Bernard M. Cox

“La Chanson de l’Observation” by Bernard M. Cox, the third in his The Space Within These Lines collection is an ingenious story. It’s science fiction, fantasy, and gay romance as well.

It used to be that gay fiction often dealt with forbidden or doomed love simply because one or both of the would-be lovers were LGBTQ. That isn’t the case for the lovers in this story, Javier Flores and Theo Zedek.

Their delightful love affair has to end because one of them isn’t a human being but a “node” posing as one in order to observe what earthly humans do. His falling in love with a human renders him useless as an observer.

From the point of view of the observers, that does make sense. From the point of view of a human, though, it’s also cold, hard, and cruel.

I can’t give away the ending of this excellent story, but I can tell you it left this reader in tears.

(As originally reviewed on Rainbow Book Reviews. Please visit http://www.rainbowbookreviews.com for other reviews that may be of interest.)… (mer)