“Unpossible”

Rich Horton, Locus Magazine

Rich selected it as one of the Recommended Story for the month and said this:

We have become used to challenging stories about the frontiers of contemporary neurologial research from Daryl Gregory, so perhaps it is a bit of a surprise to see in “Unpossible” a fantasy about a man whose wife and son have committed suicide. He is trying to rediscover something he lost during childhood, and so he resurrects a bike that had special attachments with such markings as “unpossible.” This is a way to a fantastical universe populated by characters that will be familiar to most readers. Gregory’s point turns nicely on that familiarity and on how we perhaps forget too readily our love of those characters.

Nick Gevers, Locus Magazine

After discussing “Two Weeks After” by M. Ramsey Chapman and “The Recreation Room” by Abert E. Cowdrey, Gevers says:

And “Unpossible” by Daryl Gregory is a fable of adulthood, of the necessary abandonment of youthful distractions and acceptance of the requisites of maturity. Nothing exceptionally original here, but a bittersweet mood is skillfully evoked. Thus the issue’s trio of solid, worthwhile short stories.

Elizabeth A. Allen, Tangent Online

We all know that you can’t take it with you, but it’s an equally resounding truism that you can’t return to the worlds of your youth. That doesn’t keep our nameless, lonely protagonist in Daryl Gregory’s “Unpossible” from trying. While he makes his pitiful, all-too-familiar attempts to resuscitate the past, the protagonist meets a man with a similar quest, and they end up turning their misconceptions around. A bittersweet tale that evokes the nostalgia of middle age and the endless promise of childhood at the same time.