Names for Water
by Kij Johnson
I didn’t understand this poetic story of a failing engineering student, Hala, who
imagines that a phone call of white noise is many different things, one of which is a
call from the future—but I am delighted by the mastery of language by my former teacher
at the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science fiction. She and I also had a
perfect day climbing in the western foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
It is the future.
“Names for Water” by Kij Johnson, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November 2010.