After reading John Scalzi’s Constituent Service, set in the Third District of an unnamed planet, I went back to read the short novella, An Election. In fact, it’s actually a short story more than a novella, but it’s amusing, as well as topical, although it came out in 2012.

David Sawyer is running for council in the Third District, although his husband reminds him no human has won in the district in forty-four years. Sawyer is one of five candidates running in the human-minority district. He has a young campaign manager who knows more about the district’s alien residents than he does. As other candidates drop out of the race, Sawyer finds himself running against a candidate whose only platform is to allow others to eat pets.

Although this story could be called ridiculous, it’s no more ridiculous than some of the excuses for politicians that we have in the U.S. There’s no character development since the story is so short, but we do have a couple interesting characters. Latasha is a shrewd campaign manager, a college student wise beyond her years. And, David’s husband, James, is more aware of what David is putting himself through than David himself is. An Election was just a fun science fiction story from a master of the genre.

John Scalzi’s website is https://whatever.scalzi.com/

An Election by John Scalzi. Subterranean Press, 2012.

FTC Full Disclosure – I bought the Kindle edition of the story.