Short Story Showcase #7:  “LEGO Man”

This series focuses on stories that are both well-written and do something that I find interesting from a technical perspective.  This week, try not to step on the LEGO bricks!

Post-apocalyptic fiction seems to have popped up around the time we realized we could actually destroy our world, and it’s never really gone out of style.  “LEGO Man,” by Bo Balder and published on T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog, is a different take on it than I’m used to seeing, though, and I enjoyed it enough to want to bring it to your attention.  Even in a post-apocalyptic setting, there’s no grinding poverty, no violence, no cannibals, just a story about perfectly normal farmers caught up in a plot so delicate that it’s almost invisible, like the hope being spun out of nothing by the characters.  

Even after reading this, I’m still not quite sure how Balder did it.  There’s very little conflict in this story, and the stakes don’t get much higher than baking a good loaf of bread.  Somehow, though, the story turns into a powerful meditation on hope and the human condition, with the eponymous LEGO Man functioning almost as a wandering priest in his own obsessed, worn-out, and forgetful way.