“Burn” is a story rich in metaphor and symbolism. The language is not ostentatiously ornate, but it is certainly beautiful. As a novella it focuses closely on a single person, and in the end on a single relationship. Many things are alluded to, implied, talked around. In short, it’s not your everyday science fiction novella.

Prosper Gregory Leung is a member of the Walden colony. Established by a rich idealist, the colony attempts to achieve perfection of simplicity. The homes are simple, most people live in small villages, there are no planes. There is only minimal television and wireless communication, and no connection to the wider future internet of colonized worlds.

Except in the hospital where Prosper is recovering from wounds received fighting a forest fire. Previously, Walden had been a more normal colony. That colony had failed and most people had moved away or been bought out by Walden’s founder. Some people refused to leave. When the founder, for ill-explained reasons, tries to cover the entire planet with forests, depriving the previous colonists of their previous habitat, they retaliate by setting forest fires.

In searching the planetary internet randomly for people with his own name, Prosper makes contact with an extraordinarily odd child whose back story is never really given. He has something to do with luck. He, a bunch of his young friends, and their minder suddenly appear on Walden - possibly to let the child make friends with Prosper, possibly for some hidden agenda.

The focus of all of this is Prosper, particularly his relationship with his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Their relationship had been disintegrating, and her brother died in the same fire that almost killed Prosper. In the end all the powerful imagery of uncontrolled fire is harnessed in a swirl of passion and self-destruction centered on her. As such, there are some very moving passages in this story.

However, as a story it has some issues. There are characters that exist not as people in their own right but only as metaphors. Some things are too elliptical. Where the author might have delved into the politics of colonialism, he deliberately muddied the waters and left it unexamined. The ending left me particularly disappointed, with the plot wrap-up seeming to undercut one of his most powerful images woven only pages before. I appreciated what Kelley was going for, but his overarching vision didn’t seem to seamlessly unite with the plot foundations that science fiction stories need to have. A worthy effort, but a flawed one.