Summary of The Stars You Can’t See by Looking Directly by Samantha Murray
Clarkesworld #232 January 2026
“`The story opens on Christmas morning in a small coastal town in Western Australia, where it begins snowing—something that has never happened before, especially not at the height of summer near the thirtieth parallel south. Jac stands barefoot in her nightie, arms outstretched, laughing and dancing in the impossible snow. Her husband Vin comes out, scowling at this wrong phenomenon, but joins her when she asks. The snow feels strange: it’s not cold at all, falling warm and melting on their skin.
Through flashbacks, we learn about Jac and Vin’s relationship. They fell in love on their second date at an observatory, where Jac taught Vin about the Pleiades star cluster—seven sisters who, in various cultural myths, wandered into the sky and became stars. The story was especially meaningful because Vin has four sisters and Jac has two, making six between them. They jokingly call themselves “The Pleiades,” with Jac perhaps being the seventh sister. Vin’s youngest sister, Em, becomes particularly close to Jac.
Key Plot Points
- Jac has struggled with infertility, going through multiple failed rounds of IVF that ended in chemical pregnancies
- When Em and her wife Mel start IVF, Em succeeds on the first try, causing Jac both joy and painful jealousy
- The mysterious snow falls all over Earth for nearly two days—not actually snow, but long crystalline structures
- Scientists theorize various causes, but the truth becomes clear months later: all babies conceived after the snow are different
- These “snow-babies” are born early at seven months, with translucent skin, longer fingers and toes, slower heartbeats, and DNA with twelve bases instead of four
The world becomes divided over these transformed children. Em’s baby, conceived through IVF before the snow, will be one of the last “normal” humans. Vin becomes obsessed with the change, spending hours scrolling through conspiracy theories and becoming increasingly hostile toward the snow-babies. He sees them as aliens, as parasites taking over humanity. He talks constantly about parasites in nature—the Gordian worm that controls grasshoppers, making them drown themselves; the toxoplasma that makes rats attracted to cat urine so they’ll be eaten by cats.
Vin believes this is a quiet alien invasion, that “they” sent the snow to transform all future humans from the inside without risking open warfare. He becomes radicalized, joining online groups, talking about fighting back. The tension grows as riots break out in some places, with hospitals ransacked and things burning. When Mel suggests they should be fighting, Vin agrees, asking why the government isn’t doing more.
Meanwhile, Jac has been hiding a secret: she’s pregnant. Conceived after the snow. For weeks, she’s kept it to herself, knowing what it means. Unlike her previous pregnancies, she feels no nausea, only a strange calm and tenderness. When she finally reveals her pregnancy to Vin and the others, saying “Maybe we just love them,” Vin’s reaction is devastating. For a moment, she’s scared of him as he grips her arm hard enough to leave marks, nearly saying the words “You have to…” before stopping himself—the implicit suggestion that she should terminate the pregnancy hanging unspoken between them.
Vin becomes unable to touch Jac, withdrawing emotionally and physically. He takes the camper and disappears for days at a time, stockpiling supplies in the shed—canned food, drums of petrol—trying to escape from what she represents and from his own guilt. The chasm between them widens as the world divides into “Us vs. Them.”
The story concludes with Jac’s realization that perhaps they should have only vowed to love each other “until the end of the world,” acknowledging that their story has an end date. She decides to leave, to join groups forming around parents of the snow-babies. She reflects that she should tell Vin—either in words or in a note left on the kitchen bench—that their love story is no less real for having an ending. In her mind, the memory of dancing with Vin in the snow remains, falling like flakes of silence. She chooses her child over her marriage, over her old life, accepting that she will “wander into the sky and become stars”—joining the new constellation of humanity, luminous children born around the same time, visible only out of the corner of your eye, like the Pleiades themselves.
