Crawford Fantasy Award, and finalist for the Mythopoeic Award. She is co-editor of the multi-genre anthology Who Will Speak for America? and her stories and essays have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Catapult Magazine, Electric Literature, Flash Fiction Online, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Rumpus, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family.
Feldman applied the Page 69 Test to Saturnalia and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Stephanie Feldman's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.You think you will know the end when it arrives. How could you miss an epic plague, a meteorite plunging into the sea, a zombie invasion? How could you miss a tidal wave or a government coup, nuclear annihilation or environmental collapse?Page 69 is the one passage that directly captures the mood and setting of Saturnalia, which is all about our changing world and how we will face it. Our anxiety, our rationalizations, our compartmentalization and mental juggling. Our struggle to manage our own lives and comprehend the enormity of what’s confronting humanity.
We reassured ourselves by imagining ever more fantastic catastrophes while the real disasters unfolded. We saw the bees disappearing, and the seas warming, and the anonymous oligarchs funding political campaigns. Sometimes, it seemed it was all we talked about, but our complaints were mundane. The weather, for instance: no snow on Christmas. Flood insurance premiums increased, but only on the coast, and don’t they have enough money there? Those people with their beach houses? I can’t afford a beach house; I can’t afford any house; I can’t afford my education, but no one told me that until after I graduated. I’m just glad there’s a basement, muddy though it is. My phone trills tornado alarms in the middle of the night. More and more tornadoes, spinning off from more and more hurricanes.
It’s just the weather. Hasn’t the weather always been bad? Haven’t we always had Lyme disease? Haven’t we always longed for spring to come early? Can’t I just focus on those little gifts, those simple pleasures, a flower blooming in December? Can’t I have anything to sweeten the mounting grit of daily life, here, in the end of days?
Because now, as we all know, it’s too late. A tipping point. The floodwaters and mosquitos and tornadoes are killing us here in Pennsylvania, but we’re lucky—lucky we’re not in another region of this fraying country, running from fires, rationing water, or sinking into the rising tide. Or in another part of the world, which has tipped, which spills nations across borders, which puts people in a jar and shakes them until they fight like scorpions.
In this way, the Page 69 Test is eerily spot on! Which I love—Saturnalia is also about synchronicity, and that tug between reason and our desire for the numinous.
At the same time, I wouldn’t use this page to introduce Saturnalia to readers. It’s an urgent, present-tense narrative that unfolds over one night and from one point of view, as the protagonist, Nina careens from disaster to opportunity and back again—and as her relationships shift between friendship and antagonism. Page 69 is contemplative (if still sort of chaotic) while the rest of Saturnalia is rooted in action.
I don’t know if it’s a cop-out to say I would start on page one, of if this test proves I made the right choice. But on the very first page, Nina considers an invitation from Max, her last friend, to visit him on Saturnalia eve. Soon, the wild winter solstice carnival will begin, a festival that brings up only bad memories for Nina, and she’d rather hide out in her deteriorating house. But Max offers her work, and she’s broke. She’s also been isolating herself for years, and Max’s call beckons her back into the world—not just a world of disaster, but a world of pageantry, hedonism, and power. Nina insists she’s done with all that, but she can’t resist.
The Page 69 Test: The Angel of Losses.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
