As much as I’d love to just dive right into it, it feels irresponsible to write a short fiction review this month without discussing the news rattling the field of short fiction: Amazon has canceled its Kindle periodicals program through which many readers of short fiction subscribed to magazines and through which many magazines received significant revenue. Most publications were already running on tight margins, and this change tightens those margins even further. If you subscribed to a publication via Kindle, make sure you renew your subscription through a different platform, and if you have a favorite publication, now is an important time to start subscribing or donating if you don’t already. There is a lot of amazing short fiction being published, and it’s important we chip in if we can to help support the health of the field. Speaking of which, there is a lot of amazing short fiction being published! Here are three of my favorite stories published in September.
“Eve’s Prayer” by Victor Forna
At just under 700 words, “Eve’s Prayer” by Victor Forna, published in Lightspeed Magazine, is probably the shortest story I read this past month, and it also happens to be my favorite. This story is a prayer to God, narrated by a scout sent out to search for hospitable planets. She has found one, but a subversive thought has arisen in her mind: what if she doesn’t tell Earth? After all, the people of Earth are sinful stewards who have let “their environment degrade beyond restoration because of soul-greed and wickedness.” Do humans deserve a second chance on another world? Would that be fair to this world?
I love this story because it questions the narrative of outer space colonization that’s predominant in much of our science fiction and culture at large. It invites the reader to ponder: why do we need/want to colonize other worlds? How is that impulse dangerous, and what if we were instead content to live on Earth as careful stewards of our beautiful planet? This story reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, a generation starship novel that asks similar questions, and which fundamentally changed my perspective on this topic. If you liked Aurora, read “Eve’s Prayer.” If you like this story, I’d recommend Aurora.
I also love this story because it is structured as a prayer. The narrator is praying, sharing her doubts and anguish with her lord, asking for the wisdom to make the right choice, and asking for mercy. She thinks she ought to be grateful to the people of Earth for sending her out, yet here she is considering betraying them. The prayer is a delightful choice of form, at once meditative and reflective but also urgent and immediate. I would love to read more stories likewise structured as prayers. Do you have any to recommend?
“Axiom of Dreams” by Arula Ratnakar
Do you prefer longer reads? Another favorite story of mine was “Axiom of Dreams” by Arula Ratnakar, published in Clarkesworld Magazine. At 22,570 words, it is technically a short novella.
Alvira is a researcher and mathematician in Boston who yearns to be admitted to a PhD program. She recently had a brain chip implanted as part of an ongoing study, and she hopes it will give her the edge she needs to finally earn her acceptance. She also takes drugs recreationally, which is strictly against the rules of the study and may be exceptionally dangerous with the brain chip, but Alvira does what she wants, and she thinks it might help her make a breakthrough. She finds more than she was prepared for. As Alvira puts it:
“Dude, there is a magical dodecahedron-shaped world inside my head. Full of people with mathematical terms as names. And they worship a graph of the Mandelbrot set as their god. And they fucking eat cake and dream!”
As the story progresses, Alvira explores the strange world inside her head, struggles with the world outside herself, and encounters more than she bargained for. “Axiom of Dreams” is original, weird, and surprising. I could not predict this story, and I had fun seeing where it went.
If you like academics and want to hang out with PhD students, check out this story. If you like science fiction stories that actually incorporate and play with science, check out this story, especially if you’re interested in neuroscience or math.
I also love the setting of this story. It is set in Boston and populated with academics, but it is also set a couple decades in the future. At one point, the characters allude to “classic” musicians from the (twenty) twenties. In another scene, Alvira’s friends talk politics and debate about the militarization of outer space and the commercial exploitation of space resources. Those are not common political topics for us, but they are relevant and becoming moreso. Alvira’s world is familiar yet strange and surprising at the same time, and I would happily read more minutia set in this world. And that’s to say nothing of the fantastical mathematical world within Alvira’s head! “Axiom of Dreams” is a longer story, but it shines at this length — it has interesting worlds occupied by colorful characters, and you’ll want the extra time to savor them.
“The Coffin Maker” by AnaMaria Curtis
It turns out, all three of my favorite stories from September deal with space colonization. “Eve’s Prayer” is centrally concerned with it, “Axiom of Dreams” touches on the topic tangentially, and “The Coffin Maker” by AnaMaria Curtis (published in Uncanny Magazine) also has a backdrop of colonizing new worlds.
Stephani is an outfitter on Guiding Light, a ship sent from a dying planet searching for habitable new worlds. Stephani makes environment suits for surveyors of new worlds. There were more outfitters, but after tragedy at their last potential planet, Stephani is the best outfitter left. The trouble is, she doesn’t have the supplies she needs to safely and properly equip the three surveyors who are being sent to explore Teridabe. Hence the title of this story: Stephani is “the coffin maker” because she knows her suits won’t do the job, and the surveyors’ lives are in real peril.
Like “Eve’s Prayer,” this is a story clearly about searching for new worlds to colonize as another world dies. However, the real focus of “The Coffin Maker” lies elsewhere.
This story works on two levels. First, on the face of it, this story is about Stephani as she is tasked with the impossible. It’s a compelling premise, executed well: Stephani, devastated and isolated through a prior tragedy, is set up for failure, endangering the life of someone she cares about. Can she convince her superiors to change plans? Does she have enough luck and ingenuity to make it work? Will she end up even more isolated and lonely, or can she preserve and grow her connections to others?
Beyond the immediate human drama, this is a story about the importance of listening to scientists and believing experts, about the dangers of ignoring them, and about leaders who play with fire and lives in the same breath. It’s about desperate politics inspired by desperate conditions, and it might make you question what sort of goals and values our society should have.
Have you read these stories? If so, what did you think about them? Do you have other similar stories about dying worlds or colonizing space to recommend? What were your favorite stories from September?
