Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Nola Stam

Nola lives with her family in Utah. She works as a Special Duty Nurse in a public school and specializes in aiding medically fragile children. Nola’s favorite literature is fairy tales, myths and fables.

“Father Earth” begins as science fiction but, with the transformation of a barren planet, morphs into the genre of fairy tale. Likewise, the spacefarer Kaelyn learns to enjoy a life better suited for her than interstellar piracy.

The story is reminiscent of medieval miracle plays. Is it a dream episode? When Kaelyn becomes a happy and revered great-grandmother and is ultimately embraced by “Father Earth,” is her experience real or is it an expanded moment before a fatal crash? And since she has so many descendants, who was her husband? She has to go through a kind of emotional purgatory before accepting her life on the strange planet, but does she really have a choice?

In any event, the moral will be quite clear to young adult readers, and the story can serve as a kind of companion piece to Sarah Lynne Gibbel’s “Creatures,” also in this issue.

Nola Stam’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Nola. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!