Nirvana High

"Nirvana High" is a 2004 science fiction short story by Eileen Gunn and Leslie What. It was first published in Gunn's collection Stable Strategies and Others.

Synopsis

Barbara is a student at Kurt Cobain High School, where everyone has a tendency to self-harm; as well, many of the students and faculty have superpowers.

Reception

"Nirvana High" was a finalist for the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novelette.[1] The Seattle Times commended Gunn's "knack for blending a bizarre premise and an offhand, colloquial tone".[2]

At the SF Site, Paul Kincaid considered the story "promising", but ultimately "disappointing since it never quite explores its idea with the courage it demands, and ends flatly rather than with the resolution that could have lifted it."[3] Strange Horizons questioned the story's presence in 2006's James Tiptree Award Anthology 2, as its "gender credentials appear rather weak".[4]

Tangent Online lauded the story's "forgiving, we're-all-in-this-together outlook";[5] Abigail Nussbaum, however, called it unmemorable and 'essentially plotless', with "(t)he ordinariness of Barbara's problems overwhelm[ing] the extraordinariness of their setting."[6]

Background

Gunn has noted that, when she wrote the story in 1997 — prior to the Columbine High School massacre — the idea of a school being legally forbidden to prevent students from being armed, and therefore installing technology to monitor students' emotional state in the hopes of detecting aggression, was intended as satire.[7]

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References
  1. Nirvana High, at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved June 5, 2018
  2. What's New: the Cult of Celebrity, by Michael Upchurch, at the Seattle Times; published October 10, 2004; retrieved June 5, 2018
  3. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2, reviewed by Paul Kincaid, at the SF Site; published 2006; retrieved June 5, 2018
  4. Render Unto Chaos: The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2, edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, reviewed by Victoria Hoyle, at Strange Horizons; published November 6, 2006; retrieved June 5, 2018
  5. Stable Strategies and Others by Eileen Gunn, reviewed by Thomas Marcinko, at Tangent Online; published February 21, 2005; retrieved June 5, 2018
  6. The 2005 Nebula Award: The Novelette Shortlist, at Asking the Wrong Questions, by Abigail Nussbaum; published February 26, 2006; retrieved June 5, 2018
  7. alone in the kitchen, editorial by Eileen Gunn, at Infinite Matrix; published April 15, 2005; retrieved June 5, 2018
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