Finding the Bones, central Wisconsin author Nikki Kallio’s debut short story collection, opens with a geography lesson. The short story follows a young girl who knows of Earth only through the faded atlases and books stored on her generation ship, a space vessel that will take her and others far from a dead planet.
Kallio was inspired to write “Geography Lesson” after finding a 1977 geographical dictionary at the annual American Association of University Women book sale in Appleton, Wisconsin. Kallio wondered what it would be like if all you knew of Earth came from books, providing the seed for the short story. A reminder of all the girl has lost is summarized in a simple conversation with her father.
“This ship? They built it in orbit.”
“So it never touched the earth.”
“No.”
“Like me.”
In many ways, Kallio takes up this bookish challenge herself, but instead of extracting the human experience from one book, she spreads it across her collection. Stories of hoarders, missing people, and, of course, bones, walk us through myriad human experiences. She draws from genre the way some do cards. Fiction for this story. Science fiction for that. A ghost story next to magical realism. Short story next to novella.
“The Fledgling,” a nine-part novella, opens when Gin witnesses what seems to be a freak zombie breakout at a gas station. Gin thinks it’s an isolated incident. Twenty-five years later, her daughter, Elena, unable to travel the world herself, teaches dance via virtual simulations to children across the globe. People must stay shuttered away during the daytime. Increased solar storms and a thinning ozone layer put everyone at risk for a sunsickness that causes humans to turn on themselves and their community. People must hide themselves away in the dark, going out only at night. Society fractures. Social bonds break.
Elena knows this firsthand. Yet she pushes against her mother’s reclusiveness, pushes outside the bounds of the congested yet safely covered city, puts herself at risk for a chance to feel the world the way it must have been before the chaos. It’s a feeling she will never be able to access. It’s unattainable in part because, Her mother had said little about the life before, even though Elena had, since she could speak, begged her to share that world with her; Gin would only shrug and say It was different.
Elena does it all, trying to live her life despite the inhospitable nature of her world. And she may suffer for it. For trying.
“The Fledgling” stands out in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, an event we are at turns reeling and recovering from. We try to go outside. We try to connect. Like Elena, we ask ourselves, will we be safe? Will we be better for it?
And these human questions are the heart of Kallio’s writing. Nearly as dark as Rich Larson and as melodic as Ted Chiang, Kallio is well on her way to seating her short fiction among the greats.
