Today on Skiffy and Fanty, we have something a little bit different for you. Tom Toner is the author of the Amarathine Spectrum trilogy, The Promise of the Child, The Weight of the World, and the forthcoming The Tropic of Eternity. Instead of an ordinary guest post, today, Tom has an original short story to share. I give you “Microcosm”
In C.L. Polk’s Witchmark, an Edwardian world-next-door fantasy universe is the setting for the story of an on-the-run doctor scion from a noble family, hiding his magical gifts, and getting wrapped firmly in the coils of intrigue, politics and romance. Miles Singer is a Doctor working in an out of the way hospital, hiding in an unlikely place to run away from his past. A veteran himself, his medical skills gained during his time in a recent war now concluding have transferred to a post-war career helping fellow veterans. His past, however, is why he is working in an impoverished hospital for low wages, living hand-to-mouth in a Tenderloin, and scratching out a living.
A fascinating tale of magic, beings of immense power and their unique governing system, and even Atlantis, The Last Sun is K.D. Edwards’ debut novel with Prometheus Books, which promises an engrossing trilogy to follow a solid beginning. With a court system based on tarot and the Major Arcana, powerful magics, and mythical dangers around every corner, Edwards brings a new Atlantis to life just off the coast of Massachusetts, and pulls readers into a twisted missing-person investigation that is covering up much more sinister plots.
Scientist and MacArthur Award Fellow Francine (Frankie) arrives in the near future at a facility dedicated to the study and protection of the non-human Hominidae, the great apes. Wooed there by the Foundation that runs the facility, Frankie is eager to use its resources and her ‘Genius Grant’ to study a group of bonobos as a means of testing and extending her theories on reproduction, and their influence on the mechanisms of biological evolution. Frankie begins this new chapter in her life while facing familiar personal challenges and physical complications arising from life-long endometriosis. Her intense focus on her work and the benefits provided her through the latest technology of ‘bodyware’ augmentations help Frankie persist through any disability caused by her condition. Meanwhile, another researcher there named Stotts facilitates her education on, and introduction to, the bonobos. The gentle, reserved Stotts focuses his research on the development of tool use in primates, but he looks to the relatively simple tools of communication utilized by the bonobos with a romanticized envy when compared to human technology.
Today we have a Guest post from SMOKE AND IRON author Rachel Caine, who is here to discuss some of the ancient technology she researched in writing her Great Library series. One of the most fascinating things I uncovered in writing my young adult novels about the Great Library of Alexandria were the multiple references to technologies that qualify as astonishingly advanced … if not downright science fictional. I incorporated (and yes, enhanced, for fictional purposes) many of these things into the books, but I thought it’d be interesting to discuss a few of them in detail.
My favorite story last month was “In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same” by A.C. Wise, which appears in The Dark Issue 37. It’s a smart, dark take on the Scooby Doo formula that pauses and asks, “Aren’t they too young for this?” Like poetry and space opera? Go read “I Sing Against the Silent Sun” by A. Merc Rustad and Ada Hoffmann, which appears in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 97. In this harrowing yet hopeful story, a poet-revolutionary is hunted by a god of silence. (Also, this story makes me happy because of its genderfluid and nonbinary representation.) I also enjoyed “The Sweetness of Honey and Rot” by A. Merc Rustad, which appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 254 (21 June 2018). It’s a story about the costs of resistance, and it features original, inventive worldbuilding and gorgeous, detailed prose.
