
The Long Game
Book 3 in the Far Reaches collection
Leave it Ann Leckie to take an idea and run in a completely different direction with it. She is a master storyteller, but it’s debatable whether this short story fulfills the brief.
Ms. Leckie's story uses the first-person perspective of a worm to tell an allegorical tale, like Animal Farm uses animals. We follow a particular worm who is better at organizing and long-range thinking than the others, as it goes on a quest to live forever.
Along the way it learns about exploitation, coercion, and what role it is really playing in the larger scheme of things.
“Well, of course they are,” I retorted. “Why do you think I bother to begin with? I make things better for everyone in the colony.”
“Well, not everyone,” Nish said. “Not for the people who won’t do what you tell them. Not for the people who have a different idea of what’s good. And certainly not for the people who you decide have to work harder or go hungry or even die just to make things”—Nish waved a tentacle sarcastically—“better for everyone. But let’s not argue about those details. You’re facing a choice. Live longer—twenty years, thirty, maybe even forty—and serve the humans so that things can be better for everyone, which will really be better for the humans and only incidentally better for people. Or you can die here, painfully, in a few months.”
I had to read this twice (and do some internet searching to narrow down what animal the main character is) to really understand this.
It has nothing to do with space, but it's genius. I’d read anything written by this author.