The Long View: A Tor.com Original

By Susan Palwick

In Susan Palwick's Tor.com Original short story, "The Long View", a university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her…

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250849779

Susan Palwick

Susan Palwick’s debut novel, Flying in Place, won the Crawford Award for best fantasy debut. Her second novel, The Necessary Beggar, won the American Library Association’s Alex Award. She lives with her husband in Reno, Nevada.

Book preview

Sir, Bonnie said, we have a situation.

Elliott looked wearily up at her. It was only ten in the morning and he’d already fielded three companion animal challenges. No, a student could not bring a cockroach into the dorms as an emotional support animal, because cockroaches couldn’t be neutered. No, a nursing queen and her five kittens could not be counted as one emotional support animal, and six animals were not allowed in one dorm room. No, the student whose Vietnamese potbellied pig was trained to alert to oncoming seizures—and was therefore a legitimate service animal—was not allowed to roll in slop from the dining hall, because the Student Eco-Alliance had already claimed the slop as compost for their community garden.

Outside Elliott’s window, he heard the familiar chanting of the Monday morning protesters. Free Animals Now, the student group maintaining that all animals were sentient persons and that using any of them to help humans was flat-out slavery, rotated their daily protests. Today they were at the Office of Animal Affairs, which Elliott directed. The rest of the week, they’d show up at various labs; at the stables which housed the campus’s four miniature horses, the latest rage in guide animals; at the Student Counseling Center, which had a fish tank in its lobby; and at the dog park on the university quad. Elliott liked FAN. They were nice kids, among the most thoughtful Elliott had met, with a refreshing tendency to forego ironic snark for old-fashioned sincerity. He raised his voice over their chants of Will all be free? Free will for