Introduction
James Van Pelt’s novelette “A Fierce Need,” published in the March/April 2026 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, represents a mature work from an author whose career has been marked by consistent excellence in speculative short fiction. Van Pelt, a retired high school English teacher from western Colorado, has published extensively in major science fiction magazines and received numerous accolades, including the Colorado Book Award for The Radio Magician and Other Stories and recognition from the American Library Association for his collection Strangers and Beggars. “A Fierce Need” demonstrates Van Pelt’s characteristic strengths—emotionally resonant characterization, careful attention to scientific plausibility, and thematic depth—while exploring the intersection of childhood dreams, personal loss, and the democratization of space travel. This review argues that the story succeeds as both a coming-of-age narrative and a meditation on grief, using the framework of near-future space exploration to examine how ambition and loss shape identity, though it occasionally suffers from predictable plot beats and a somewhat linear narrative structure.
Plot Summary
“A Fierce Need” follows the lifelong friendship between Theo, the first-person narrator, and Celeste, a brilliant and driven young woman obsessed with space exploration from childhood. Beginning when the protagonists are ten years old, the narrative traces their shared passion for spaceflight through adolescence and young adulthood. As children, Celeste, Theo, and their friends form a group called “the astrogirls,” inspired by the video game Star Explorer and real-life astronaut Amelia Singh. The story chronicles key moments in their development: Celeste’s disastrous rocket experiment that burns down her father’s shed, their ditching prom to watch a lunar eclipse, Theo’s flight training with instructor Dusty, and Celeste’s academic achievements at MIT.
The narrative takes a tragic turn when Amelia Singh dies in a launch explosion, briefly halting space program recruitment. Later, just as Celeste is about to join the maiden voyage of Dirac One—a spacecraft powered by the revolutionary Dirac Drive—she suffers a catastrophic stroke and dies. Theo, devastated but determined to honor their shared dream, eventually secures a position on the Dirac One mission through the intervention of flight director Robert Riley, who had worked closely with Celeste. The story concludes with Theo aboard the spacecraft, discovering a memorial plaque to Celeste as the engines engage for the journey to Venus and beyond.
Critical Analysis
Themes and Ideas
Van Pelt constructs “A Fierce Need” around several interlocking themes, most prominently the tension between individual ambition and mortality. The title itself suggests an intensity of desire that transcends rational calculation—the “fierce need” to escape Earth’s gravity well becomes a defining characteristic of both protagonists. This need is established early through the children’s immersive play with Star Explorer and their Halloween costumes replicating the Ceres crew’s mission patches. Van Pelt suggests that certain vocations are not merely chosen but arise from deep psychological imperatives formed in childhood.
The story also functions as an extended meditation on grief and survivor’s guilt. Theo’s journey is marked by three instances of holding Celeste’s hand: at the lunar eclipse during prom, at her father’s funeral, and finally at her deathbed. This recurring motif of physical connection underscores the emotional intimacy between the characters while emphasizing Theo’s progressive losses. The narrative structure—which moves inexorably toward Celeste’s death—creates a sense of tragic inevitability, as if the “rapid, unexpected disassembly” that characterizes both the shed fire and the rocket explosion foreshadows Celeste’s cerebrovascular event.
The democratization of space travel provides the story’s science-fictional framework. Van Pelt imagines a near-future where the “Dirac Drive” (presumably utilizing principles from theoretical physics related to antimatter) revolutionizes spaceflight by enabling constant 1G acceleration, reducing journey times from years to days. This technological breakthrough transforms space exploration from a government monopoly to an industry with “private enterprise” and multiple competing programs. The proliferation of launches becomes so routine that even historic missions receive minimal media coverage—a commentary on society’s capacity to normalize the extraordinary. Yet Van Pelt resists pure techno-optimism; the Amelia Singh disaster reminds readers that spaceflight remains inherently dangerous, and the story’s emotional core emphasizes that technological progress cannot insulate individuals from personal tragedy.
Form and Style
Van Pelt employs a first-person retrospective narration that allows Theo to reflect on events from childhood to young adulthood with the wisdom of hindsight. This narrative strategy creates emotional distance at key moments, as when Theo observes, “When I thought back, years later, I realized Celeste had a magician’s flair and drama in everything.” Such reflective passages suggest that the narrative present exists sometime after the events described, though Van Pelt never explicitly establishes this temporal frame. The retrospective voice enables thematic foreshadowing—the repeated imagery of explosions and disassembly, for instance—while maintaining narrative momentum.
The story’s structure is essentially chronological and episodic, organized around key moments in the protagonists’ development rather than a traditional rising action/climax/falling action pattern. This picaresque approach allows Van Pelt to compress years into pages, but it sometimes produces an uneven rhythm. The middle section, covering Theo’s college years and flight training, occasionally feels rushed compared to the more developed childhood sequences. The pacing accelerates notably after Celeste’s stroke, with the final section covering Theo’s training and launch in a few condensed paragraphs.
Van Pelt’s prose style is generally straightforward and accessible, prioritizing clarity over linguistic experimentation. He demonstrates particular skill in rendering technical details without overwhelming the narrative: the description of Theo’s first helicopter lesson, for example, conveys both the complexity of the controls and the student’s confusion without resorting to excessive jargon. The author also effectively uses sensory detail to ground abstract concepts, as in Theo’s experience of the observatory dome rotating: “Pure, 360-degree, auditory delight.” Such moments of heightened perception punctuate the narrative, signaling transformative experiences.
Symbolism in the story centers on fire and flight. Celeste’s matchstick rocket, which explodes in her father’s shed, establishes a pattern of dangerous experimentation that reappears in the Amelia Singh disaster. Fire represents both the destructive and propulsive forces of ambition—it destroys the shed and kills Singh, but it also literally powers rockets into space. Flight itself functions as both literal goal and metaphor for transcendence, escape, and the fulfillment of childhood dreams. Theo’s progression from video games to propeller planes to jets to helicopters to spacecraft mirrors the narrative’s movement from fantasy to reality.
Characterization
Celeste emerges as the story’s most vividly drawn character despite being filtered through Theo’s perspective. Van Pelt characterizes her through specific behaviors and speech patterns: her insistence on proper nomenclature (calling the willow Salix Babylonica and the raven Corvus Corax Principalix), her “magician’s flair,” and her unflappable response to the shed fire (“A rapid, unexpected disassembly”). These details create a portrait of a brilliant, somewhat literal-minded young woman whose intelligence manifests as both scientific aptitude and social awkwardness. The kindergarten anecdote about “your epidermis is showing” efficiently establishes her character at an early age.
However, Celeste’s characterization remains somewhat idealized. Van Pelt presents her almost exclusively through Theo’s admiring gaze, and she functions more as an inspirational figure than a fully rounded character. Her flaws—if they can be called that—consist mainly of excessive enthusiasm and minor recklessness. The story provides little sense of her interior life beyond her obsession with space, and her dialogue often serves to explain scientific concepts or articulate thematic points rather than to reveal character complexity.
Theo, as narrator and protagonist, receives more nuanced development. Her journey from enthusiastic child to skilled pilot to grief-stricken friend to reluctant astronaut feels psychologically credible, particularly in the depiction of her emotional numbness after achieving her lifelong goal. The passage describing her initial disappointment aboard Whitson Station—”I felt no sense of wonder. No achievement. Was I the dog who finally caught the car and didn’t know what to do with it?”—captures the phenomenon of anticlimax with precision. Van Pelt also subtly establishes Theo’s secondary position in the friendship: she is always reacting to Celeste’s initiatives, following her lead, achieving slightly less spectacular results. This dynamic makes Theo’s ultimate success aboard Dirac One both satisfying and bittersweet.
The supporting cast serves primarily functional roles. Dusty, the flight instructor, exists to provide Theo with skills and wisdom, delivering aphorisms like “Flying is mostly uneventful except for two points of panic: takeoffs and landings.” Gale, Celeste’s sister, appears only at their father’s funeral and Celeste’s deathbed, providing emotional support but little independent characterization. Robert Riley’s late introduction feels somewhat contrived, his function as deus ex machina—securing Theo’s position on the mission—only partially justified by his emotional connection to Celeste.
Historical and Cultural Context
“A Fierce Need” participates in a long tradition of science fiction about space exploration, from the hard SF of Arthur C. Clarke and Larry Niven to the more character-driven work of authors like Lois McMaster Bujold and Mary Robinette Kowal. Van Pelt’s story aligns most closely with what might be called “aspirational near-future SF”—narratives that imagine plausible technological advances enabling expanded human presence in space within the lifetime of contemporary readers. The Dirac Drive, while speculative, draws on actual physics concepts, and the story’s depiction of commercialized spaceflight extrapolates from current trends involving SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other private aerospace companies.
The story also engages with gender in ways that reflect contemporary rather than historical attitudes toward women in STEM fields and space exploration. Van Pelt’s near-future is one where the “astrogirls” face no apparent gender-based obstacles to their ambitions; their challenges are financial, competitive, and ultimately biological (Celeste’s stroke) rather than discriminatory. The casual mention of Amelia Singh—presumably named for the Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla and aviatrix Amelia Earhart—as a celebrated figure suggests a world where diversity in space programs is unremarkable. This optimistic vision may strike some readers as utopian, but it aligns with the story’s overall tone of possibility tempered by tragedy.
The narrative’s treatment of grief and mortality invites psychoanalytic or existentialist readings. Theo’s journey might be understood through the lens of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief, with the final scene representing a form of acceptance and integration. The story also raises questions about the relationship between individual ambition and meaning: does Theo’s achievement aboard Dirac One honor Celeste’s memory or simply fulfill a dream that has become hollow without her? The memorial plaque provides a symbolic resolution, but Van Pelt resists offering easy emotional closure.
Evaluation
“A Fierce Need” succeeds most powerfully as an emotional narrative. Van Pelt’s depiction of childhood friendship, particularly the intense bond between young people who share a passionate interest, feels authentic and affecting. The story’s emotional peaks—the shed fire, the prom eclipse, Amelia Singh’s death, Celeste’s stroke—are carefully orchestrated without feeling manipulative. The author demonstrates admirable restraint, allowing scenes to carry their own weight rather than over-explaining their significance.
The integration of technical detail represents another strength. Van Pelt clearly possesses substantial knowledge of aviation and aerospace engineering, and he deploys this knowledge judiciously. The descriptions of flying lessons, the F-16 flight, and the simulator training educate readers about the skills required for piloting while advancing the plot. The story makes a convincing case that Theo has genuinely earned her position aboard Dirac One through years of training rather than simply inheriting it from Celeste.
However, the narrative suffers from predictability in its plot structure. Experienced readers will likely anticipate Celeste’s death well before it occurs, given the story’s trajectory and genre conventions. The Amelia Singh disaster, while serving important thematic functions, also telegraphs the story’s ultimate direction. Van Pelt might have generated greater tension by introducing more ambiguity about Celeste’s fate or by structuring the narrative non-chronologically to delay revelation of key events.
The story’s conclusion, while emotionally satisfying, verges on sentimentality. The memorial plaque, Theo’s epiphany, and the final line—”The acceleration kicked in”—provide closure that some readers may find too neat. Van Pelt seems to endorse a straightforward interpretation: that Theo has successfully honored Celeste’s memory and found meaning in grief through achievement. A more ambiguous ending might have enriched the thematic complexity, acknowledging that personal loss cannot simply be resolved through career success, even one as extraordinary as space exploration.
The work’s treatment of secondary characters and relationships also represents a missed opportunity. Theo’s romantic life receives only glancing attention (the prom date with Nate Huntley), and the story provides little sense of how other friendships or family relationships might have shaped her development. The singularity of Theo’s focus on Celeste and spaceflight, while thematically appropriate, sometimes renders the narrative world narrow.
Despite these limitations, “A Fierce Need” demonstrates Van Pelt’s considerable strengths as a storyteller. His ability to compress a bildungsroman into novelette length without sacrificing emotional resonance is impressive. The story balances hard SF elements with genuine pathos, appealing to readers who value both technical plausibility and character development. Van Pelt’s prose, while not stylistically innovative, serves the narrative efficiently, and his thematic concerns—ambition, loss, the persistence of childhood dreams—resonate broadly.
Conclusion
James Van Pelt’s “A Fierce Need” stands as a accomplished work of contemporary science fiction that uses the framework of near-future space exploration to examine universal themes of friendship, ambition, grief, and the relationship between childhood dreams and adult achievement. The story succeeds in creating emotionally compelling characters whose passion for spaceflight feels both personally motivated and culturally significant. Van Pelt’s careful attention to technical detail grounds the speculative elements, while his straightforward prose style ensures accessibility without sacrificing literary quality.
The narrative’s primary weaknesses—predictable plot structure, occasionally rushed pacing in the middle sections, and perhaps excessive neatness in its resolution—do not fundamentally undermine its achievements. Rather, they represent the limitations of the story’s chosen form and approach. A more experimental narrative structure or more ambiguous characterization might have produced a different kind of story, but not necessarily a better one for Van Pelt’s purposes.
“A Fierce Need” will likely endure as a representative example of early 21st-century aspirational space fiction—stories that imagine humanity expanding into the solar system while acknowledging both the technical challenges and the emotional costs of such expansion. The work invites comparison with other recent novellas and novelettes exploring similar territory, including Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut series and Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers sequence, though Van Pelt’s tighter focus on two characters and his emphasis on individual loss over social commentary distinguish his approach.
Future scholarship might productively examine “A Fierce Need” in relation to other narratives about women in STEM fields, particularly those that address the persistence of childhood interests into professional careers. The story also merits consideration as part of Van Pelt’s broader oeuvre, which frequently explores themes of memory, loss, and the relationship between past and present. Ultimately, “A Fierce Need” affirms that genre fiction can achieve genuine emotional depth while maintaining commitment to scientific plausibility and sense of wonder—a balance that Van Pelt, throughout his career, has consistently demonstrated the skill to achieve.