Recent Recommended Short Fiction, December 2018

As an SFF fan who gravitates towards novels for the bulk of their reading, I am now used to the annual panic of reaching the end of the year, when recommended reading lists start coming out and people start thinking about their Hugo nominations, and realising that I've barely scratched the surface of the excellent short fiction that has come out. In the second half of this year, I've got better at doing something about it - I've taken some time to curate and make sure that I'm reading the subscriptions I have, in formats that I like (i.e. ebooks - web-based fiction reading is a big nope for me). I'm happy to report that the effort has paid off, and it means I have some recommendations to share!

Not So Stories, edited by David Thomas Moore

As the name suggests, this collection from Saga Press riffs off Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, but through a lens which explicitly addresses and unpacks the colonial legacy of those stories and the wider implications of having a white Edwardian impose and define the folklore of another continent for generations of young people. The result is a mix of "animal fables" and human narratives, with the defining thread being about stories and storytelling rather than the exact form of the Just So Stories. Although the jumps between "timeless" animal fables and more contemporary tales are a little jarring at points, this is still a well-curated collection that was very easy to get through in one sitting, and there's a range of talents on display here. For example, "How the Ants got their Queen" is, on the surface, a straightforward retelling of the history of colonialism and of the history of nations after the colonial power leaves, but the style and the reimagining as a story of ants and pangolins makes it one of the strongest stories in the collection. "Queen", by Joseph E. Cole, is another great entry (and an author debut!), telling of a meeting between the Queen and a young girl, and the story which the Queen imparts. There's also some wonderful "lighthearted" entries including "How the Camel Got Her Paid Time Off" by Paul Krueger, "How the Tree of Wishes gained its Carapace of Plastic" by Jeanette Ng, and Zina Hutton's cat-based story of gods and belonging, "Strays Like Us".

Rating: 7/10

Uncanny Magazine Issue 25, edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damien Thomas and Michi Trota. (Read online for free!)

Uncanny is an institution with a deservedly beloved place in genre fiction at the moment, and this, the first issue in their fifth year of operations, is about as close to perfect as I can imagine a single magazine issue being (a feat which is particularly impressive given it comes on the heels of the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue, which also had a great deal to recommend it.) In "How to Swallow the Moon", Isabel Yap kicks off the issue with a fairytale retelling drawing on Filipino myths about the bakanawa - a moon-eating serpent - as part of a queer coming-of-age love story with twists that will be satisfying to anyone who enjoys this form of myth-exploration. There's also a T. Kingfisher story which is sure to be an instant hit, particularly with those who like the more ribald notes of humour in her other work. "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society" is based around various males of the magical persuasion getting together to commiserate about Rose, the woman who got exactly what she wanted - without any pesky heartbreak or murder - out of their various fey liaisons. Also in the issue are a Sofia Samatar reprint, some great short fiction from Monica Valentinelli and Cassandra Khaw, and an insightful essay about Diana M. Pho about how writing fanfiction has shaped their work as an editor (and some poetry, which I'm absolutely no good at analysing the quality of, but hey, poetry!)

For me, though, the standout was "The Thing About Ghost Stories" by Naomi Kritzer: a story about a researcher who catalogues stories of the supernatural, and how this leads to final contact with her mother, who recently died after a period of living with Alzheimer's. Kritzer has such a wonderful light touch as an author, letting the main character cope with the grief of losing her mother -- to an illness where much of her was already "lost" before her passing -- in a way that feels real without being heavy. I think short fiction soars when stories pair interesting supernatural (or science fictional) ideas with evocative emotional content, and Kritzer crafts an outstanding example of that here.

Rating: 9/10

Awakenings, edited by The Book Smugglers. (Read online for free!)

Like many, I was sorry to see the Book Smugglers' announcement that their publishing wing will be closing at the end of December, but 2018 is a hell of a year for them to go out on, with six strong stories ranging from short to novella, all collected in this year's-end anthology. It's a lineup that showcases what I like most about the Book Smugglers' editorial line: their eye for diversity, for emotionally driven stories without easy answers, and for young adult themes like coming-of-age within the short fiction world. As you'd expect, "Awakenings" gets a pretty broad interpretation across the stories here, which range from epic fantasy to alt-historical first contact to transhumanism and stories of magic school. It's perhaps a more painful collection than I was expecting; it turns out some "awakenings" lead us only to death or pain, and others can be ambiguous at best. Still, nothing feels forced or unearned, and if one story ("Timshala" by Leah Cypess, the only novella of the bunch) feels like it ends right at the point the fun should start, that's a narrative decision that's given plenty of in-text justification.

My favourite of the six is the first: "When the Letter Comes" by Sarah Fox, a story about being left out of easy magical answers and having to work through your own transformation - and the power that brings. Also worthy of note is the deeply unsettling novelette "Nussia" by Michele Tracy Berger, which is probably the best story here, but gave me stomach ache with its unforgiving vision of an alien teenager's highly publicised stay with a Black family in the 1980s. The Awakenings stories are all available for free online but, at least until the end of the month, you can also avail yourself of the handy collected version, which also puts insightful author interview after each story.

Rating: 7/10

FIYAH Literary Magazine Issue 8: Pilgrimage, edited by Justina Ireland and Troy L. Wiggins

The theme of this FIYAH issue is pilgrimage, and its a topic that brings out an impressive and very different quartet of stories. "Bullet", by Stephen Kearse, tells the story of a pilot flying a "bullet" ship designed to destroy an entire planet across two years of space, and their attempts to either sabotage or come to terms with the journey they've decided to undertake. In "Magicians Trial" by Sarah A. Macklin, a young woman returns to the birthplace of humanity to take the test that will allow her to become a sorceress: a test that requires her to confront and address different aspects of herself. It's not spectacularly original, but Macklin handles the tropes well and those who enjoy fantasy coming-of-age stories will find satisfaction in how she allows her protagonist to triumph after solving the puzzles put in front of her. 

Then there's "Pedaling", by Tuere T.S. Ganges: a story very much in conversation with Octavia Butler's Parable stories (to the extent where they could plausibly be set in the same world), about a diverse group of teenagers travelling a lightly post-apocalyptic society trying to survive and to support those they meet. The use of Butler's "so be it, see to it" affirmation, and the care and community which the teenagers bring to each other - completely subverting the usual stereotypes that would be attached to a gang of teens of colour in a world like this - was heartwarming, and the plot gives them a nice way to showcase their talents and humanity against a deliberately two-dimensional white supremacist enemy. Rounding out the prose fiction is "Saudade", a story of survival in a post-spaceflight Korea, which I liked least of the four but still more than holds its own. (There's poetry too, including a great take on the Rapunzel myth by Doxa Zannou.)

Rating: 8/10

Fireside Magazine October - December, edited by Julia Rios.

Fireside's fourth quarter (which, for full disclosure, I read through a monthly ebook subscription rather in their physical "Fireside Quarterly" issues, although I envy all who receive the latter!) contains one S-rank among all the As: "STET" by Sarah Gailey, an unusual piece told in the form of marginal editorial comments on the first page of a journal article. Contained within this inventive structure is an excruciatingly good - and bitter - tale about artificial intelligence and the value of life in a world of machine learning and algorithms. The story also effectively addresses the tensions between lived experience and "professionalism", as the author of the article struggles to retain her rage at the technology they are writing about in the face of editorial concern that wants to separate their individual, emotional identity from the argument they trying to make. To say more would be to spoil the effect of the piece itself, which you honestly just need to read immediately.

That's not the only thing to look out for this quarter, of course. In "And I Never Named Her" by Renee Christopher, we follow the protagonist on a hunt for a mysterious creature, whose form and identity haunts them throughout the process. "Birch Daughter" by Sara Norja is a fairy tale of rescue and adventure, with bears! "Cleaning Up", by Brian M. Milton, is a fabulous tale of supernatural janitorial heroics, with a bonus talking cat. And December also brings a reprint of "All The Time We've Left to Spend" by Alyssa Wong, which was one of the outstanding stories from the Robots Vs Fairies anthology from earlier this year.

Rating: 8/10 overall (but STET is at least a 9 on its own)

POSTED BY: Adri 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.

MAPPING SHORT SF/F: Part 2: Fun Short SFF

Fun. For some people, fun evokes childhood and a certain kind of carefree energy. For others, it means something more like excitement and adventure and novelty. Mapping fun short SFF is something of a challenge, not because I cannot point to works that I’d consider fun, but because fun is a weirdly nebulous term that, like most things, I probably define oddly in terms of genre. But, as that what I’m seeking to do in this series, I’ll do my best.

To me, fun as a genre operates a lot like horror does. It’s not so much about elements of world building or how the piece conveys message. It’s not about theme or about any one style. When I say it operates a lot like horror, what I mean is that they both are built around a feeling. Horror as a genre is defined (or at least I define it) by its ability to evoke fear and unease in the reader. Whether the story seeks to do that through gore or violence, or through atmosphere and suspense, doesn’t matter so much, because it’s all horror. Similarly, for a story to be fun, it has to be about evoking an emotion. Instead of fear, though, I’d say that fun is about joy. To me, fun SFF stories are those that seek to make the reader feel joyous. Which, given the times, is both an incredibly difficult and important mission.

Now, I’ll start with the bad news. Fun seems like a rather difficult genre to pin down, and also a difficult one to market. I know that there is an assumption that some people have when they see the word fun it means easy or simple or...not important or impacting. There aren’t to my knowledge too many venues that specialize in fun SFF, though there have been a few that have tried. First and foremost, Mothership Zeta did an excellent job of exploring what fun SFF could look like. Released as a non-podcast branch of the Escape Artists, Mothership Zeta released a number of issues bursting with stories of all sorts of short SFF, all with the editorial intent to explore the intersection of speculative fiction and fun. And it did so with stories that were romantic, stories that were gripping, stories that were suspenseful and epic. There was a huge range of stories that the publication looked at, and a huge range of subgenres represented. I loved the publication, and while sadly it is on indefinite hiatus, it remains the sole “pro-level” publication I can think of that so intensely pursued fun as its goal.

Similarly, The Sockdolager had a focus on stories “that are fun to read.” So from an editorial level, The Sockdolager was looking to push stories that were fun, what flowed quickly and left the reader feeling invigorated and joyful. Which, again, doesn’t mean that they were only happy stories, or that they were without violence or meaning. My favorite horror story of 2016, “Butter-Daughters” by Nin Harris, came out at The Sockdolager, and it’s loads of fun as well as intensely creepy. It perhaps didn’t range quite so widely as Mothership Zeta in terms of pacing, preferring (in my opinion) rather fast-moving and punchy stories instead of more romantic or slower narratives, but I can safely say that the publication was always rather fun to read. It’s another publication, though, that has sadly closed its doors, and together with Mothership Zeta it makes the number of publications specifically interested in fun SFF...well, kinda slim.

That’s not to say that there’s no fun to be had. The other Escape Artists podcasts, especially Cast of Wonders, has a rather fun feel to them. Now, here’s where I have to slow down a little and say that it’s often the case that YA SFF or SFF geared toward younger audiences does often lean a bit more in the fun direction than does more “mainstream” SFF. There are reasons for this and not reasons I feel like going into here in great depth but, well...

MINI-RANT: There’s a whole long discussion that we could have about aesthetics and fun and art. Within SFF this is a very tangled and complex web, because genre work is often dismissed as fluff or without literary merit or escapist drivel or...all that. And in counter to that, there is a lot of SFF that brings in traditions that are more associated with literary fiction (and defining that would be another exercise is pain), by which I mean short fiction that is often considered for the highest awards for literature. There are also camps, though, that resist this effort to make SFF “more literary” or “more artistic,” not because they believe that SFF (and all genres, really) are already artistic and worthy of discussion and examination of art without shaming people’s tastes or preferences, but because they condemn “literary” fiction and “artful” fiction as pretentious and dull. So suffice it to say that we’re into some heady waters here. I do not believe that being fun makes a work suddenly not adult or not artistic (and again, not that I’d ever argue YA isn’t artistic, either). But I do recognize that YA and fun intersect or perhaps are allowed and expected to intersect more frequently than “mainstream” SFF and fun, so for those hungry for fun SFF, checking out the YA publications (Cast of Wonders and Cicada specifically), might yield some fruitful searches.

Similarly, checking out where SFF intersects with other genres often leads to finding a bit more freedom with regards to fun. While it ran, Urban Fantasy Magazine had a number of fun stories, and those looking for where SFF and romance intersect can find a whole slew of fun SFF stories that deal with relationships and spaceships, magic, and monsters. Indeed, for those looking for fun queer stories, checking out small queer presses (like Lethe, Circlet, Less Than Three, Dreamspinner, JMS, & more) can lead to finding fun SFF that gets pushed to the margins because it contains fun queer relationships, and these can come in all levels of heat (from lots of sex! to no sex at all to everything in between). Admittedly, finding short fiction of this sort normally requires searching for anthologies (of which there are many), or else shopping the individual ebooks of shorter works (which can be difficult when comparing it to the “mostly free” stuff that dominates “mainstream” SFF). It also means that you might end up putting down money for something you don’t much care for, and especially for those for whom money is tight, this can be a real barrier to getting at fun stories.

But FUN! Let's get back to what's out there. Though the number of fun-specific venues has decreased, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t publications that regularly put out really fun stories. I want to highlight three more that spring to mind as being good places to start. The first is Fireside Fiction. Especially at the flash fiction length, it often has joyfully fun stories, like "A Silhouette Against Armageddon" by John Wiswell and “Feeding Mr. Whiskers” by Dawn Bonnano. The publication definitely trades in darker and denser works as well, but fans of fun will be well served keeping an eye out for their weekly releases.

Secondly, The Book Smugglers put out some amazingly fun stories, both shorter stories to read for free as part of their yearly themes (this year was Gods & Monsters) and for their longer work such as the Novella Initiative. Again, some of their work does drive very dark, but there's a charming quality to so much of it and lots of it is just amazingly fun. Go read Hurricane Heels by Isabel Yap, which is at times intense and at times rather violent but which is all about friendship and hope and joy. There's "Superior" by Jessica Lack and "Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live" by Sacha Lamb and just so many stellar stories that center heart and fun. The publication doesn't tend to put a huge amount, but they're growing, and they're definitely one of my go-to sources for fun.

Thirdly, Daily Science Fiction is also well worth checking out. Given how much they put out, perhaps it’s not surprising that they hit the “fun zone” often enough, but I think overall the driving aesthetic of the publication leans more towards the fast and fun. These are pieces that are meant to be read almost every day, and as such they often act as little rays of sunshine to lift the spirits and inspire a push toward freedom and joy. There's a lot to sift through, but you'll find a lot of treasure if you give it a go.

I could go on with publications that often have some fun stories but I would challenge readers that if they want fun it’s often to go straight to the source, and perhaps track down your favorite writer of fun SFF and see if they have a Patreon. As this skirts around most gate-keeping in SFF, it’s often a place where authors can explore joyous stories without the crushing question of “can I sell this” or, if they’ve tried and failed to sell it, “what the fuck do I do with this now.” I can personally recommend the Patreons of Rose Lemberg, Merc Rustad, and Bogi Takács, where I’ve read recent fun SFF such as Lemberg's “The Splendid Goat Adventure” and Rustad's “Just Like Mombeast Used to Make.” The Patreon of Lethe Press also offers levels of support that include short stories, many of which are fun (and very queer). Obviously not all the content is going to be fun, but in my experience so far Patreon is a place that creators go to put up the stories they want to tell that they might not think will please “mainstream” venues. These works are often a bit freer, a bit looser, and a bit more fun than you might find elsewhere, so my advice is that if you find a piece that you love and is fun and want more, track the author down and see if they offer more like it through a Patreon.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of my advice is going to run along similar lines. Namely, that because fun SFF is something that is often viewed as...less marketable, I guess, it’s not often something publications take as many chances on (at least at the short fiction level). Which means that the costs of finding it are often passed down to the fans. It’s out there. There’s the Unidentified Funny Objects series of anthologies which are loads of fun and funny to boot, but these are not things that you’ll get access to for free. Patreons, small presses, anthologies...at least at the short fiction level most of the more reliable sources of fun require a monetary investment. The good news is that there is a lot out there to support, and that your support can make a huge difference for people trying to do more with fun SFF. The bad news is that it can feel like fun SFF (and especially fun SFF that crosses other boundaries, like allowing marginalized character to just be happy and have adventures) isn’t incredibly welcome. It’s a complex conversation that SFF is having with itself and with the larger writing landscape, and one that continues to be tricky to navigate. In the wake of that conversation, the map of fun short SFF has some noticeable holes, gaps, and ruts. It doesn’t mean you can’t find what you’re looking for, just that it’s not the easiest of tasks, made more difficult by some recent closings of publications. But hey, some might rise to take their places, or they might even rise from the dead. There’s always hope, and where there’s hope, there’s often fun.

So thank you all for joining me on this first cartographic adventure! If you want to help determine what continent of short SFF I’ll be trying to map next, find me on Twitter and vote in my poll (closes date). Cheers!

[For those looking for the previous Mapping Short SFF installment, check it out here: A Key to the Kingdom]

---

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