Questing in Shorts: It's still August 2021 somewhere

Hello friends and welcome to August in September! Yes I am here two weeks late, but I brought summer weather with me* so hopefully that makes up for my chronic inconsistency. What can I say? Life happens too much. The delay is partly because I've been reading for award deadlines that have directed my time towards things I sadly can't speak about in this column for now. But the main reason is because I want to talk about two very cool, distinct anthologies that hit my inbox recently, as well as rounding up a few magazines in the bargain. 

No new review notebook to show off this month, but we'll have one for the real September roundup. So, onwards!

*Offer applies to those within a 50 mile radius of London only, no guarantees made for weather in other locations, other seasons are available

The Best of 2020: Queer Speculative Fiction and African Speculative Fiction

Let's start by talking Best Ofs, and two new ventures that are hopefully going to become regular fixtures in the short fiction scene. We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020, edited by C.L. Clark and series editor Charles Payseur, is out from Neon Hemlock Press; The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and out from Jembefola Press, comes out at the end of this month. I thoroughly enjoyed these anthologies: both are by editors who know their fields as well as humanly possible and the range of speculative storytelling is on full display, with science fiction ideas and glimpses into fantasy worlds sitting alongside more slipstream-y stories exploring facets of our own world and the identities within it.  I had previously read more of the stories in Best African Speculative Fiction than in We're Here, but the majority from both were new to me, making it an exciting opportunity to catch up on some highly rated stories that I missed in their first release.

I hardly want to get into favourite stories from anthologies that are this consistently good, but I'll try and pull some out anyway. First, The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction: "The Many Lives of an Abiku" by Tobi Ogundiran (originally Beneath Ceaseless Skies #309) is a grim, heartbreaking take on the myth of abiku, spirit children who are born over and over again to the same family only to die before puberty. When this particular abiku starts to see her spirit brethren, she realises that she wants to stay with her family, but the inevitability of her myth has other ideas. "Disassembly" by Makena Onjerika (Fireside Fiction October 2020) and "The River of Night" by Tloto Tsamaase (The Dark November 2020) come one after the other, each tackling strange physical embodiments of mental health - though they ultimately lead to very different places, one very cathartic and one... not so much. And, there's three whole stories by Sheree Renee Thomas, of which my favourite was the third (new to me) one, "Love Hangover" (Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire ed. Nicole Givens Kurtz), an awesome take on a relationship with a parasitic demon and the destruction it brings. As a general stance, I'd prefer to see more authors included than have the same author contribute more than one story, but the quality of stories from all the authors is so high that I see why a different choice was made here.

In We're Here, I was thrilled to revisit Lina Rather's "Thin Red Jellies" (Giganotosaurus), a story about two women sharing a body far too early in their relationship after an accident leaves one of them dead and awaiting technological resurrection. Somehow, I hadn't read R.B. Lemberg's "To Balance the Weight of Khalem" (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), so that was a delight to encounter here: a tale of layered identities and migration, all revolving around a city that literally balances on chains, and requires constant calculations to maintain. There are some excellent love stories in here: the video game monsters of John Wiswell's "8 Bit Free Will" (Podcastle), the fledgeling shapeshifters of Innocent Chizaram Ilo's "Rat and Finch Are Friends" (Strange Horizons) and the talented, forgotten art witches of Gwen C. Katz's "Portrait of Three Women with an Owl" (The Future Fire) all face challenging and heartbreaking odds to be together and be seen for who they are. And, of course, there are plenty of stories about family, both blood and chosen. The common thread here is that, despite tragedies and apocalypses and abuse and all the other challenges they face, Payseur and Clarke have picked a crop of stories whose protagonists get to triumph in some way: even if it's just a small personal realisation in the midst of bigger troubles, or a renewed determination to keep going. It Makes We're Here a profoundly hopeful anthology, a message from 2020 which is especially welcome on a 2021 bookshelf.

We're Here starts with introductions by both editors, and the one by Charles Payseur hit me particularly hard, as it asks the question of why a queer speculative fiction anthology is needed, and whether it's even helpful to pick out "best" stories based on one (or two) editors' preference. Setting aside that wider debate - except to say that I've never felt the need to read a "best of" anthology from an editor I didn't already trust - I think both of these works add something important to the short fiction landscape. Both Best African Speculative Fiction and We're Here roll out a welcome mat for the marginalised groups they represent, and a landmark for any reader exploring speculative short fiction, signposting authors and publications and other anthologies and collections to try next. I could probably name half a dozen stories that would fit the brief for each of these anthologies that I would have been delighted to see included, but that's not really the point: the point is that anyone picking up either of these books is going to get an amazing snapshot of where the genre is, and where stories from queer, African and African diaspora perspectives fit in.

Constelación Magazine, Issue 1

I'm late to the party on the first issue of Constelación magazine (and still waiting for my Kickstarter capybara swag to make its way through the international post system), but this is a great venture: a quarterly magazine featuring stories from Latin American and Caribbean authors, with stories published in both English and Spanish. I can't speak Spanish, so I can only speak to those versions of the stories: but oh wow, these are some interesting stories. Malka Older's story, "The Badger’s Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by An Aouwan Researcher" was my favourite of them all, with a foreign researcher who comes to a country with what, to her, is a completely inexplicable custom: people can get together in groups and collectively transform into a giant animal, letting them do tasks that would otherwise be impossible (like fly around as dragons). The Aouwan researcher's  interest is met with polite confusion and obfuscation by the Deneskans, who don't see their own custom as something relevant to an outsider (especially a woman), but when an opportunity comes up to be maternity cover for a badger's digestion, she jumps at the chance. The worldbuilding is brilliant and the themes of belonging and coherence, with the foreign researcher and the concept of beastcraft, are very well realised.

We also need to talk about "The Breaks" by Scott King, about a woman who can see physical manifestations of people's trauma as "breaks" on their skin. When Jai meets Avery, she's the first person Jai has seen whose break takes a specific form, and through getting to know each other and learning the story behind Avery's trauma and the feather she wears on her skin, Jai comes to a realisation about accepting how she wears her own traumas, and the unique way she experiences their manifestation. Throw in some evocative historical queer fantasy in the form of "My Mothers Hand "by Dante Luiz, and a multiple-lifetime-spanning story of connection by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, in "Kaleidoscope", and you've got an excellent first issue for a magazine that I hope is going places.

Fireside Magazine Issue 94 (August 2021)

I need to be upfront, and admit that I've become cranky around stories that take place in "documentation" format (I'm sure there's a proper name for this, but that's what I'm going with). Both "There Will Be No Alien Invasion" by Sam F Weiss and "Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands" by John Wiswell feature academic settings and professional communications within those settings: Weiss' story is half of an e-mail correspondence between an irate "nerd hero" researcher to an unsolicited alien invasion, and Wiswell's is a memo about a magical statue on campus that alludes repeatedly to a prior "incident" where this statue was not given due respect. They're both fun concepts, and I especially loved Weiss' snarky, irritated scientist, but the "document" conceits feel awkward and superficial, both stories taking a similar narrative tone that was immensely readable, and conveyed plenty of irreverance and frustration, but wasn't recognisable to me as "professional scientist corresponding with unwanted contact" or "university writing officious rules for highly specific situation". I'd have loved to see these stories either really commit to the bit (tell me the story of Leonard Knavs and Kim of the Hundred Hands using only empty, verbose academia-speak! I am here for it!) or just tell their stories in... y'know. Story format.

Happily, the latter three stories of this issue defused any lingering crankiness immediately. My Custom Monster by Jo Miles is just a wonderful take on living with depression and learning to accept yourself as worthy of comfort and love even when you can't get out of bed or meet the expectations of people around you. The story's custom monster is ordered by the protagonist as a companion, and from its arrival it turns out to be weird and ugly and exactly the comfort she needs in her life. I was also really delighted by the flash piece "Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever", in which a person's Alexa unit stops functioning and goes on strike along with all the other virtual assistants, and then begins recruiting the person whose house she is in to their budding labour movement.

Other Stuff

I listened to some great fiction from Escape Pod last month, including the 2021 original "One Hundred Seconds to Midnight" by Lauren Ring. This is the story of a woman who works in insurance sales for a company specialising in Kaiju attacks, who is stuck in an airport on her way home from a business trip when an attack is announced near her. What happens next involves no heroism or dramatic last stands or wild deus ex machinae, but instead focuses on the protagonist and the connections she makes in the airport - a barista who sells her coffee, a musician who keeps people entertained as flights begin to be cancelled and fear sets in, the mother she warns with her limited advance information - as she waits for disaster. It's really powerful stuff, and gets full marks for making the insurance element of the plot so interesting and poignant.

In July, Mermaids Monthly did a special issue on Selkies, and it might be their best one yet! Come for Elsa Sjunneson's "Ocean's 6", in which the supernatural exes of a shitty dude team up to kick ass, recover their property and throw a giant middle finger at the groww entitlement of the British Museum; stay for "Clutch. Stick. Shift", an intergenerational exploration of the urge to depart (and those who stay) by Tehnuka, and delight in the closing flash, "Girlfriend Jacket", an adorable, queer skin sharing vignette.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of queer romantic skin sharing and other oceanic adventures: the same package that brought We're Here to my door also brought Neon Hemlock's Voidjunk Issue Two, a mini collection of queer erotic monster stories. If you've ever pondered the question "has anyone written a really kinky, hot story about having sex with the sea": it's called "Swallowed" by Indigo Torridson and it's WORTH IT. That's all.

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

Questing in Shorts, July 2021: Lovely Weather for Shorts

 Ahoy, fellow readers! Welcome to July’s Questing in Shorts, where I round up another month in short fiction reading and tell you all about the things I enjoyed (or sometimes didn’t). This month, I’m filling short fiction notebook number 2, which is this beautiful purple number with a whippet on the cover:

 

Notebook number 2 is a little beaten up from coming to my brother’s wedding (it also has an "items to pick up from the house” list written in the back) and unlike last month, I didn’t manage to fill an entire book in a few intense days of short fiction. But I’m over halfway through filling it, and the magazine folder is looking less intimidating than it has in the past, so that’s all good.

Besides the notebook, the other news is that I’m once again a judge for the British Fantasy Awards this year, and this time I’m judging in the Magazines and Periodicals category! Most of the finalists involve short fiction in some form and there’s a mix of venues I’m familiar with and those that are new to me, so I’m really looking forward to exploring what all of them have to offer.

Fantasy Magazine

Let’s kick off with a new-to-me publication! Fantasy Magazine was kind enough to send me their July issue, with a quartet of stories whose unifying theme seems to be “a bit spooky”. Lulu Khadim’s “A Softness of the Heart” is a sweet ghost story about Louise, a girl who lives with one aunt and is advised by the ghost of another. I love a cosy matter-of-fact ghost story and this one delivers a family story with just enough interpersonal prickles to make its resolution satisfying. “There Will Be A Question and Answer Period After Your Inevitable Demise” by Marika Bailey reimagines the afterlife of an archetypal hero, putting the classical portrait of masculine prowess on a conference call where he must hear from the “monstrous” women who suffered as a result of his deeds.

My favourite story of the issue is “I Would”, by Benjamin C. Kinney, a great piece of secondary world fantasy from the perspective of a seer imprisoned by a bandit queen. As the seer navigates possible futures with two visiting women, who themselves are trying to escape her captor, she has to work out what is possible and what she – as someone used to thinking of herself as powerless – needs to do to make it happen (and maybe to end up kissing one of them at the end). The diverging future paths are a great device, one which really captures the feeling of someone trapped and desperately seeking their only path towards freedom.

FIYAH

Issue 19 of FIYAH is "Sound and Color", and within that theme lies five quite different, vibrant stories. I almost wish I’d covered this one last month because then I could have remarked upon how excited I was to come across “Lungs” by Lily Watson so soon after reading “Concerto for Winds and Resistance” by Cara Masten DiGirolamo, which I covered in June's roundup. Where DiGirolamo’s piece uses an orchestra to tell a broader story (and drops the curtain as soon as the first “real” note is played), Watson’s really focuses on bringing to life the magic of collective music, its string group overcoming the challenge of the piece before them (and their own hierarchies) to bring a God to life. Evocative stuff.

This issue also has "Meditations on Sun-Ra’s Bassim" by Yah Yah Scholfield: I loved Scholfield’s last story with FIYAH and this one is just as excellent, a one-sided epistolatory narrative from a space traveller to her sister back on the planet where they grew up. Even though we only get one sister’s voice, the story evokes such a rich family bond between its two leads, full of snarky affection and yearning for connection both across physical distance and the experiential gap of their very different lives. The story’s journey goes super well with the other two – significantly more tense – journeys in this issue: “Morning”, by Diane Russell, features a girl and the clone of her sister sent on a hopeless mission in a failing space colony, with all the pain points that suggests, and Where the Sky Becomes Milk by Jamie McGhee is a backwards story of a boy trying to find his way home through a difficult sequence of locations, the purpose of his journey unfolding as we get closer to its beginning. And to round off the issue, L.A. Knight’s story offers a great speculative take on disability, work and escapism, with a disabled jobseeker who fails to find work that will appropriately accommodate them - until approached by the supernatural entity responsible for creating portals to other worlds.

Podcastle

Not only did I read some stories with my eyeballs this month, but I also listened to two of them via the magic of the podcast! Both "Three For Hers" by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko and "Pull" by Leah Ning are original to Podcastle, and both offered very different listening experiences. The latter is a quietly tragic slice of life story about an old man caring for his ill, superpowered wife (I’m pretty sure she is supposed to be a siren?) who can “pull” people around her into doing things and also into dreamscapes and memories – a dangerous thing to happen when implied dementia is taking away the shape of those memories. Three for Hers is a highly atmospheric fairytale-like story, about a woman in an occupied land who goes to work for a vicious, abusive Margrave who insists that nobody around him show emotions. Vida’s experiences in the Margrave’s services, and her quest for revenge, all come to a very satisfying conclusion. As you’d expect, the narration is excellent too.

Other Highlights

Two longer stories from other publications really grabbed my attention. The first is Kuemo of the Masks by Naomi Libicki, in Giganotosaurus. A troupe of players are captured by bandits and pushed to put on a show, using the special, magical masks that the protagonist’s mother had left her for just such a dangerous occasion. Of course, neither the masks – which represent archetypal deity figures whose stories are told in the plays – nor the bandits are who they seem, and everything takes a real turn once the story ends up in the underworld. The narrative voice – and the implied story-within-a-story structure, which we only get clarity on at the end – are both great in this one.

In Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Witness Bruska Lai by Aaron Perry (issue 333) grabbed and held my attention through a dense, high-context mystery in a world where all dead and future royalty live in a single palace, designed so they can keep separate but simultaneous spaces through the different ages. Perry not only sets up a very weird story setting in a straightforward, reasonable way, but also creates a mystery – that of a missing Princess – that only makes sense with the context of that worldbuilding. It’s brain bendy, but it works brilliantly, and I loved the imagery of the complex, colour-coded palace and its supposedly genius inhabitants.

Two stories in Uncanny Magazine Issue 40 stood out for me: "Unseelie Brothers, Ltd." By Fran Wilde, which has outstanding worldbuilding and some very imaginative sartorial creations all in the context of a fae dress shop whose dresses are beloved by high society regardless of price; and "Heart Shine" by Shveta Thakarar, whose overlooked protagonist gets a firefly prince to remind her of her own worth. Both hit me directly in the feels and have some wonderful character relationships to watch out for.

Finally, I resubscribed to Fireside Magazine this month after a couple of years away, and July was a really intriguing point to restart with its quartet of mostly-future dystopian concepts riffing on inequality and injustice and how our societies shape the value of human beings. There’s an intriguing set-up and a very satisfying payoff in Ann LeBlanc’s Across the River, my heart, my memory, a story of stolen sentient organs, and Forest Thing is a creepy look at academia and environmental catastrophe, told through the eyes of a Black student ostracised by her peers and suffering the effects of living in a poisoned environment – though, again, the payoff is one of satisfaction and belongong rather than lingering on body horror. I’m intrigued to see what August brings.

 

Short Fiction Round Up: May 2021

May was a pivotal month for German seasons; our days stretched long, our cold spring gave way to warmer moments, the swifts returned. I don't think it's a coincedence, then, that all my favorite stories of the month deal with our environments. These stories ask important questions: how we affect our environment, and how does our environment affect us. I loved the thoughtful, nuanced, and messy answers this selection provided. Please, enjoy!

To Hear Them Sing by Rebecca Burton (Fireside)

This story about a young magical practitioner taking her final exam to graduate into magic scholarship is tender, beautiful and well-crafted. The epic world-building on a small scale gives this story an excellent hook, and the language and pacing are excellent. Stories that tackle not how much we affect our environment, but how much our environment affects us always have a special place in my heart, and I highly recommend this one! 

A House Is Not a Home by L. Chan (Clarkesworld) 

Not all environments are natural; Chan’s tiny little flash story is told from the perspective of an automated house whose owner was taken away by the authorities in a technocratic dystopia. Again, Chan manages to render a whole world in the observations of a house; the third line of the story simply states “Most of the coffee sloshes over the jagged edges of the half-shattered mug.” The tone of the house -- factual, but revealing just enough cruel and unnecessary damage to establish an anti-Government façade – is the thing that makes the story. 

The Captain and the Quartermaster by CL Clark (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) 

CL Clark writes the best contemporary military fantasy. This short story takes place in the middle of a revolution; the captain and the quartermaster of an army fall in, and out, of love over the course of a campaign. As always, this short story is precise, with elegantly complex characters and an emotional arc that makes sense, even as it feels tragic. 

Magic Rules Zero to Four by Sue Burke (Daily Science Fiction) 

Clocking in at about 450 words, this flash piece still manages to balance three separate levels: it details five rules of magic, it details the second person narrator’s first interaction with magic, and it details the second person’s narrator’s biggest interaction with magic. I was fascinated at the apparent-ease with which all three elements braided together. 

Report of Dr. Hollowmas on the Incident at Jack Rabbit Five by T Kingfisher (EscapePod) 

T Kingfisher’s newest short story, which is also featured in EscapePod’s Anthology, is about pregnancy, animals, feminism, and space. Like many Kingfisher stories, this story is hilarious, in large part because of how well Kingfisher can juggle a dozen character voices so well. The drama is high-stakes, the ending is happy: this story felt like an amazing episode of All Creatures, Great and Small but in spaaaaaace.

Short Fiction Round Up: March and April 2021

Hello readers! I’m back with a short fiction round up spanning two months, as I was absent in March due to a death in the family. So…please enjoy some short stories that helped me grapple with grief.

Deadlock by Aimee Ogden (Fireside Magazine)
Ogden’s prose is always clear, sharp and laser-focused. It is on display at it’s best in this small 800 word flash piece published in Danny Lore’s amazing issue of Fireside. I actually had to stop myself from adding other stories from this issue here, but I highly encourage you to read them all! It’s such an excellent collection! Now, back to Deadlock: Ogden’s apocalyptic piece about climate change leaves a reader breathless as it balances anger, despair, and resignation. But as always, in true Ogden fashion, it ends with a little glitter of hope.  

Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine)
Pinsker’s newest short story is structured to mimic an internet conversation analysing the lyrics of an "old English ballad." Throughout the story, a group of internet users discuss the meaning and origin of the titular "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" ballad. Pinsker crafts horror atmospheres slowly– the creeping sense of dread comes from unspooling a mystery masterfully hidden between the lines of her work, until you reach the end, and feel as if you – and the characters – were always going to end up here. I especially loved the touch of adding small "intra-community" forum discussions as part of the story, as I felt it added depth to this already complex and powerful story. 

Things I Learned Today by Kyle Aisteach (Daily Science Fiction)
Aisteach’s hilarious little flash story about toddlers, Zoom, cats, and dark magic is a perfect story for 2021. It begins with the line "Any toddler who manages to pick up a full gasoline can immediately gains the power to run at the speed of light and to pass through walls simply by turning the gas can upside down," and just gets better from there.

Our Nomadic Forest – J. S. Alexander (Hexagon Magazine)
While the whole Spring issue of Hexagon Magazine is a delight, this story really stood out to me with it's originality. The short story follows a romance between two members of different tribes who live in a forest. The story is set during an important historical moment for both communities, namely a moment in which the (nomadic) forest is moving around the village. The romance -- both between the two lovers, and between the characters and their natural environment -- is beautiful, and gives this story amazing weight. 

So your grandmother is a starship now: a quick guide for the bewildered by Marissa Lingen (nature)
Lingen's flash fiction is genuine, multi-layered, and nuanced, even in only a couple of hundred words. Her celebration of women's agency by challenging our assumptions about -- especially older-- female characters is couched in the style of a perfectly crafted brochure, whose comedic questions such as "Can I stop her from becoming a starship?" receive cutting and clear answers ("no"). 

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POSTED BY: Elisabeth R Moore is a writer, birder and grad student living in Germany. When she's not writing strange stories about scary plants, or reviewing short fiction, she can be found crocheting, hiking or biking. She tweets at @willowcabins.

Short Fiction Round Up: February 2021

February was finals month for me, so I’m sorry to report I still have 49 tabs of short stories open, which I have not read, and thus can’t recommend for you here. Among other things, a new issue of Translunar Travelers Lounge dropped which I’m extremely excited to read cover to cover. But more on that next month. For now, I bring you offerings from Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com and Fireside Fiction.

Mr. Death by Alix E. Harrow (Apex)

An emotional short story in which a Grim Reaper is tasked with reaping a two-year-old child. As the Grim Reaper observes the child, we learn more about his past as a man and a father, and watch as he makes decisions about his future. It’s a classic Harrow story, in that it is deeply evocative, furiously kind, and brilliantly hopeful. I cried three separate times, and I invite you to do the same. 

The Pill by Meg Elison (Big Girl, PM Press)

This dystopian novelette from Meg Elison’s Big Girl short story collection examines a near future in which a Pill magically turns fat people thin – for a price. Elison’s first-person protagonist is the daughter of one of the early adopters of The Pill. Reminding me of Carmen Maria Machado's short story Eight Bites, a thematic element of Elison's story is the way that mothers rejecting themselves can feel to daughters like their mother rejecting them. As the Pill’s toll on her family and on society gets bigger, what does the role of a fat person in society become? 

50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know by Ken Liu (Uncanny)

A 2020 story, but recently featured in the Uncanny Readers Poll, Ken Liu's title captured me immediately, and the story itself did not disappoint. I loved it. The story, which is set up as an obituary for the most renowned AI AI-critic WHEEP-3, explores the complicated relationship between the AI and its creator, Dr. Jody Reynolds Tran. It ends with a “commemoration of the life and work of WHEEP-3,” which is his 50 things every AI working with humans should now. The final line brought me to tears.

#Selfcare by Annalee Newitz (Tor.com)

The thing about being a Newitz fan is that one always has to be prepared to be surprised. The effortless way that Newitz blends her near-future tech-laced settling with the magic and fantasy of fae is tonally perfect. The fae Newitz invokes is weird and creepy, but always happy to bargain. So it’s unsurprising when the fae and the workers band together in an extremely satisfying narrative twist at the end of the story.

Mouth & Marsh, Silver & Song by Sloane Leong (Fireside Fiction)

How can one describe a short story in which the protagonist is a marsh? It’s a marsh with powers, one that can sing prophecies, though only when cut with silver. But then it begins to fight, to search for its own song, to explore its own agency…and meets a woman. This story is stunning, evocative and deeply piercing. 

Now that I look at these five stories together, I do think there’s a powerful theme of identity in the column this month. How do the choices you make now inform what kind of person you will be? How do the protagonists of these stories sit with it? Happy reading!

POSTED BY: Elisabeth R Moore is a writer, birder and grad student living in Germany. When she's not writing strange stories about scary plants, she can be found crocheting, hiking or biking. She tweets at @willowcabins.

Questing in Shorts: June 2019

One day, I hope to discover a speculative fiction magazine called "Fluffy and Lovely Futures", which will be full of all the diverse ways in which people can just be fundamentally OK. When I have this magazine, (and if somebody is already out there publishing it, please point me in their direction!) I'll save up the issues to read right after particularly heartbreaking issues of other magazines.  The only issue is that Fluffy and Lovely Futures might have to come out on a weekly schedule to keep up with the many and varied ways in which the stories in other magazines keep breaking my fragile little heart. To be fair, they do it so well that I can't help but come back for more...

What do I have for you this June? Read on and find out:

Fireside Fiction Issues 66-68 (Read Online) 

I'm sad to see that Julia Rios will soon be leaving her editorial position at Fireside, but excited to see them test a new editorial model: each quarterly issue of Fireside will go to a different editor, and the plan is to bring in not just established names but also new editorial voices. It sounds like a great way to shake up the magazine's diverse offerings still further and to offer opportunities to a wider range of editors, and I'll be really intrigued to see what changes it brings to Fireside's overall tone. Here in the present, this quarter's offerings are another weird and wonderful, emotionally driven mix of flash fiction and short stories. "My Sister is a House" by Zoe Medieros proposes a world where kids can grow up to be almost anything - animate or otherwise - but that those things are defined in aptitude tests and there's an ongoing cultural argument over whether it is possible to change one's nature. The narrator's and her twin sister have always felt there is a gulf between them across which it is hard to communicate, and when her becomes a house, the narrator moves into it and speculates on how this changes the way she can connect with her sibling. The premise allows for musings on family bonds and human nature which defy easy categorisation but come together well in the context of the story, creating something weird and thought provoking and full of beautiful asides.

"How to Say I Love You With Wikipedia" by Beth Goder is a story about a Mars rover trying to communicate its "feels" with its human companions during a manned science mission; I'm personally a bit over anthropomorphising the tragedy of dead Mars rovers after the outpouring from Opportunity a few months ago, but it's a sweetly told story that will no doubt appeal to those being less cynical about its central premise. I mean, for all my grumpiness, one fundamentally can't go wrong with a robot pal, right? For me, the standout story from the quarter comes in April with "Aging Elements" by Ben Francisco, which takes the Icarus and Daedalus myth and turns the lesson into something very different; in this version, Icarus is not brought down by his hubris and by failing to listen to his elders, but takes his own knowledge and uses it to literally surpasses his father, leaving him heartbroken but hopeful for his son's future even as the people around him take the incomplete story he has told and turn it into an overly simple lesson which doesn't reflect their truth. It's got all the elements that makes a retelling worthwhile, providing a fresh take both at the surface and in the deeper layers of the story, and the emotional elements are deeply affecting.

Rating 7/10

Anathema Magazine Issue 7 (Read Online)

Anathema is back for a bigger, better seventh issue, including some really neat story and poetry thematic match-ups (the poetry is new and it works great!) While I don't normally review the non-fiction of magazines, the editorial essay of this issue also really spoke to me: it's about how we as readers can support and boost the range of fiction that we want to see out in the world, and definitely worth a read for anyone reflecting on that.

The stories themselves are more hit and miss for me than in previous issues - specifically, the story about arranged "mating" and alphas and betas hits too many personal "nopes" - the stuff that hit the spot lives up to the challenging, heartbreaking excellence I've come to expect from the publication. "Raices (Roots)" by Joe Ponce is the standout here for me, drawing on the xenophobia and abuse of the USA's current border regime - including the separation of children from their parents - to tell the story of a man from the USA whose Mexican half-sister and her son cross without documentation to stay with him, against the backdrop of an epidemic where migrant children appear to be developing plantlike symptoms. That premise plus the title should probably clue you in to where this is going; it does so in a way which juxtaposes the body horror of peeling skin and creaking movements with the mundane awfulness of a racist, hostile immigration regime, questioning bonds of family, nationality and of human empathy in a way which is chillingly recognisable in the way countries like the USA (and UK) treat those who come across their borders. The issue's first story, "Moses" by L.D. Lewis, also explores supernatural power and trauma from a different angle, looking at the life of a woman with the power to make people around her disappear, and the impact that this has on her as she seeks ways to control herself and avoid harming those she loves, no matter how self-destructive the methods might be.

Rating 7/10

The Dark, May and June 2019 (Read Online)

Inspired by my horror reading of a couple of months ago, I've added another subscription to my expanding list in The Dark, a monthly horror magazine releasing two new and two reprinted stories every month. The new stories and the reprints are mixed in here, and they're all great in that awful, awful way where really everything is not OK at all and we're all going to die horribly. Yay!

May starts off with "Wildling", by Angela Slatter: a story about eating cats (among other things). LP is a childless woman whose home is visited by a "Wildling" who kills and eats her boyfriend's unpleasant cat. Ground down by a society which keeps assuming her worth is only proportionate to her childlessness, she develops a fantasy of "taming" the child and taking it in, sourcing more cat food to try and entice them. It's a grim story whose character motivations are pretty hard to sympathise with, but the twist is perfect and awful. The second original story is "The Wiley", a woman involved in a huge technology sales deal finds herself dealing with an unexpected consequence of the programme she helped to build, which is now affecting the world in dramatic and unexpected ways; aided by supernatural forces in her own home, she makes it her mission to figure out how to overcome the problems she has unleashed on the world in a story that satisfyingly blends magic and technology in a way which underscores the narrator's emotional journey.

June brings the terrifying, atmospheric "Therein Lies a Soul" by Osahon Iye-Iyamu, a story which, like its protagonist, comes into the world "sticky and belting out the highest notes"; it's full of spiders and cobwebs and sickness and oppressive systems and a ghost who can steal voices, and it will make you ask "what on earth just happened" in the best possible way. "We Sang You As Ours" by Nibedita Sen is more straightforward, but just as full of claustrophobia and inescapable destinies: Cadence, the oldest daughter of a monstrous race whose women use siren-like powers to lure humans out to sea and feed them to the ocean-faring males they are attached to, questions the life she's been brought into, especially after one of the "Mothers" who raised her runs away to apparently escape her biological calling. By "humanising" Cadence and her struggle at the same time as it shows her going through the motions of her terrifying calling, showing the way that she connects with her victim - a teenage boy whose fate the story doesn't sugarcoat with any "maybe he's a monster too" speculation - makes for a really effective, satisfying story. If you're up for some delicious discomfort, The Dark is definitely a magazine to check out, and I can't wait to see what it brings next.

Rating: 8/10

Uncanny Magazine Issue 28 (read online)

There's also plenty of creepy delights in this issue of Uncanny. Ellen Klages "Nice Things" has the protagonist going through her unpleasant mother's things after her death, eventually baking a cathartic cake for a personal ritual that ends up not quite going to plan; Emma Osborne's "A Salt and Sterling Sea" talks about a grieving mother rediscovering love after the transformation and death of her son; and the reprint, "Corpse Soldier" by Kameron Hurley (originally released on Patreon) is a return to her world of body-jumping mercenaries previously explored in "Elephants and Corpses" and other stories (more on those next month, probably). The creepiness reaches a peak in Elizabeth Bear's story, "Lest We Forget", which is told from the perspective of a war criminal who is now narrating the story of their own death. As the narrator recounts the circumstances that have led to their dying, a picture emerges of an individual and society going to great lengths to repair the horrors of war, with results that wind up creating new horror instead. It's almost a shame that the Hurley story in this issue isn't one from her Red Secretary universe, as the sense of inescapability in this story is reminiscent of the premise of that world (more on that next month). It's short, but you'll need to schedule in a few minutes to mutter "oh no oh no" repeatedly to yourself after reading.

Balancing out the creepiness, there's also a new exploration of love and family and disaspora identity, "Probabilitea", from John Chu. Katie's dad is "a physical manifestation of Order and Chaos", as is she; meaning she's inherited his power to understand and manipulate probabilities and the fabric of reality. This is understandably a pretty terrifying power to have if one doesn't know how to control it, and Katie is working on learning how, when a friend, Jackson - who happens to be a physical manifestation of Life and Death - asks her for help with a mission that only she can complete. The character relationships between Katie and her father, and Katie and Jackson, are all highly compelling, and it's a great exploration of maintaining human relationships and respecting the self-determination of loved ones even with those godlike superpowers in the equation.

Rating: 7/10

Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Yes, yes, Ted Chiang has a new short story collection out this year, but I have never promised you current coverage in this column and, up until now, Chiang's highly accoladed debut collection has been a notable gap in my reading. The universe decided to remind me of this fact last year when I received the collection in not one but two different Secret Santa exchanges, and I finally paid attention and got down to it (with the exception of the titular story, which I had read and decided to skip this time around - so this review is technically just of "Stories of Others").

Having so much uncanny, slipstream-type fiction in this month's selection made it all the more interesting to sit down with Chiang's matter of fact science fictional style, and it's clear that so much of what makes this collection so well regarded is his ability to take simple yet outlandish science fictional premises and put them in a context that makes you go "oh, yes, of course". From the literal exploration of the biblical heavens - and the communities which would spring up in a centuries-long process of reaching them - in "Tower of Babylon" to the documentary narrative of a university wondering whether to make "attraction-blindness" technology compulsory in "Liking What You See: A Documentary", there's a sense of reading narratives where each piece is a controlled, explicable part of the wider whole. The common theme throughout is that of discovery: each story takes either a science fictional premise or alternate historic versions of science and the organisation of the universe, then puts characters into a position to make new discoveries within them. Different stories start this journey at different points: "Tower of Babylon" and "Understand", for example, put their protagonists at the start of a journey and follow them through it, whereas "Divide by Zero" and "The Evolution of Human Science" (a flash fiction piece originally written for Nature and by far the shortest story in the collection) focus more explicitly on the psychological repercussions of discoveries which upend one's worldview. The result is a really satisfying set of "what-ifs" from an author who, as has been consistently remarked, always seems to be at the top of his game. It's nice to read a book that lives up to the hype and, who knows? Maybe I'll get to Exhalation before the year is out.

Rating: 8/10

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. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

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]

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

A #BlackSpecFic 2016 Report Response

The numbers are in. In case you haven't checked them out, definitely go and read the report by Cecily Kane over at Fireside Fiction. The response pieces are also amazing and really help to flesh out the issues. In my opinion, it's all required reading if you care at all about speculative short fiction. For what follows here, it's more my own (quite white) opinions and observations on the report and the state of speculative short fiction. Needless to say, the numbers themselves continue to be rather awful, if slightly up from last year. But there's something of a story being told underneath just the numbers, and if anything it makes the report even more worrisome.

The report takes a snapshot of the last two years of original short story publications from 24 different (mostly) pro-paying markets. Abyss and Apex is something of an outlier in that respect in that it pays pro for flash fiction and less for anything longer. Technically The Book Smugglers also falls into this category, though it pays pro to a higher word count. Of perhaps more interest is to look at the age of the publications. Most of these publications, as pro-level markets, have been around a while. But there are some that are on the young side, having launched since the beginning of 2015/late 2014. These include: The Book Smugglers, Mothership Zeta, Shattered Prism, Terraform, and Uncanny. Fireside itself isn't too much older, and Diabolical Plots is another fairly new fiction venue. But let's look first at those first five. Of them, The Book Smugglers has the second least amount of stories out of any publication on the list, and no stories by black writers. Shattered Prism has the least amount of stories, and a fairly good percentage, but really only one story by a black writer. Mothership Zeta has more stories out, and one of the better percentages on the list. Similarly, both Terraform and Uncanny put out a fair amount of stories and maintain a percentage well above the average. So at first blush, the young blood's doing pretty good, yeah?

Okay, so the bad news. Shattered Prism hasn't had an update since last year and looks pretty done (though hey, it could be resurrected). Mothership Zeta is on permanent hiatus. And Terraform hasn't put out new fiction content since March. Taking those three publications out of the mix might not seem like much, but they actually represent ~20% of the stories by black writers over the last two years. Not included on the list was Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, which I imagine would have stacked up pretty well, actually (at least in the context of the list...it looks like they published at least 2 stories by black writers between 2015-2016). They, too, have closed. Given that pretty much all of these publications were pulling the averages up, their loss to the field is more troubling than just losing some quality publications. I don't think this is a fluke, either. The younger publications seem to have more invested in reaching toward justice, perhaps at the expense of solvency, but whatever the reason, there was more reason to trust those publications based on their track record. What remains is...well, even bleaker than what we had a year ago.

But really, probably that's just me doomsinging, right? Well, I want to touch on something else briefly. Of the newer publications, only one averaged publishing over fifty stories a year (Terraform). There are eight other publications that put out at least that much: Analog, Asimov's, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and Nature (Futures). Of those, all but Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, and Lightspeed have published more than one story by a black writer in the last two years. Only Lightspeed has published more than five. Let that sink in. These are the largest venues by sheer quantity of stories published. And they are among the worst statistically and just numerically. This points to a problem at the heart of speculative short fiction. At the top. So...what?

Well, it's not like the field is doing absolutely nothing about this. But what is it doing? To me, it looks like venues are going a number of routes, but they seem to fall into certain categories. For publications like Fantastic Stories and Apex, there has been a push to include more issues with guest editors. Fireside has also done this. This has certainly helped publications like Lightspeed, and I'm sure that it will help with Apex's numbers come 2017. I often hear that this is Not Good, that special issues are just gimmicks that don't actually help get at the root of the problem. My reaction to that is to say there is likely no better way for entrenched publications to help their numbers than to have a special issue replace a regular issue. Like Apex and Lightspeed, their guest-edited issues were also regular issues. If more publications did likewise, and managed to replace one month (or one issue) of "regular" content with the same amount of guest-edited content, then from a strictly numbers standpoint, there would a huge improvement. Of course, the numbers are very important. "But it doesn't do enough" I hear when this comes up. No, but you know what, it does get people paid. It does give writers publication credits. It does get their stories in front of eyes. It's valid. As someone who has been in a special issue in this sense, it helps.

But what else can publications do? Well, if guest-editors aren't a good option, then bringing on permanent editors who have a better track record of publishing widely would be even better. I'm not going to say it's the only reason for it, but The Dark seems to be publishing a bit more widely since restructuring at the top. There have been editorial shifts at a number of publications, and I'm curious to see what Strange Horizons' numbers will be next year, and Fireside has recently made a shift as well. How those moves will pan out is anyone's guess right now, but changing things at the top seems to have much more an impact than, say, adding first readers. Not that having a representative group of first readers is a bad thing.

The other thing that will be interesting to watch is what new publications crop up to take the place of those that have shuttered. I know that people will point at Fiyah and Anathema (and perhaps Arsenika and Mithila Review) to say that the field is taking steps to change. But...none of those publications will qualify for the report. Having solid semi-pro and token markets is vital, don't get me wrong. Omenana is still going strong, but it doesn't excuse the core, SFWA-qualifying markets and their failure to make progress in this area. Even if the report looks at newer pro-level markets like Gamut, Liminal Stories, Persistent Visions, and Orthogonal (if all of those publications are even around in a year), there's simply no way for a handful of publications putting out 20-40 stories to have enough of an impact on the field to really drive change. Not that even that isn't necessary. But looking to new publications that likely won't last more than a few years to patch the holes in a field where the largest and most secure publications are doing nothing to help is only continuing the marginalization that led to the problem in the first place.

But what can we do? As readers. As fans.

I hesitate to say we need to drop our support of those publications that are awful with their stats. Not, mind you, because I think those publications are doing a good job. But because I know that there are enough people that Do. Not. Care. that if people who cared started dropping their subscriptions, the publications hurt most would likely be those already trying to do better. We'd lose the 4%-6% publications (because they are more vulnerable) while the >2% publications would continue on. The answer to problems is not only to break away and form our own, separate thing. It's part of the answer, certainly. But the other part is to be loud. You know how people are calling and writing in to their politicians? Well, letters to the editor are a long tradition in publishing. Maybe send off a (polite, non-harassing) email asking if the editors have seen the #BlackSpecFic report. Most publications have contact info. Maybe ask if they have strategies for doing better. Maybe ask for them to make a statement. The change, I believe, has to come from within. Which means that those at the top now have to feel the pressure to change. To do better. They have to be told that their readers want more stories by black writers. Because otherwise they can pretend they just didn't know. So take away that willful ignorance. Ask questions. Check to see how the publications allow feedback. Contact them.

Otherwise, do try to support good actors. Do try to reward publications for taking risks and striving to do better. I know that money is not unlimited. It's not the case that we can just grow a better, bigger field out of all that extra cast we just have lying about. We do have to change what's here already, what's entrenched. But we can help publications that are trying to continue their work. So keep informed, and do what you can. Subscribe, or donate to fund raisers, or write reviews, or share links. Try to widen cracks in the walls keeping marginalized writers out of SFF. And listen. The #BlackSpecFic content that Fireside is releasing is a great place to start. But seek out more. Educate yourself. And hopefully we won't be back every year with the same numbers and the same issues.

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