Finisterra by David Moles

“Finisterra” is a 2007 science fiction novelette by David Moles. It is about an engineer from Earth who contracts out to help poachers on a distant world make their biggest kill yet.

Non-Spoiler Summary In A Nutshell:
Bianca Nazario grew up on post-singularity Earth as a minority Christian living under an Islamic government. For generations the members of her family have been aeronautical engineers, but when her parents die and her brothers marry she is left with very few professional or marriage prospects. She consequently takes a risky but lucrative contract to go to Sky, a strange gas giant world where beasts the size of mountain ranges float in the sky and support the small population living there. Her assignment, however, is to help poachers bring down the biggest animal of all. Hmm… will she do it or will she feel too guilty about helping the poachers?

It was only a handful of years later that Bianca’s father died, leaving a teenaged Pablo at the helm of his engineering business; and only Bianca’s invisible assistance and the pity of a few old clients had kept contracts and money coming into the Nazario household.

By the time Pablo was old enough to think he could run the business himself, old enough to marry the daughter of a musical instrument maker from Tierra Ceniza, their mother was dead, Bianca was thirty, and even if her dowry had been half her father’s business, there was not a Christian man in Rio Pícaro who wanted it, or her.

And then one day Pablo told her about the extrañado contract that had been brought to the ayuntamiento, a contract that the ayuntamiento and the Guild had together forbidden the Christian engineers of Punta Aguila to bid on—a contract for a Spanish-speaking aeronautical engineer to travel a very long way from Rio Pícaro and be paid a very large sum of money indeed.

Three months later Bianca was in Quito, boarding an elevator car. In her valise was a bootleg copy of her father’s engineering system, and a contract with the factor of a starship called the Caliph of Baghdad, for passage to Sky.

My Two Cents:
“Finisterra” passes my simple test: A good story, told well, with some cool science fiction ideas. This is my first time reading a story by David Moles and I found his writing style to be excellent – he also has a few other published stories that I’ll have to give a try now that I’ve read this one and liked it so much.

• The good:

• A very cool idea in the Zaratanes – floating animals so large that they are like mountain-islands, complete with dirt, trees and farmers!
• I personally liked the world that Bianca came from. I think the idea of an Islamic government helping squash out the singularity is very plausible.
• The bits and pieces of Spanish and Arabic made the story seem more authentic – and made it more fun to read.

• The bad:

• Be careful, there is some strong language and dark themes that make this story inappropriate for children – or people who don’t like that stuff.

Fact Sheet:
• Word Count: 12,878
• Page Count: 24

• “Finisterra” has garnered the following awards:

• Nominated for the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Novelette

Where you can find “Finisterra”:

• This story first appeared in the December 2007 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
• You can read a free online version of “Finisterra” at the F&SF website.
• …sorry, that link is no longer available.  But you can read an archived copy of this story here.

Related Yet Still Interesting Links:

• John Joseph Adams (the assistant editor at F&SF) has a nice blog post about both “Finisterra” and David Moles – including some interesting insight from the author and an illustration from the story that was used as cover art for the F&SF issue in which it appeared.
• Did you know that David Moles was a finalist for the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer? Yep. You can learn more about this science fiction author by reading the biography on his website.

Craving More Stories?
If you enjoyed this story then you may like Lambing Season by Molly Gloss – a short story about a sheepherder who one night sees an alien spaceship land near her flock.

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