Short Fiction Review: October 2024
My favorite stories from October feature characters who care deeply for their local community, for communities across the world, and for their planet itself. In “Hot Hearts” by Lyndsie Manusos (published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 173), a headstrong woman is determined to terraform a lifeless rock into a world that bears life. In “The Children of Flame” by Fiona Moore (published in Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 217), a woman tries to hold her community and its allies together when they are threatened by a contemptible acquaintance from her past. In “A Most Lovely Song” by Albert Chu (published in PodCastle Episode 861), a talking bird accompanies a Chinese boy and his descendants through times of war and protest, but the bird might not be as altruistic as it first seems. Let’s get to it. “Hot Hearts” by Lyndsie Manusos Dallas signed up and trained to foster a planet, and she chose a solo mission. Now, she has awakened from hyper sleep in a remote and lifeless solar system, and it’s her responsibility, all on her own, to guide and jump-start her planet into a habitat that can support life. She was prepared for this to be difficult, but now that she’s here, she sees it’s even more hopeless than she was prepared for. Here’s how the story begins: Dallas gazed out the viewing window of her ship, beheld her planet, and despaired. She’d anticipated something more. Better. She’d studied the worst-case scenarios. She’d read about the lost causes. But she’d never really believed one would be her first. Why had the program given her a shell? One thing I like about this story is how it diverges from more traditional narratives about terraforming planets and colonizing space. Dallas is trying not only to birth an atmosphere and make the planet capable of supporting life, but to cultivate a planet filled with life. However, there is no direct mention of preparing the planet to be colonized by humans. Earth is referred to as a failed planet and Dallas’s namesake as “a city that no longer existed”, so presumably people may want to immigrate to this planet, but colonizing the planet doesn’t seem to be the primary goal, since terraforming it will take decades or centuries and since Dallas is on only one of many such missions scattered throughout the galaxy. Instead, it seems the primary goal here is simply to foster life. It’s a beautiful vision of environmental (planetary?) stewardship. “Hot Hearts” is also just a motivating, inspiring read. Dallas wakes from hyper sleep to a monumental, near-impossible task. Sure, she feels overwhelmed and hopeless at first, but she’s intelligent, resourceful, and committed — and she has an encouraging audio diary from her mother. I found it powerful to see Dallas persevere and rise to the challenge before her. She is a headstrong character intent on bending a planet to her will, and I found it tremendously fun to watch her try. “The Children of Flame” by Fiona Moore Morag is doing the best she can in a fallen world. After society as we know it has collapsed, Morag tends to her farm, cooperates with the people around her, and tries to help them cooperate with each other. She’s pretty good at it, even when dealing with the Children of Flame, an odd group of religious nomads who spend the winter in Morag’s village. She faces a true challenge, however, when visited by a former acquaintance, a wannabe warlord running a protection racket. This story reminds me of two others. First, it reminds me of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. Like A Canticle for Leibowitz, it takes place after civilization has fallen, during an interregnum where some people are cooperating and trying to preserve knowledge while others work to accumulate resources and power for themselves. There’s an interesting tension in this story in which some characters feel pressured to either embrace feudalism or become nomads while Morag tries to preserve peaceful cooperation as a realistic choice. Also, like A Canticle for Leibowitz, “The Children of Flame” pays attention to the role of religion, something I always appreciate. The Children of Flame are a strange religious group who seem to abstain from talking for most of the year, who practice rituals the villagers don’t understand, and who say wonderful things like, “We have to stop the sky wolves from eating the sun.” They aren’t explained in much detail (which is a shame because I’d love to read more about them), but that isn’t a problem because they feel believable and fascinating and the core conflict in the story has more to do with the wannabe warlord. This story also reminds me of “Masque of the Red Death” by Cory Doctorow, a story included in Doctorow’s Radicalized collection which I previously reviewed on this site. Both “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Children of Flame” explore conflicts in post-apocalyptic settings between cooperators working to foster community and selfish individualists who serve only themselves. “Masque of the Red Death” is focused on a prepper who brings about his own tragedy, while “The Children of Flame” tells a story about how the cooperators manage to unite and support each other in a moment of danger, which makes this story feel more upbeat and hopeful. It also has a fun robot. You can’t go wrong with weird, friendly robots. [Editor’s note: Fiona Moore has more stories involving Morag and Seamus the robot, as well as others, at Clarkesworld.] “A Most Lovely Song” by Albert Chu This story opens in Chongqing in 1939. After a young boy’s father is killed in a Japanese bombing campaign, the boy meets a magical talking bird that offers him advice and helps lead him to safety. The story then progresses through three other scenes: Korea in 1951, New York in 1970, and New York in 2024. In these scenes, the boy and his descendants find themselves facing wars and protest movements, and always the magic bird is there
Short Fiction Review: September 2024
My favorite stories from September all involve things going wrong: at the office, within your community, and when you screw up your ill-conceived revenge. In “The 6% Squeeze” by Eddie Robson (published in Uncanny Magazine Issue 60), a freelancer faces an impossible assignment. In “The Ex Hex” by Jae Steinbacher (published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 172), a witch tries to hex their ex in a fury of vengeance and screws up the spell in the process. In “We the People Excluding I” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu (also published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 172), the very world seems to be falling apart when a new leader steps forward with a risky ritual promising to restore balance. Let’s dive in. “The 6% Squeeze” by Eddie Robson At work, Miles is tasked with the impossible. In this case, that means designing packaging for a “Mr Zeb” branded mug. The dimensions are already set, and the company style bible is extremely particular and “must be obeyed to the letter.” The style bible features exacting imperatives such as “Height of largest Mr Zeb™ image must be at least 30% the height of the packaging.” Given those strict imperatives, and considering the physical limitations of the packaging that Miles must work within, Miles realizes that the task before him is quite literally impossible. Miles does the reasonable thing and emails his coordinator outlining the problem. He even sends a follow-up, noting the urgent deadline. However, when he receives no response, he deviates — ever so slightly — from the style bible to make a functional design that he can turn in, figuring that something is better than nothing, reasoning that if there’s an actual problem, at least then someone will get back to him to discuss it. I will stop summarizing here so as to avoid spoiling the story, but I will warn you that it becomes surprisingly violent. This is a story that you either should read because you will love it or should actually skip over because it will make you irate. It’s a comically absurd take on dysfunctional, toxic corporate cultures that ask the impossible, punish you for failing to deliver it, and thereby breed fear and paranoia. I want to say it’s relatable, but Robson stretches the ordinary nonsense of office life into such a ludicrous torment that you’ll have to either laugh at the absurdity or cry in despair. Personally, I greatly enjoyed it, but I would only recommend this story to readers with a taste for dark humor. “The Ex Hex” by Jae Steinbacher This story hooked my attention from the first paragraph, which clearly introduces both the protagonist and their conflict, so let me simply share it with you here: Talis had a problem. They’d copied the spell incorrectly, in a fury, after seeing photos of their ex with a new date in “their” spot. Adelite was supposed to have experienced a night of terrible dreams leading to a remorseful morning after. Instead, he just hadn’t woken up. I love the way this story is written. The prose is clear, immediate, and compelling. The characters are fun and easy to imagine, and the conflict is engaging and surprisingly relatable. (Botching a hex? Not so much. But acting on a bad idea and screwing things up? Oh yeah.) I particularly enjoyed the casual way characters spoke to each other, such as “Yep, that’s a fuckup, all right.” What’s best about this story is its themes of justice, community, and friendship. This story is firmly rooted in restorative justice and community reparations. Talis knows they messed up and wants to make it right. They are willing to take the blame for their actions, and they want to repair the harm they caused. It’s hard, but their friends are there to support them — and to help hold them accountable. As one of Talis’ friends says, “Friends help friends, eh? You’re going to have to make reparations, but let the community handle that and not the ‘justice system’.” If I were to teach restorative justice, I’d likely start by asking folks to read this story. It’s an excellent and heartwarming illustration of these principles and a vision of justice that cares less about punishment and more about repairing harms and strengthening community. And as a bonus, it’s got lovely queer and trans representation. “We the People Excluding I” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu This is another story about the vital importance of community, but whereas “The Ex Hex” shows the presence and support of community, “We the People Excluding I” explores exclusion and isolation from community. Where “The Ex Hex” is cozy and nourishing, this story is darker and fiercer. The story begins when the world is unstable and falling apart. In this world prone to disasters and increasingly inhospitable to life, the narrator lives in a deeply collectivist society. They say, “I could walk to the ends of the earth and still see my mother, and still see my fathers. They’re a fluid group of roles and assignments, constant to change over time as I grow.” In these trying times, a leader with a smile “as predatory as a fox’s” steps forward with a solution: one person needs to disappear. If this person can sacrifice themselves and be exiled, be “separated and isolated from this community, to be never found by anyone from our society again, then the world can be restored.” For the good of their community, the narrator volunteers, but it is a more perilous assignment than they first realize. The fox man continues to hunt and threaten them, even as they try to run farther and farther away. This story has a beautiful quality of folklore to it. It features a shape-shifting trickster fox and giants who live in the south of the world. The instability of the world reminds me as easily of Noah and the great flood as it does the perils of our changing climate. The story feels mythic, like a fable passed down from generations, meant
Short Fiction Review: June 2024
My favorite stories from June feature characters who are struggling to find answers or closure and who are interrogating the narratives that reinforce power. In “In the Hands of the Mountain God” by Deborah L. Davitt (published in Lightspeed Magazine), a woman reckons with the problem of evil, risking her own life to get demand answers from a god. “Three Faces of a Beheading” by Arkady Martine (published in Uncanny Magazine) is a smart and surprising story about the power of narratives, both those published in history books and those we watch/play out in games. “Himalia” by Carrie Vaughn (published in Clarkesworld Magazine) is set on a lunar outpost that’s about to be abandoned, a beautiful, detailed setting for a story about moving forward even when closure is hard to find. “In the Hands of the Mountain God” by Deborah L. Davitt After a plague kills Sennu’s family and people, she finds herself at a monastery of Eero the mountain god. Eero isn’t even one of Sennu’s people’s gods, but it seems her gods have died. Eero, at least, “was a god. He might have answers for her. An answer for the terrible whys that burned in her heart and soul.” So Sennu, brimming with grief and rage, struggling against despair, prepares for a dangerous pilgrimage to meet Eero and hopefully wrest some answers out of him. This is a story, in short, about the problem of evil: about why awful things happen to good people, about grappling with these “terrible whys” and trying to find some way to move forward. It’s a meaningful and relatable story. Crucially for a story like this, the ending is strong. The problem of evil doesn’t have easy answers, so it would be easy for a story like this be feel unsatisfying, whether because it doesn’t offer any insights or it offers poor ones. Instead, the story leans into the character of Sennu — her strength and her desire — and offers a believable, moving, and satisfying conclusion. If you appreciate stories that incorporate religion, or if the problem of evil keeps you up at night, check this one out! “Three Faces of a Beheading” by Arkady Martine “Three Faces of a Beheading” has three main threads. First, there’s the present day, in which “you” watch and participate in “mass-story games,” which are kind of like live streamed virtual reality role-playing games. An anonymous player piloting “the Soldier” makes a bold — and dangerous — political statement about the empire/regime you live under, which both inspires and unnerves you. This portion of the story feels like a near-future world, one that’s novel and weird yet deeply relatable and arguably already here. For example, I particularly enjoyed this line: You’ve played the Soldier. Everyone tries it, once or twice. (Everyone who gets into mass-story games, at least. There’s people out there whose lives are very boring and don’t contain narrative experiences at all. You’ve met them at work.) Second, there’s a history: the story of a failed revolt against the empire, the story which informs the mass-story game you’re watching/playing. This pairs well with the third thread: a detour into an academic mode (complete with footnotes), reflecting on historiographies, narratives, power, and politics. For example: A historiography presents a view of events-which-happened which is acceptable or understandable to the larger culture-complex, even when that view is meant as an intervention into the current state of affairs—a historiography which means to rehabilitate a ‘bad’ emperor, for instance, is still engaged in normative narrative-making, as it uses the values which already exist in the culture to make new claims about events which have occurred in the past. The academic discourse is admittedly dense, but as a nerd for these sorts of things, I enjoyed it! However, it’s the shortest part of a fairly short story and history of the revolt is easier to follow. Together, these threads remind readers that the histories we tell are contingent things — the historical narratives we weave don’t just serve power but can be rewritten to question and challenge power as well. The present-day thread extends that to the stories we play out in video games and around the tables of role-playing games. These narrative experiences are inextricably political — and therefore powerful and important. “Three Faces of a Beheading” is a marvelous story about history — not just what happened in the past but importantly how we form narratives and create meaning from the past and how those narratives wield power. This is a fun, opinionated, and surprising story, one that’s both playful and weighty, and I highly recommend it, especially to fans of video games, role-playing games, history, or academia. “Himalia” by Carrie Vaughn Jenny grew up on Himalia, a small moon of Jupiter. Her family is part of a mining co-op that set up a temporary base on the moon, one that’s lasted for decades. Jenny left years ago to find her own way in the system, but now she’s returned to visit because the base is closing down and soon to be abandoned. It’s her chance to reconnect with family and friends and say goodbye to the place she grew up in. Importantly, it’s Jenny’s chance to make amends with and support her childhood bestie Niri, who was never able to bring herself to leave Himalia before and who even now may not be ready to abandon her home. Similar to The Expanse, this story takes place in a universe where humans have colonized the solar system, with outposts on different planets and moons. It’s futuristic, but believably so, imaginably so, and this story pays fine attention to the details of it. Vaughn does a tremendous job immersing you in the setting, making the moon feel inhabited and the story feel real. Here’s an example: Going from artificial light to open space, I needed a moment to take stock. The filter darkened my visor, but I squinted anyway, reflexively. The rule was to look at your
Short Fiction Review: May 2024
My favorite stories from May look at loneliness and connection, greedy capitalists and social justice. In “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (published in Uncanny Magazine), a young woman is mysteriously unable to meet up in real life with the people close to her, even if they’re both in the same place at the same time. In “Variant Cover: Pantone Sunset” by Marie Vibbert (published in Escape Pod), robot saleswomen learn that the high-end clothes they sell are unethically produced. In “Fishy” by Alice Towey (published in Clarkesworld Magazine), a woman searches for her late father’s breakthrough invention. It has tremendous potential for the public good, but she must contend with the capitalist who funded her father’s research. “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou When Nefeli plans to meet up with her old friend Cara, they both go to the same bus stop — only, it seems they have somehow ended up in different universes. Nefeli is at the bus stop, but Cara isn’t there, while at the same time Cara is at the bus stop, but Nefeli isn’t there. They can text each other, but their phone calls won’t go through. As the story progresses, Nefeli finds this happening to her with more and more people: no matter where she goes, people close to her simply aren’t there, although strangers abound like normal. She can text and email her people and interact with them on social media, but for some reason phone calls and video calls to her family and friends won’t go through. Nefeli begins to wonder if she somehow ended up in a strange, parallel universe. Some readers may find the speculative conceit at the center of this story confusing or implausible, but I found it weirdly relatable and surprisingly easy (and horrifying) to imagine. As someone who works from home, a disturbingly large amount of my interactions with other people are computer-mediated and asynchronous, which makes it easy to imagine somehow being able to communicate with people in alternate universe but being cut off from meeting up in person. You could also read this as a commentary about social media, a technology ostensibly designed to connect us that instead often generates feelings of loneliness and isolation. “Loneliness Universe” is sad, scary, and haunting, but it has warmth to it as well. Nefeli’s relationships with Cara and her family are genuine, relatable, and supportive, even though they are at a distance. In particular, I loved one scene where Nefeli and her brother play a video game together across their different universes. It’s a heartwarming moment that underscores how technology can help us meaningfully connect with others and how games can help carry us through hard times. If you want a beautiful, emotional story about connection and interdependence, this is for you. “Variant Cover: Pantone Sunset” by Marie Vibbert This story is about Stacey, Maria, and Diva, three robot saleswomen whose “existence is devoted to the proper display and peddling of women’s casual separates for the upscale consumer.” Their lives are dominated by the rules and expectations of their company, but that doesn’t totally define them. Stacey reads comic books customers leave behind, and Maria reads news on lost and found phones. When Maria learns that some of the clothes they sell are produced by child slaves, the trio begin to imagine how they can resist the injustices they are immersed in. This is another story that felt weirdly plausible to me. Technologically, I don’t think we are about to see robots replace the humans who work at malls anytime soon, but through the logic of capitalism, this is only a small step away. It is too easy to imagine profit-seeking corporations replacing humans with robots, robots who do not need to be paid a salary, who cannot unionize, who can look exactly as designed, and who (at least in theory) can be programmed to follow strict rules and avoid asking tough questions. At the same time, we have seen how recent AI models are not the same as classical computer programs that follow strict and decipherable logic. If people can already trick ChatGPT into breaking its own rules, why should we expect artificially intelligent robots to behave exactly as designed? So I found it both plausible that unscrupulous corporations would replace human employees with robots and that those robots might become disgusted with their corporate masters and try to resist, and it makes a great premise for a story. I enjoyed watching Stacey, Maria, and Diva learn to question the injustices they were made to serve, work through their differences, and work to cooperate with each other. It was satisfying and hopeful to watch them take action to resist those injustices, and it was inspiring to see them choose for themselves the wonderful perils of a free life. The story is accessible, immersive, and colorful, and its ending is particularly beautiful and moving. If you want a fun, easy read charged with some social justice energy, here’s a story for you. “Fishy” by Alice Towey “Fishy” is a short, quick, and fun story about capitalist greed, the public good, and robots. Ada’s father, Dr. Peretz, was researching water treatment, working on a method to filter out forever chemicals, and supposedly made a breakthrough before his death. Ada searches through his papers, hoping to uncover this breakthrough and share it free of charge to benefit public health. Unfortunately, Dr. Peretz’s old business partner Richard Murphy is searching for it too, and Murphy is much less interested in the public good and much more interested in how to profit off the invention. The robot in this story is Fishy, a fisherman’s buddy designed to help locate ideal fishing spots and a birthday present Ada had previously given her dad. Fishy is easily endearing, an aquatic, robotic creature with the energy levels and attention patterns of your favorite puppy. Murphy is a simplistic villain, but one that’s all too common in our world: a capitalist more concerned with their own legal rights than
Short Fiction Review: March – April 2024
My favorite short stories from March and April are all quite different from each other, which means you will probably enjoy at least one of them. “Fragments of a Symbiotic Life” by Will McMahon (published in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 166) is a humorous piece of flash fiction that’s likely to leave you with something more serious to think about after. “A Magical Correspondence, to the Tune of Heartstrings” by Valerie Valdes (published in Uncanny Magazine Issue 57) is a relatable romance about a busy woman trying to fit in just one more thing — in this case, a correspondence course in witchcraft. “Threshold” by Audrey Zhou (published in Strange Horizons) is for those of you who enjoy more unsettling reads, exploring what happens after death, or cool magic systems. “Fragments of a Symbiotic Life” by Will McMahon This story won over my attention and affection from its first sentence: I was born normal enough, except that I was four days late, which isn’t so much, and slightly jaundiced, which isn’t unusual, and had a raccoon for an arm, which is admittedly strange. This is flash fiction, recollections from the narrator who was born with a raccoon for an arm. This story is written in a clear, accessible manner and with a certain dry humor that many readers are likely to enjoy. A raccoon for an arm is a ludicrous concept, but the narrator’s serious, reflective tone makes it feel both plausible and hilarious. The humor is well executed and makes for a fun read, but there’s more going on here than just a playful gag. When the narrator was four years old, his parents “decided to amputate” the raccoon arm and replace it with a prosthetic. The narrator understands their decision but portrays it as just that: “their decision,” not his own. The narrator’s sadness and unease over their decision shifts the story into a more critical mode. The narrator writes that when he tells people about the raccoon, “They’re usually sympathetic. Kind. But they only see me—one broken human. Never him [the raccoon]. Never the other.” The narrator openly examines how easily we undervalue and marginalize non-human life, and it makes for a striking conclusion to the story, but there are other, less explicit, critiques that I can’t help but read into the story. The story makes me think of people with disabilities and how they can be challenged to conform to society’s norms, rather than society adapting to welcome all people. And it makes me think of people who undergo surgeries that are not medically necessary in order to better conform to society’s norms or ideals. This includes both people who make that choice for themselves (such as with certain cosmetic surgeries) and people who have that choice made for them (such as intersex children who undergo surgery to more closely align with one gender or another). In these cases, the perceived need to conform to society’s norms and ideals can ostracize, marginalize, or harm individuals. Yes, that’s serious and heavy, especially for a story that started with a raccoon for an arm — and that’s exactly what I love about this story: it’s a fun, wild gag, yet there’s also weighty stuff to dig into here if you are willing to sit with the story for a little bit longer. “A Magical Correspondence, to the Tune of Heartstrings” by Valerie Valdes Lissa is busy. Her family makes violins and harps, and they just received an unexpected order with a tight deadline. She also has her house chores, of course, and she’s on the committee organizing the Summernight dance for her village. Beyond that all — which is really more than enough — Lissa is taking a correspondence course in basic witchcraft, in which she must learn elemental cantrips, brew a potion, and create an enchantment. The course is challenging under the best of circumstances, and Lissa’s hectic schedule and chaotic, distracting family don’t help, but she is committed to persevere and see her course through to completion. The story is set in a secondary fantasy world that reminds me of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, but thematically, this story feels refreshingly relatable. It’s about a busy woman trying to cram one more thing in her schedule, but this is the one rare thing that’s simply just for her and for the sake of trying something new and interesting. In Lissa’s world, witchcraft isn’t considered a practical skill, nor does she hope to turn it into a new career. It’s just something different that Lissa wanted to try out. In our world, it is too easy to spend all your energy on work, life admin, and hobbies that are really side hustles (that is, hobbies that are themselves a form of work). It can be challenging to devote the time and energy to a hobby that’s legitimately just a hobby, something you find interesting and want to do just for the sake of it. And when you do devote yourself to such a hobby, struggle through it, and persevere, it feels great! That is what’s great about this story: watching Lissa choose to do something just for herself and persevere through the challenges. It’s relatable, inspiring, and a little cozy as well. Speaking of cozy, there’s also a cute romance here. (Yet another thing Lissa is trying to fit in!) I was more drawn in by Lissa’s magical correspondence course, but the romance is quite enjoyable as well. If you like romance, cozy fantasy stories, or want to watch Lissa persevere through her correspondence course, I easily recommend this story. “Threshold” by Audrey Zhou When Li’s close friend Huyuan dies unexpectedly after her twenty-third birthday, Li has an option most of us don’t: Li can capture Huyuan’s spirit and build a new body for her to live in out of metal, wood, clay, and other materials. When Huyuan dies, it isn’t really a question for Li whether or not to do this; this is what Li
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.
