DEINDE Review: Jen Gunnels, The New York Review of Science Fiction

Photo by Justin Hoch at jhoch.com. Post by August Schulenburg.

Oh, it was a joy to return from the Retreat, and rather than facing the return to ordinary life alone, be met with Jen Gunnels review of DEINDE for The New York Review of Science Fiction. This review is further example that the long-form criticism – the kind that deeply engages with the ideas and real-world-context of a play – that is a relative rarity in theatre reviews can be found abundance in the world of science fiction.

Happily, the Review is now offering their work online, so I encourage you to read the full review here. Because of the depth and complexity of the review, it’s difficult to select a single quote to share here, but I particularly liked this:

“…what can be done in the onslaught of inevitable progress? When does beneficial crossover to harmful? As the characters sang “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” the meaning in the context of Schulenburg’s inquiry settled into more deeply layered nuances. Humanity, like the stalwart spider, will get washed away time and time again and yet will always go back to climbing up the water spout, hoping, perhaps this time, to get to the top.”

Perhaps the recent death of Neil Armstrong makes this quote even more moving to me. The unbelievable beauty of human beings walking on the moon – a sight that still strikes chords of wonder from me – has been in some part washed away. Eugene Cernan was the last man to walk on the moon in 1972, and his last words on the moon were:

“As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record, that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. “

But we believe not too long into the future…that was nearly forty years ago, and we have not been back since, nor look likely to return anytime soon. And though I know (and wholeheartedly agree) that we have challenges enough here on our our own little stone of green and blue, I can’t help but feel we’ve been washed a little further down that water spout of human striving.

Here’s to all the other worlds in the wide multiverse, real and imagined.
Here’s to the daring that crosses the distances between here and what could be.
Out comes the sun.