Last Stand of the East 12th Street Pirates

“This short story looks at a climate change world. This community had nothing to do with the waves that have encroached upon their city, but they’re living on top of it. And in that unfair way that often happens, authorities are just letting it happen. It’s easier to just ignore the problem and let other people deal with it than to actually find a solution, so that human beings don’t have to work their way through the horror of living in a drowning city… This story looks at what devotion to capitalism as a solution to everything can create, but it also speaks specifically to issues that black society has to deal with. There’s often a reduction of our places as a threat, our people as violent – we are not human beings, we are a collective unknown to be scared of. This story is told through the eyes of someone who’s intimately familiar with her community – the bad seeds, the good seeds, the indifferent seeds – and she’s just trying to get through her day doing what needs to be done to keep the community going, which is what a lot of black women have to do. She’s just trying to get the mail delivered, and the day takes a horrible turn – because when you’re just trying to get the mail delivered in a neighbourhood that nobody cares about, and which is just an obstacle to getting the important business of the rest of society done, there will be many of these.” Read more...

The Best Sci-Fi Short Stories

R.S.A. Garcia, Short Story Writer