"Spar" is a science fiction short storybyKij Johnson; it won the 2009 Nebula Award for short story,[1] and was short-listed for the 2010 Hugo Awards.[2]
It was first published in Clarkesworld.
A lone survivor of a space shipwreck is trapped in a raft with an alien, and is pitted against it in a sexual competition for survival and dominance. The story is written in a third person perspective with a nameless, female survivor of a spaceship wreck. A tentacled alien has made it into the escape pod with her and tries to assert its dominance. The female spacer tries to make sense of what the alien is using her for, and what she is to it. She also tries to make a connection to the alien by teaching it about her body parts and how to pleasure her, rather than to assault her. All the while, the spacer has flashbacks to a man, Gary, the spacer lost in the accident, who tried to make an emotional connection to her, when all she wanted was a physical connection. In the end, the female spacer is rescued and now has to face being around human beings again.
