Effective story of a displaced person and a displaced people. Saufatu has taken on the role of the keeper of his community’s memories of their home – a half dozen beautifully tranquil islands swallowed by the rising sea levels. Those memories are virtual ones : they have a virtual re-creation of their islands, which Saufatu tends, and develops as best he can with limited resources. The VR is a shared dreamspace one, and this technology is used to good effect by Johnson in the story. When a megarich Internet mogul substantiates (memorably) in the sea nearby, Saufatu and his neice, and his fellow islanders are enabled to come to terms with their loss and their migration.
