While reading “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”, I wondered who this Kij Johnson was and where I could find more of her work. Turns out she also wrote The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe. No wonder this novella is so good.

The “Man Who Bridged the Mist” has a perfectly shaped plot. The story opens when Kit Meinem, an engineer/architect, rolls into town with a suitcase full of plans for a bridge. It closes just before the bridge opens to the public, as Kit prepares to move on.

Normally you’d expect Kit to meet resistance from the locals, or get snapped at by the monsters in the mist river, but the conflict in this story is subtler: he falls in love with the ferrywoman, who will become obsolete when the bridge is finished. She loves to ferry, but she agrees the job is so dangerous nobody should do it.

But especially you get sucked along by the main question. Will the bridge work?

The novella reads like an antidote to The Fountainhead. Kit needs the people who will put in the labor to build his bridge, and they need him. He’s socially awkward and struggles to form bonds with people, and learns he’s more connected to them than he ever realized.