The Falling Woman

A tale of parallels between a world more than a millenium dead and gone, and a world now looking at the former world both as scientists and as human beings.

The old world is that of the Maya, the Central American culture of the turn of the first millenium. An event happened at the site of a current archaeological dig, and unearthing it in the present brings the spirits of that long ago time back to influence the living once again.

Alas, parallels are only good so far, much like metaphors, and the breakdown between these paralells creates a problem for the story. To maintain the paralells, the author is forced to push characters in a direction that seems unnatural, and inconsistent with their earlier natures. It relies on panic, irrational reaction and self-destrcutive behavior to drive the final points home.

All along, the message to the reader is that 'the gods' make the rules and drive what happens, and the characters, either alive or long dead but resurrected spirits, have no final agency. What will happen on a given day is set by 'the gods', and any effort to the contrary is futile and hopeless.

In my world, there are no gods or spirits that control my fate, or anyone else's. Mythologies from a distant past that completely control the people of today leave me cold, so this work has that effect on me. Clearly, very many people liked the ideas and story so much that the author received a Very Big Award. Their collective judgement is no doubt more to be respected than mine.