Questing in Shorts: December 2020

I'm back - on a scheduled Thursday no less - with the last Questing in Shorts of the year, and possibly the last column in this format, at least for a while. It's been 2 years since I started my quest to explore short fiction reading and reviewing more seriously, and while I absolutely love the new fiction and perspectives it's brought my way and have no intention of slowing down, the last few months have shown me that this particular monthly roundup format doesn't really play to my strengths, and too often (for example, at the time of writing) leads to last minute sprints to pin down reactions that never feel like they're as fresh as they should be. I'm going to take a bit of time to figure out how I can work my reviewing around my reading more organically, and what that means for a potential schedule. For now, though, let's round up what short fiction I've been reading in the last month:

Sunspot Jungle Volume 1 (Rosarium Publishing, 2018)

The first of Rosarium Publishing's two volume "mix tape" of science fiction and fantasy from around the world, is a 500 page chonker filled with fifty one stories, curated to an extremely impressive standard. If you've been paying attention to the current SFF scene, you're bound to find some of your favourites in here: the first story is "Walking Awake", a chilling alien colonisation story from N.K. Jemisin (one of the few stories in the collection I'd read before); the last is "The Day It All Ended" by Charlie Jane Anders; and the likes of Sarah Pinsker, Mame Bougouma Diene, Amal El-Mohtar, Malka Older, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and R.B. Lemberg are also in here among lots of others, including plenty of names that were new to me. It all comes together, as per the introduction, to form a celebration of the potential of genre right now, and particularly the multitude of voices accessible to English speaking readers. If you only have one short fiction anthology on your shelves, Sunspot Jungle would be an outstanding choice for that spot.

Reviewing 50 short stories in 300 words is not a task I care to take on, and the quality here is so high that it's hard to even highlight favourites (OK, if you must know it's "A Good Home" by Karin Lowachee, a quiet, moving story of personhood and rehabilitation between an engineered soldier and a disabled veteran). As you'd expect from an anthology which sets out to be as inclusive within the genre as possible, there's quite a range of literary weird and slipstream fiction alongside the spaceships and robots and glimpses of secondary worlds, and there are plenty of stories that feel like they end abruptly, before the narrative has had a chance to close. This is not my favourite form of short story telling but when the stories are good, I can hardly complain. It adds up to a book that is best savoured: left on a bedside table or read, a couple of stories at a time, on a train commute (remember those?) - a trusted source of quality fiction for as long as you need it.

Consolation Songs ed. Iona Datt Sharma (2020)

This anthology contains a dozen stories about hope in times of crisis, and its subtitle is explicit about its purpose: this is "optimistic speculative fiction for a time of pandemic", and the stories here absolutely deliver on that promise (plus, all proceeds are being donated to the UCLH charity, supporting COVID-19 work by the University College London Hospitals NHS trust). Some are more overtly optimistic than others: Aliette de Bodard's "A Hundred and Seventy Storms" is a Xuya universe tale about a mindship set to work in harsh conditions on a backwater planet, trying to survive the latest storm that threatens to tear her apart with the help of her Cousin Lua.  The Snow Like a Dancer has little to look forward to beyond further decay and desperate survival, but de Bodard's story makes that feel, for a moment, like it just might be enough in the circumstances. Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Low Energy Economy" also takes a person in an almost impossible situation - Tobler, one of a generation of miners sent out into space in individual capsules that, decades later, are slowly failing around them as they keep up their lonely work - and only at the very end twists it into something that makes that survival worthwhile. These are not stories that justify the decisions that caused their protagonists to be in their awful circumstances to start with, but which offer weight to the resolve to simply keep on going: to fix the red alert lights we can fix, file a maintenance request for the rest, and move forward with whatever we have.

Most of the other stories are more lighthearted than this, running from lighthearted whimsy (like Stephanie Burgis' "Love, Your Flatmate", about a human and a fae stuck together during lockdown who eventually start to learn they might have things in common beyond a predisposition for passive aggressive note passing) to gentle wistfulness. Characters make quiet decisions, like whether to move into assisted living on Mars in "Seaview on Mars" by Katie Rathfelder, or to pursue a new queer romantic relationship at 50 while also caring for sufferers of a mystery coma-inducing disease in the middle of a major climate shift and the appearance of mysterious travellers from another world (as you do) in "St Anselm-by-the-Riverside" by Iona Datt Sharma. The star of the show, however, is "This Is New Gehesran Calling": by Rebecca Fraimow the ever shifting tale of a pirate radio show, put on by refugees from an invaded planet, and the fellow citizens who discover it and try to build their schedules around these snatches of entertainment from their former home. The snatches of worldbuilding from multiple angles and the way it builds up little pieces of the lives of its refugees and the struggles they face make for a perfect, deeply human tale, and its eventual ending caught me, as they say, right in the feels.

Reconstruction by Alaya Dawn Johnson (Small Beer Press, 2020)

I'm very uncertain why Reconstruction has been on all my lists as a 2021 release when, in fact, it seems to have come out last month, but here we are! Alaya Dawn Johnson's debut collection spans work from the breadth of her career, from 2005 to this year, and there's some impressive gems within it. "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i", a 2015 Nebula Award winner, is definitely one of them (and it's a story which feels familiar, though I'm fairly certain I've not read it before): the story of Key, a human worker at a feeding centre for vampires, after vampires have taken over and herded the remaining humans into their camps. Key is nearing the end of her usefulness as a worker and is desperate to find escape, but when she's reassigned to a high-grade facility to look after a group of teenagers whose relative privilege doesn't make up for their situation, she is forced to examine her own decisions about collaboration and the option to potentially become a vampire herself, while trying however imperfectly to make life bearable for her young, grieving charges. Its a great novelette with a gut-punch of an ending, and it's a great way to start off the collection.

Through whatever accident of curation, my other two favourite stories also happened to be right at the start of this collection: "They Shall Salt the Earth With Seeds of Grass" is about survival in a future Chesapeake where humans survive alongside strange, alien "glassmen", present in their lives through robot drones that are prone to dropping bombs and abducting people for strange and nebulous reasons. When Tris becomes pregnant, she and her sister make a desperate journey to find somewhere that can offer a safe (though illegal) abortion, kicking off an entertaining, action packed tale that packs in a lot of worldbuilding and a very satisfying strand of resilience in adversity. Then there's "Their Changing Bodies", a bizarre but wonderful YA-esque summer camp story where a trio of girls find themselves on the menu for a group of sleazy boy vampires. The fourteen-year-old sexual awkwardness jumps off the page in this one and it won't be for everyone (especially as, incompetent as they are, the boys' intentions are fundamentally about sexual assault) but if you're up for exploring some of the kind of gross body stuff that only early teenhood can provide, the take on vampirism here - very different to the first story! - is absolutely perfect. All in all, although it fell off for me a little towards the end, this is a really solid collection from a great author.

Augur Magazine Issue 3.2

A themed issue of Augur this time, based around "A Multiplicity of Futures": science fiction stories which explicitly focus on the paths our world might take. This being Augur, a lot of those directions are strange and sad, as in "The Truth at the Bottom of the Ocean". Maria Dong's story blends the experiences of a seafaring community displaced onto the open ocean by climate change with the love of a mother for a son who has grown up with that displacement and found ways to survive that alienate him from her, and the reality of a capitalist future dominated by climate change with fantasy coping mechanisms: a boy sprouts wings, while a woman's skin becomes made of stone, letting her dive into the depths of the ocean without consequence. "Are We Ourselves" by Michelle Mellon feels almost old-fashioned in the detached, matter of fact tone with which its protagonist tells us about the world she inhabits, and the historical events which have led to a future where Black bodies are co-opted (in a manner which directly relies on the legacy of slavery) to house the consciousnesses of white people who would otherwise die of a climate-change related illness. Make no mistake, though, this is no detached golden age story of scientific progress, and by the end, the protagonist's lived experience, and the individual horrors she has gone through are inescapable. Her ending invocation directly drawing attention to the importance of her human experience, her individual story, when weighing up the moral harm of what has been done to her, and generations of her people before her.

And so the losses of our possible futures mount up, from unsurvivable shipwrecks to worlds where food itself is processed to be poisonous without the right tech installations. As the loss builds up, though, so too do the moments of quiet calm and discovery: "Moon Gazing", by Michelle Theodore, is a very welcome visual rest stop, a comic about a child and their Dad talking about their respective dreams of travelling to the moon. I also loved the poem "When I Could Draw a Sun in the Sky", by Manahil Bandukwala, which offers a very personal spin on the experience of playing the video game Okami, and "X.O. Tempo," in which a woman finds her own deeply cool spacefaring alter ego through a process of quantum entanglement, and gets to shake up her own life a little while she's at it. Once again, Augur demonstrates it is not a publication to be ignored.

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Bujold, Louis McMaster. Penric's Travels [Baen]

Publisher's Description:

Tales of a new hero in fantasy from Lois McMaster Bujold, together for the first time!  Including Penric’s Mission, Mira’s Last Dance, and The Prisoner of Limnos. He does it his way!

Penric’s Mission: Learned Penric, a sorcerer and divine of the Bastard’s Order, has faced danger and intrigue many times before. Now, he finds himself on his first covert diplomatic mission. Penric must travel across the sea to Cedona in an attempt to secure the services of the Cedonia General Arisaydia for the Duke of Adria. But nothing is as it seems. No sooner than he has arrived, Penric finds himself tossed into a dungeon. If Penric is to survive, he’ll have to navigate treacherous politics—and his own feelings for the young widowed sister of the General.

Mira’s Last Dance: Penric, suffering from injuries attained while escaping from the Cedonian dungeon in which he was imprisoned, must now guide General Arisaydia and his widowed sister, Nikys, across the last hundred miles of hostile Cedonia to safety in the Duchy of Orbas. In the town of Sosie, the fugitive party encounters unexpected delays, and even more unexpected opportunities and hazards, as the courtesan Mira of Adria, one of the ten dead women whose imprints make up the personality of the chaos demon Desdemona, comes to the fore with her own special expertise.

The Prisoner of Limnos: Penric and Nikys have reached safety in the Duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys's mother has been taken hostage by her brother's enemies at the Cedonian imperial court and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.

Now, Nikys, Penric, and Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile country once more, finding along the way that family relationships can be as unexpectedly challenging as any rescue scheme.

Why We Want It: While not a new novella from Lois McMaster Bujold, this second Penric and Desdemona collection is essential reading for fans of Bujold who may have missed the novellas the first time around or just wants them all in one place.

Collins, Suzanne. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes [Scholastic]

Publisher's Description:

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the 10th annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to out charm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

 The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute...and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.  

Why We Want It: While many have been looking forward to a potential Hunger Games prequel novel, I'm not sure anyone really wanted a Young President Snow novel. The rise of a dictator is less interesting than other stories that can be told - but with that said, we trust Suzanne Collins to tell a good story.

Johnson, Alaya Dawn. Trouble the Saints [Tor]

Publisher's Description:

The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to change her fate at the dawn of World War II.

Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.

Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams.

Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it’s too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice?

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines—and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

Why We Want It: I've read some of Alaya Dawn Johnson's short fiction years ago, but haven't kept up with her novel length work. It's certainly possible that The Night Circus meets The Underground Railroad is overselling Trouble the Saints, but it's also one hell of a recommendation and I want to see if Trouble the Saints rises to the billing. If so, this will be incredible.

King, Stephen. If It Bleeds [Scribner]

Publisher's Description

From #1 New York Times bestselling author, legendary storyteller, and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary collection of four new and compelling novellas—Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds—each pulling you into intriguing and frightening places.

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, including “The Body” (Stand By Me) and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (Shawshank Redemption). Like Four Past Midnight, Different Seasons, and most recently Full Dark, No Stars, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.

Why We Want It: Some of Stephen King's strongest work is at novella length and while we're always excited for new Stephen King - we're often more excited when it is a collection of shorter works. While many of his most famous novellas were published decades ago, King is still doing strong work and pushing himself in directions we'd never have expected from a younger Stephen King. We *are* excited to check out this collection of four novellas.

Kress, Nancy. The Eleventh Gate [Baen]

Publisher's Description

WHAT LIES BEYOND THE ELEVENTH GATE...

Despite economic and territorial tensions, no one wants the city-states of the Eight Worlds to repeat the Terran Collapse by going to war. But when war accidentally happens, everyone seeks ways to exploit it for gain.  The Landry and Peregoy ruling dynasties see opportunities to grab territory, increase profits, and settle old scores.  Exploited underclasses use war to fuel rebellion.  Ambitious heirs can finally topple their elders’ regimes—or try to.

But the unexpected key to either victory or peace lies with two persons uninterested in conquest, profits, or power.   Philip Anderson seeks only the transcendent meaning of the physics underlying the universe.  Tara Landry, spoiled and defiant youngest granddaughter of dynasty head Rachel Landry, accidentally discovers an eleventh star-jump gate, with a fabulous find on the planet behind it.  Her discovery, and Philip’s use of it, alter everything for the Eight Worlds.

Why We Want It: Nancy Kress's bibliography is extensive and while there is plenty more to read, we know that a new Nancy Kress novel will be imaginative science fiction. While most of her more recent novels have been near future science fiction, Kress's return to space opera is something to look forward to.

Wells, Martha. Network Effect [Tor.com Publishing]

Publisher's Description

Murderbot returns in its highly-anticipated, first, full-length standalone novel, Network Effect.

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.

Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.

I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

Why We Want It: New Murderbot. Okay, let me rephrase that. After four excellent novellas, Network effect is the first full length Murderbot novel!

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

A Taste of WisCon

Image blatantly stolen from their website (sorry...)

Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin can often mean many things. Most years, it means a return of spring, of the snow (hopefully) being gone after about six months of winter. It means renewal and finally stepping outside without all the armor the cold forces on us. It's fitting then, that it also means a return of WisCon, a convention that is, at its core, about provided space for people passionate about science fiction and feminism to meet and talk without the need for all the armor that is sometimes required for simply existing as a fan of speculative fiction.

Perhaps I don't have the best basis for comparison, as WisCon has been the only convention (aside from a Wizard World Chicago which was much different) I've attended. But it was amazing seeing many of the writers whose stories I have read and admired and while I did not have the courage to approach any to say hi they were there and I was there and that was enough in many ways. Living in Wisconsin, though, means that this convention is close enough and just the right kind of thing to get me out of my hermitage to engage with real, living, breathing people.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the location first. Madison is a nicely sized city, and for those staying away from the convention hotels (I stayed with friends), the convention site is pretty easy to get to. Just be sure to park in the structure closest to the Concourse (the one with the $5 daily max, because otherwise parking adds up fast). On Saturday there's the Farmer's Market on the Square, less than a block from the convention, and anyone who has never had fresh (and I mean squeaky) cheese curds should be sure to check that out. Normally it's too early in the year to get too much in the way of produce, but it's always a fun walk to see what's for sale. There's tons of places to eat and drink just in general, from very fancy restaurants to more laid back bars. Plus there's the Bar in the Concourse itself, which featured a special drink menu for the Con (combining my great loves of stories and booze!).

And the puns! Oh, the puns!

There are also some bookstores that you should not miss whenever you are in Madison. The first is A Room of One's Own which is awesome and carries books new and used with a special eye for diverse books. They also always have a table in the vendor room as well, but making the trip down to the brick and mortar store is a must. I wish I had a bookstore like this in my city, but as that is not the case I settle for buying lots of books there when I'm in town. Just a few blocks away is another amazing bookstore, Rainbow Books. It's a queer-centric bookstore with its own cat! The selection of fiction isn't as robust as elsewhere but it has tons of nonfiction and has a large zine selection and did I mention the adorable cat? Because yeah, it's an amazing store.

But the Con! There were so many things to see and do. The panels were, by and large, both provocative and entertaining. Things don't really get going too much until Friday, but once things got going they really got going. That first night had both Misandry, Reverse Racism, and Other Imaginary Creatures and Death to Love Triangles. Imaginary Creatures was probably the most fun I had in a panel this year, the panelists really hitting their stride and engaging with the ideas in a powerful and hilarious manner. Death to Love Triangles, meanwhile, featured Guest of Honor Alaya Dawn Johnson and others speaking about how to subvert the "standard" tropes that continually pop up in YA and beyond.

Saturday had Sex Positive SFF and The Future of Gender: Beyond the Binary, as well as The Mixtape, an examination of science fiction in music that made me think about how science fiction can be interpreted in music even when the lyrics of a song are not explicitly speculative. Really, anyone looking to get a great reading list or music list has only to sit in on some of these panels to hear a dozen titles thrown out of works that manage to capture some aspect the panel discusses. For me it meant walking away with a great many new books and albums in my mental to-read queue. Saturday also featured a full slew of parties, but as I am not much of a party-person, I opted for dinner out with friends and some lively discussion.

Sunday was a very full day, with the morning featuring Towards More Realistic Fictional Diasporas, a great discussion on integrating immigration and diasporas into spec fiction in a way that is sensitive to those real-world populations actually displaced and scattered. And, of course, Sunday had the…fascinating panel Elim Garak's Weird Cardassian Penis, a discussion on alien genitalia, which was everything it sounds like and more. As Garak is my favorite DS9 character, it was a must-attend, and I did not leave disappointed.

And the panels were only part of the fun. The convention was also full of readings by many talented writers. Alaya Dawn Johnson had a hilarious reading of a gay zombie romance(ish) story that was great and I also attended a reading of Comics Against the Gender Binary as well as a Mythical Creatures reading featuring Nino Cipri, David J. Schwartz, and others. I also count the Guest of Honor speeches as a reading of sorts. Kim Stanley Robinson spoke about climate change, politics, and economics while Alaya Dawn Johnson stunned with a song and an impassioned speech on the importance of diverse books and the power of stories. The convention would have been worth the price of admission with that speech alone, and it was the highlight of the weekend for me.

Not that things were over. There were a few more things to do on Monday, including a panel on food in world building and the Sign Out where I may have gotten a number of things signed. It was amazing getting to talk (even very briefly) with the writers there and to have something to take home to treasure (besides the invaluable experience and reading recommendations).

I might have a book problem...

So yes, in short, WisCon was amazing! It really is something that gets me incredibly excited for stories, for reading and writing and reviewing. If you haven't, definitely consider giving next year's (big whomping anniversary year) WisCon a go. Guests of honor will be Sofia Samatar, Justine Larbalestier, and Nalo Hopkinson! If you go, you just might see me there...

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.