Short Fiction Review: February 2024
My favorite story from February was “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim … My other favorite stories from February all took the form of in-world artifacts of some sort.
Short Fiction Review: January 2024
My favorite stories from January all wrestled with tough ethical questions [“A Saint Between the Teeth” by Sloane Leong, “Nothing of Value” by Aimee Ogden, and “A Cure for Solastalgia” by E.M. Linden].
Short Fiction Review: December 2023
My four favorite stories from December are all quite different. While the first three stories all do something interesting with the perspectives used to tell the story, the fourth story doesn’t. Instead, it just tells a good story with good characters.
Short Fiction Review: October 2023
Often, there ends up being a common thread connecting my favorite stories for a given month. This month, however, the differences between my favorite stories seem more notable, particularly when it comes to structure.
Short Fiction Review: September 2023
“… there is a lot of amazing short fiction being published! Here are three of my favorite stories published in September.”
Holy Shit! Representation Matters! Or, How SFF Helped Me Realize I’m Nonbinary
I can’t really tell you why I’m here saying I’m non-binary instead of saying I’m redefining cishet masculinity. One just feels more true to me than the other, and I say that with huge amounts of love and respect to everyone of all genders. —Jonathan Alexandratos, “How Geek Culture Made Me Realize I Am Non-Binary” I’m trans/nonbinary. I use nonbinary pronouns such as they/them, and I came to this bit of self-knowledge through the science fiction and fantasy (SFF) community. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t come to this realization about myself while in college while I minored in women’s & gender studies. I minored in gender studies because I liked thinking and talking about feminism, racial justice, art, culture, politics, and activism. I also really liked talking about gender. I thought that was just because I hated sexism, the patriarchy, and toxic masculinity. In college, I didn’t begin to think: maybe I like talking about gender because I’m trans/nonbinary. And why would I? I knew trans and nonbinary people existed, but they weren’t on my radar. Back in college, I had heard of nonbinary people, but that was about it. I rarely encountered anyone who was nonbinary or genderqueer. As far as I was aware, I didn’t personally know any trans people. I knew the definitions of transgender and cisgender, but I didn’t know all that much about trans or nonbinary people. I had never really been asked to make space for trans people, and I hardly ever saw others make space for trans people. I rarely came across media representation of trans or nonbinary people, much less good representation, much less consistent good representation.
