflict. With that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and say right now that you shouldn’t read this post until you’ve read Ship in a Bottle, because we’re going to spend almost the entire time talking about the ending.
If you’ve been following the site for some time, you probably know about my struggles with endings, whether from posts in which I’ve discussed the issue, or from reading stories I haven’t quite ended as well as I might like. It’s something I’ve been working on consistently, and I gave the ending to Ship in a Bottle a great deal of thought. The original draft had no perspective from the aliens, and ended with the sphere being carted away to be secured, ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. I thought it was an ideal science fiction ending, giving no clear answer, neither side really winning, and lots of room for readers to wonder what happens next.
My writing group did not share my enthusiasm for it when I circulated this story with them; in fact, the ending’s ambiguity was one of two most significant critiques I received, and I spent most of the month when I wrote this thinking about it. The feedback was that I needed something more, something to indicate that one of the characters was right or wrong, that simply carting the sphere away and never finding out about it was dissatisfying. But, I still wanted a certain ambiguity to the ending, with both sides of the debate failing to get what they wanted. Combining the two main critiques led me to cutting out as much extraneous world-building, exposition, and description as I could in order to roust up enough words to add an opening and closing scene from the perspective of the aliens imprisoned inside the sphere.
By adding the alien perspective, I thought to increase the tension, reveal what was inside the sphere, and make it easier for readers to take one side or the other. It also would make the ending more interesting, reducing some of the vagueness and providing a sense of something more to come, not the sphere simply being buried and disappearing from human consciousness for a few decades. Unfortunately, I fear that it also made the story too predictable, too pat, and too sparsely written. Trying to convey a completely alien civilization with advanced gravitational-manipulation technology in just three hundred words in which action also needs to take place is not the easiest thing to do.
In the end, I was pleased with how it came out, although I think I preferred the original version, without the explicit aliens, but the story wasn’t accepted for the “behind the veil” issue of Elegant Literature, so it is again appearing here on the site. And here I was worried about not having consistent new stories for IGC Publishing while I work on novels. I still think it’s a good story, one of the stronger short stories I’ve written, and I hope you enjoyed it.
Spacemaster Eshervat crackled electricity along his tarsal-spines. “It’ll work,” it communicated to Spacebender Terestat.
“I wish I had your confidence,” Terestat conveyed through subatomic vibrations. A flicker of lightning traced its dorsal ridge, though it affected to be too busy consulting its notes to notice.
“It’ll work,” Eshervat repeated. “All we need is a little push.”
After making more adjustments and ensuring that the calibrations were appropriate for the compressed spatial geometry inside the blackbody prison bottle, Terestat slithered back from the controls. “All is readiness, Spacemaster.”
Eshervat coiled around from the engineering station to take its place on its throne. “Finally. Spacecrew! Full starboard displacement!”
The ship’s antimatter reactors, idled within the prison, burst to life, and the spacecrew channeled the energy to the ultracondensers. A few stray, exotic particles escaped and were absorbed on the blackbody’s surface, but most of the energy was channeled into micro-singularities lining the control surfaces. Within the compressed spherical spatial geometry of the prison bottle there seemed nowhere for Eshervat’s vessel to go, but it nonetheless strained sideways, as if trying to touch the blackbody’s unreachable inner surface.
“Is it working?” Eshervat called down to Terestat.
“Impossible to tell,” Terestat reminded the spacemaster. “We can’t perceive anything beyond the blackbody.”
“Right.” Eshervat bared its teeth. “Then we’ll find out if we crash!” Outside their private spacetime prison, the spherical blackbody, already coated in an eon of interstellar dust, hurtled on through vast emptiness. Perhaps its trajectory changed by the barest smidgeon, but inside, the crew of the Nameless Scourge knew only their prison, a helpless ship in a bottle.
Click here to read the rest of Ship in a Bottle
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