When I finished reading Borne, I was pretty smitten with the world and characters that Jeff VanderMeer had created (I’m still smitten, to be honest, and it’s on my list of books to buy for when I have room on my shelves again). Eventually, I learned of this short story set in the same universe. When I had a little downtime, I picked it up from the library and pretty much breezed through it. Though different, it still had the same feel as Borne and made me miss this universe all over again.
The Strange Bird: A Borne Story (2018)
Written by: Jeff VanderMeer
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 128 (Paperback)
Series: Borne
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Premise:
The Strange Bird is a new kind of creature, built in a laboratory — she is part bird, part human, part many other things. But now the lab in which she was created is under siege and the scientists have turned on their animal creations. Flying through tunnels, dodging bullets, and changing her colors and patterning to avoid capture, the Strange Bird manages to escape.
But she cannot just soar in peace above the earth. The sky itself is full of wildlife that rejects her as one of their own, and also full of technology — satellites and drones and other detritus of the human civilization below that has all but destroyed itself. And the farther she flies, the deeper she finds herself in the orbit of the Company, a collapsed biotech firm that has populated the world with experiments both failed and successful that have outlived the corporation itself: a pack of networked foxes, a giant predatory bear. But of the many creatures she encounters with whom she bears some kind of kinship, it is the humans — all of them now simply scrambling to survive — who are the most insidious, who still see her as simply something to possess, to capture, to trade, to exploit. Never to understand, never to welcome home.
No spoilers
Discussion: The Strange Bird is similar to both Borne (the intelligent blob-like creature in the original book) and Mord, the giant flying bear from Borne, in that it was created in a lab. These labs made some truly weird shit, let me just say that right now. Weird and fascinating and on many occasions, both terrifying and awe-inspiring. Readers are witness to the Strange Bird’s creation, her escape, and her travels through the wildly changed world that now exists. She faces many adversaries, and the entire time she has but one goal. You wonder about that goal the entire time. Is her purpose to go somewhere and destroy something? To create more of herself? Honestly, with the things the Company made, there’s really no way to tell.
It’s a very interesting journey, to be sure. She’s able to undergo some truly radical changes (imagine that as a human, someone took you apart and put you back together, only this time as a couch. Yeah, that kind of radical), but still watches things as they occur, with the reader along for the ride. Eventually, characters from Borne appear, including Rachel and Wick. It was nice to bump into them again, and they’re the same, good, useful people as they are in the main book. They become the reason Strange Bird can continue on her journey until she finally reaches her destination.
In Conclusion: Though it is just a short story, I found it to be quite enjoyable. I liked going on this journey with Strange Bird and revisiting all the bizarreness that is the world of Borne. The end was also not quite what I expected (though it was hard to fully know what to expect), but that doesn’t make it bad or any less of an ending. In fact, it was oddly sweet in its way, something that this world lacks simply because it is so harsh, so it was very nice to see. I do recommend reading Borne before this short story, though. There are many things within this story that come straight from there, and it could potentially confuse someone deciding to dive into this first. It’s possible to read this first, but I think this story is far more interesting when you already know about the world and the characters; they have more of an impact when they appear and Strange Bird has to deal with them. But definitely read both the next time you have the chance.
At some point, I plan on picking up Dead Astronauts, which is next in the Borne books, though it sounds like it’s going to be one bizarre read. Then again, that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?
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