Short Stories 366:164 — “A Compass in the Dark,” by Phoebe Barton

[image error]I was lucky enough to get to be on a panel with Phoebe Barton at Can-Con last year, and it was one of those moments where you just want to lean back and absorb the knowledge, so when I saw her name in the table of contents in the May/June issue of Analog, I stopped everything I was doing and dove right into the story, and I regret nothing (even if my tea over-steeped in the kitchen). Basically, sinking down into a Phoebe Barton story was exactly what I needed.

“A Compass in the Dark” is a short story with an untidiness of emotionality I could immediately empathize with. Set on the moon, the main character of the story is a woman whose relationship with her father (and her father’s belief in spirits and the use of magnetic towers to “guide” them) is, at best, complicated. We have only enough time for a few small glimpses into their interactions, but Barton fills them with so much impact that I caught myself nodding multiple times while I read. When an accident on the unforgiving moon claims a life, the fallout is similarly emotionally tangled (there is a great line about what aunts want versus what the deceased would like, and I guess even in the future and on the moon funerals are more for the living than the dead).

Ultimately, I think “A Compass in the Dark” was such the perfect time-and-place read for me because of the sense of isolation of the main character and how it’s presented: she’s gone to the far-side of the moon, is very alone, and that’s by choice. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but it’s good and chosen and sometimes choosing to do a thing matters the most, including choosing how to pay respects, and how to say a farewell to someone. It’s a wonderful story, and one I’m still pondering since.