Heck of a good story, this one. My only complaint is that it ended too soon. Nobody said it was a novella. Well, that and a few formatting problems on the Kindle version. But nothing seriously distracted from the engaging story of Osaji, a floater who thought she wanted to become a barnacle (or even a spacer) but turned out to have floating in her blood, after all.
I’d read Carolyn Ives Gilman’s short stories, so I knew to expect good plotting and believable characters. But the biotic membranes the floaters use to get about the sea of their ice-covered world (think Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus) are brilliant conceptions. Even my old scuba diver’s fear of deep water relaxed after a few dozen pages. Now we can look forward to the next installment of Osaji’s adventures and discoveries, yes?
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 