3.5 Stars

This was a very short, but enjoyable story from GRRM. Very different from what I'd experienced of his before (which is basically only his "Song of Ice and Fire" series).

My only complaint, if one can call it that, is that it's just not as fleshed out as I would like it. I mean this in pretty much every way - from the characters, to the world (although the descriptions were fantastic... I just wanted to know more), to the mystery and the philosophy. I just wanted a bit more depth to all of it.

That being said, I did enjoy this, and it has made me interested in reading GRRM's Dreamsongs collection.

So, a short plot synopsis, then. It's presumably the future, and there've been quite a few inhabited/inhabitable planets found, and colonized. One such planet, Wraithworld, is a tourist destination because it is, literally, enshrouded in mist-ery. (See what I did there?) From dusk until dawn, the planet is covered in thick mists. They retreat during the full light of day, but never fully disappear. Ground level is always covered, so the hotel Castle Cloud was constructed above them.

(Wait, this actually reminded me of another small nitpick I had with this story. I've just mentioned that many different inhabited planets have been discovered, yet at one point, one of the characters likens believing in UFOs to believing in ghosts. Which just struck me as odd, because if WE can travel to other, inhabited, planets, why couldn't they travel back to Earth? Wouldn't that then PROVE UFOs exists?)

Anyway... Since the planet was discovered, people have turned up dead, or simply vanished. The initial party of explorers claimed that they saw an 8 foot tall, incorporeal humanlike form over one of their crew who was brutally killed, which promptly disappeared into the mist, leading to stories of the mist wraiths, and giving the planet its name.

A scientist sets out to prove, once and for all, whether they are real or not.

This was the aspect I did like the best about this story, because I could see both sides of this argument so clearly. On one hand, the fact that a mystery is a mystery to us indicates that we do, at some level, want to know what the truth is. It's just a matter of whether that desire is strong enough to overcome the sense of wonder and curiosity we hold. The mystery is the draw... while there's a mystery, there's possibility and imagination. Are the wraiths real? Are the mists causing some sort of hallucination? Could it be that the wraiths ARE the mists? Or that the water content reflects shapes and shadows in the right conditions causing people to report a "wraith sighting"? So many possibilities and theories. The curiosity keeps people coming back the Wraithworld to try to figure it out for themselves.

But then there's the attempt to prove. As people, we thirst for knowledge. We want to know how things work, what they are made of. We want to know the answers to life's questions. But sometimes that knowledge can be so limiting. Once you know something, that's it. There's no getting back the wonder one had before all other possibilities were removed in the name of truth. Sometimes, I just don't think it's worth knowing every answer.

Sometimes, we should keep our sense of wonder. ( )

This provacative tale on the subject of "knowledge at any price" was one of my favorite stories from Martin's Song for Lya collection.

On a sparsely inhabited planet of surreal beauty, rumors of wraithlike beings which, on very rare occasions, attack humans, add a bit of danger and excitement to the perceived attractiveness of the planet. The story tells about a visit by a scientist who sets out to debunk these rumors, and the long term impact thereof. ( )