Lowland Sea - Suzy McKee Charnas

 Lowland Sea - Suzy McKee Charnas

Lowland Sea was first published in Ellen Datlow’s tribute anthology, Poe. It was a nominee for the 2010 Locus Award for Best Novelette. It was collected in Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year Volume Two and by Paula Guran in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2010 Edition. Datlow has more recently included the story in The Best of the Best Horror of the Year.

Charnas is best known as a science fiction writer, using the genre to explore social inequality. Her tribute to The Masque of the Red Death sketches a dystopian future clearly based on contemporary political issues. The nature of the pandemic, the migration crisis, and the effects of climate change are all familiar to us. Charnas takes the background of world events of 2009 and extrapolates into a dystopian near future. She explores how social power plays out in a similar manner to Poe’s tale, but with a much clearer eye toward divisions caused by gender and race. She also draws a neat line along an axis of self-preservation, selfishness and greed. She tells a really good story which offers much to think about, a story that has gained in power over time.