Questing in Shorts: February 2023

The calendar might say 2023 already (how!?) but as far as my short fiction reading is concerned, it's still very much a time for 2022, with lots of things to catch up on and enjoy in advance of Hugo nominations. Let's dive straight into some of the fun stuff I've been reading over the past couple of weeks:

Escape Artists October - December 2022

I'm not a big audio listener, but since Escape Artists have started offering review e-books of the original fiction from the network's five audio fiction podcasts (Escape Pod, Podcastle, Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders and Catscast) I've been making the effort to both read and listen to stories, sometimes at the same time. For those just tuning in, I have two PSAs. First, these podcasts do a great mixture of both original and reprint fiction ("reprint" here usually meaning these are still the first audio versions of the stories), so unless you are specifically reading for awards consideration I don't recommend limiting yourself to their original fiction only. Serial audio versions of stories like Meg Elison's "The Pill" (on Escape Pod) and Caroline M. Yoachim's "Colours of the Immortal Palette" (Podcastle) are particularly worth your time.

Second, even if you're a mostly adult fiction reader, do not sleep on Cast of Wonders. This YA zine publishes some seriously powerful original stories covering the gamut of speculative fiction. Beverly Aarons' "Gone Red" (Episode 513) is a strong piece of dystopian fiction, taking what might in other hands have been a dated premise (city districts assigned colours based on inhabitants' moods, used by a universal surveillance algorithm to distribute resources) and using it to tell a timely story about how societies blame and dehumanise the poor for their own impoverishment. "A Full Set of Specials" by Marguerite Sheffer (Episode 512) tackles a similar subject from a very different angle, telling the story of a nail salon where a down-on-her-luck customer is given a free magical manicure, lifting her up just enough to allow her to break the cycles holding her back. And "The Cat of Lin Villa" by Megan Chee (516) is a delightful story about a cat who wants to hang out with their friends and also wants their friends to be happy - one of those being much more difficult than the other.

Elsewhere in the Escaposphere, you'll want to check out "A Shoreline of Oil And Infinity" by Renan Bernado (Escape Pod 863) for a story of separated siblings on a future polluted shore and "The Bone Pickers" by Kelsey Hutton (PodCastle 761) for an utterly grief infused tale of two indigenous women surviving in the wreckage of colonisation and environmental collapse. As a horror zine, you'd expect Pseudopod to deliver on its Halloween offerings and it totally does: there's "Trickin'" by Nicole Givens Kurtz (Pseudopod 835), which revels in the monstrous joy of its protagonist on Halloween night, and Alasdair Stuart's "The 2022 Halloween Parade" (Pseudopod 836), full of figures you won't recognise but who will nevertheless feel strangely, eerily familiar. Go forth and treat your ears!

FIYAH Issue 24: Horrors & Hauntings

Continuing the belated Halloween Theme (it's nearly October!), FIYAH's 24th issue is long and it is good. "Girl Eats Girl" by Gnesis Villar kicks off with an emotionally charged sort-of friendship by two Black latinx teen girls trying to survive both their white town and the creatures living in the forest - which seem intent on changing at least one of them. Eden Royce is always a great name to see in a table of contents, and "Sugar Honey Iced Tea" is a fantastically creepy story about coming into work on a Saturday because the mediocre man who got promoted above you hasn't done his job properly. "Old Solomon's Eyes" features two plucky youths trying to negotiate with a demon who has taken up residence near their village, as the adults around them attempt less successful methods to deal with it. I love how this story plays with the morality of its characters, making both the inaction and the overreactions from various segments of the community seem damaging and the demon's perspective seem nearly sympathetic, while also coming down firmly on the side of "negotiating with demons is terrifying and tricky".

The final three stories all deal with family trauma in some way, like Tobi Ogirundan's story of two brothers and a terrifying childhood incident "In The Smile Place". "Chrysalis" by Aimee Campbell features a young person trying to break free of a family curse which has transformed their home into the lair of a spiderlike creature who claims each member of their family as its own as they come of age.  The horror here is claustrophobic and visceral, and it pairs compellingly with "Blooms of Sorrow" by Amanda Helms, in which a family garden becomes a hungry burial ground for all kinds of familial pain, from an abusive former husband to a daughter's struggle with untreated endometriosis. Both of these final stories offer some level of catharsis to their protagonists, which stops them from tipping over into pure hopelessness - so it's not all creepy doom and gloom. Read your FIYAH subscriptions, everyone.

Strange Horizons

I tend to read Strange Horizons fiction in no particular order, all at once, so the following are going to be from all over their 2022 publication list, but let's try some thematic association for this recommendation journey:

Artwork for "Intimacies"
by Dominique Ramsey

Start under the water, with "Intimacies" by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, in which a hippocampus-merman and a widowed human overcome their respective cultural limitations and taboos to build an unusual family together. I love mer stories (pour one out for Mermaids Monthly, the best year-long magazine project a girl could hope for) and it's always nice when the differences in living circumstances are treated as something to be adapted to, rather than an insurmountable grounds for tragedy. Underwater tragedy is also great though, and the cyclical central tragedy of "Sister, Silkie, Siren, Shark" by Ariel Marken Jack is so painfully well-realised that it will probably make you scream into your hand. The story of a group of sisters who, like their mothers before them, are forced to give up their silike skins when they are sold to the men who come to their island, it traces out the things they are told at each stage of their lives to perpetuate a toxic cycle, and the moment at which they choose to break it.

Artwork for "Clockwork Bayani"
(SEA special issue) by Gianne
Encarnacion

When you're finished crying from that depiction of matrilineal trauma, treat yourself to "Mother Hunger" by Mary Maxfield, which starts with a somewhat whimsical premise where daughters are assigned their mothers as teenagers and need to care for them until they get mothers of their own, and turns it into one long gut-wrench of a story about failures of care and community for a daughterless woman whose mother takes absolutely everything she can provide and more. After that, you'll probably be both hungry and in need of some lighter storytelling, so it'll be time to slip into the Southeast Asian issue with "Wok Hei St" by Guan Un, a heist where the steak could not be higher (because you're tossing it! in your wok! ...I'll get me coat). Stay in Southeast Asia to read... well, read all of it, but for the purposes of this recommendation journey, go with "Lay My Stomach On Your Scales" by Wen-yi Lee, with its story of teenage body awkwardness featuring a manananggal and the girl who has stolen her hands. Finally, finish off with another heartwarming spooky tale with "Embroidery of a Bird's Heart" by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas, about a daughter whose ghostly grandmother comes over for lunch and guides her through a change of her own.

Questing Elsewhere

I'm tired of difficult stories about reproductive justice, because I'm tired of how much they hurt and how we still need them so badly. "Rabbit Test" by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine Issue 49) hurts, and is badly needed, featuring the cyclical struggle for control over women's bodies with a focus on a future where intrusive surveillance is the norm. Make time for it.

While you're following the Strange Horizons recommendation trail above, you could take a left turn at Wok Hei St and go instead to Giganotosaurus' "Begging the Moon" by Eli Brown, the story of a woman sourcing ingredients for tom yam gung nam for a gang lord's birthday in a border city full of refugees and cut off from surrounding countries. It's thematically powerful, and making food the central driver adds a little touch of levity while bringing the city of Diyu to life.

Finally, I don't normally talk about the to-read pile in this column but two recent acquisitions demand to be mentioned. First, We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2021 (edited by Charles Payseur and L.D. Lewis) has a table of contents that easily lives up to its 2020 predecessor; starting with "The Captain and the Quartermaster", an outstanding and heartbreaking tale by 2020 co-editor C.L. Clark, is a great touch. Second, Song of the Mango and Other New Myths by Vida Cruz-Borja has a beautiful cover and a whole lot of stories I'm excited to dive into, alongside some of my existing favourites by the author (like the titular "Song of the Mango", which previously appeared in the "Beyond the Line of Tree" chapbook.

Will 2023 be a year of returning to more regular columns? I hope so! For now, happy reading and I'll see you when Hugo nominations open.

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.

 

Questing in Shorts June 2021: The Triumphant Return!

 Yes that's right, Questing in Shorts is BACK, bay-bee!

Put on your dancing shorts and boogie with me

It's been six months, during which time the subscription folder on my e-reader has been relentlessly filling itself up with enticing things. Sadly, since the start of the year my mind has mostly been elsewhere (and by elsewhere I mean "taking on the general capacity and aura of a mossy pond"). I had a few exceptions, mostly to catch up on 2020 stories from Omenana and FIYAH before Hugo nominations ended in March, but on the whole it's not been a good time for me and short fiction.

But! as of the start of this month, I've been feeling the short fiction itch again, and I've spent some time trying to come up with a system that will help me keep track of all the short fiction I read in a way that actually reflects the way I read short fiction (so, not sitting in front of a spreadsheet trying to type things in every ten minutes). After some thought, I decided to give in to the instinct that this was a problem that could only be solved with new stationery.

For once, though, new stationery really has been a gamechanger! Behold, Adri's first 2021 short fiction review notebook, courtesy of Whirling World on Etsy:

I decided to pick up a few pre-formatted review notebooks, but as they're set up for books I quickly realised that I'd need to change a lot of things to make this work for short stories. I printed out a set of form stickers to go in the middle of the page so I could quickly write in double the number of reviews, and wrote in the publication instead of a "finished date". I completely ignored the formatting of the TBR pages at the front to just put in a big ol' list of magazines (limited to things I have ebooks of, with apologies to Baffling Magazine and Omenana, both of which I read online - I needed to fix the folder backlog first!)

An incomplete list of things

I also gamified things for myself: after finishing a magazine, I rolled an eight-sided dice (because my e-reader shows eight documents per page) and read the corresponding magazine from the first page of the folder. This meant I mostly read things that I'd added more recently, but it kept me interested, and picking things randomly confirmed that I'm really happy with my current subscriptions: nothing ever came up that I was disappointed to have to read next.

And I filled this whole notebook! With 61 stories, from Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Giganotosaurus, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Mermaids Monthly, The Future Fire and Anathema. The whims of the dice I didn't read any Uncanny or FIYAH despite having a couple of issues of each, nor did I get to the first issue of Constelacíon, so those are on the list for next time. but needless to say there's still plenty of stuff within these 61 stories to talk about...

Mermaids Monthly

A new publication to this column, Mermaids Monthly was set up by Julia Rios and Meg Frank with a simple, one-year mission: to publish content about mermaids. This month, I read their March, April and May issues, and I did indeed get a lot of delightful mermaid art, comics ("Fat Mermaid In: Wardrobe Malfunction" is a great piece from the May issue), poetry and of course short fiction, covering everything from surrealist slipstream to survivalist horror and everything in between.

A lot of Mermaids Monthly's content is flash fiction, which combines with the art and poetry to create a big, slippery mash-up blend of mermaid and siren myth where individual pieces feel subsumed into the whole experience. That's not to say that each piece doesn't stand on its own merits, of course - everything is really good! - but that Mermaids Monthly really benefits from being read as a single publication from start to finish, leaning into the thematic coherence and letting the different interpretations work together.

That said, there are some stand-outs, and as a longer-short fan it was longer stories that really caught my attention. In April, "A Minnow, Or Perhaps a Colossal Squid" by C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez is a story about a magical world where debtors are transformed into fish while their debts are being repaid, and it alternates between Estrella, a caseworker charged with doing this magic, and a naturalist studying deep-sea sirens whose debts allow her to pursue her research in unexpected ways. The split perspective between Estrella's present on Mariposa, and the research notes of Ven. Damiana Cardosa y Fuentes, provides a great mix of worldbuilding and the sirens themselves are excellent (you'd expect no less from Mermaids Monthly, of course). In May, "The Incident at Veniaminov" is the story of an indigenous community visited by a cruise ship with a sinister agenda, in which Mathilda Zeller weaves together questions about identity with an action packed story (involving cannibalism) with excellent results.

Apex Magazine

Also new to my subscription folder is Apex Magazine, back off hiatus this year and publishing some magnificent things. I read issue 122 (March-April), which is full of stories that riff off of themes of survival, vengeance and memorialisation in one way or another. "Black Box of the Terraworms" was a weird highlight for me: the story of a strange terraforming intelligence as it battles the "gods" of a planet it is trying to make habitable to humans. The way the terraformer's objectives change as it takes on the perspective of the gods makes this a really interesting ride, combining a science fictional concept with a creation-myth story structure to brilliant effect. Elsewhere, I am a sucker for a documentary-style story and Sam Miller's "A Love that Burns Hot Enough to Last: Deleted Scenes from a Documentary" hit all my buttons in that regard, giving a range of testimonials about the life of Ti, a singer with the ability to channel magic through her songs. Ti's story - which, we know from the start, has a tragic ending - is offered up alongside the story of one of her fans, Brent, a closeted soldier who goes to one of her military concerts and is caught up in her magic. Brent's life, we learn, is changed for the better by being able to come out and build a life with his boyfriend as a result of their concert experiences; but Ti's magic can't alter the challenges of her own life and her own inability to follow her desires.

Finally, this issue of Apex includes an interactive piece by Sabrina Vourvoulias which is highly worth checking out. "Las Girlfriends Guide to Subversive Eating" is set in a magical version of Philadelphia, and offers up a fictional culinary tour of the city where food is not just a guide to the history and diversity of the city, but a way for migrants and activists to offer each other the magic they need to survive, be that through mushroom-based cuisine that can heal ailments, tamales woven with spells for keeping ICE away and paperwork rolling smoothly, or gardens which encourage younger generations to engage with the heritage of their ancestor's homelands. The formatting is fun, and the break-up of text between different pages means it doesn't feel hard on the eyes, and while the technology doesn't quite hit full intuitiveness every time (the lack of "back" buttons at the bottom of each food stop makes scrolling back up a bit of a faff) it's still a great vehicle for a powerful, engaging piece of urban fantasy.

Art by Sunmi for "The Chicken House"

Strange Horizons

Right as I started clearing my backlog, Strange Horizons dropped four months of ebooks on Patreon collecting their editions from February to May, and I ended up reading the entire set, including April's Samovar, the Palestinian special issue and the trans/nonbinary special issue. This is, quite simply, too much Strange Horizons to summarise in a couple of paragraphs, but if you're diving in on the recommendation of this column in particular, those special issues are where I'd start: the Palestine special issue brings 3 stories and 6 pieces of poetry as well as an excellent roundtable. "PALESTINE IS A FUTURISM: THE DREAM" is a brilliant piece of all-caps fury/joy riffing off capitalist exploitation and extractive industries and imagining something still strange and affected by their presence, but somehow newer and more pure. "Queer Arab Dictionary" is also an amazing piece, its stanzas looking at current and future language and envisioning how a gendered language might be reenvisioned or pushed beyond the binary. When it comes to short stories, I loved the deeply wry, satirical "A Day in the Life of Anmar 20X1" by Abdulla Moaswes, in which the future President of Palestine attempts to curate his dream palace, and his tenure's success, as his land literally constricts around him.

May's Trans special issue also has lots of good poetry (I liked "Luna" by Alexander Te Pohe), as well as some fun stories. "Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me" by Paris Green is the story of a sex worker in a world where many people have animal genes transferred into them to increase their potential for particular careers. Green's protagonist has had fish genes transferred, but remains multiply marginalised with no other options available. The story unfolds in snatches of perspective, centring on an interaction with one particular client, and while the nuances are beyond my critical capacity as a cis reader, the detail and atmosphere is extraordinary and makes this well worth the experience. "A Welling Up" by Natalia Theodoridou and "The Chicken House" by Jenny Fried are also excellent - I enjoyed the latter, in particular, for its trans take on the Baba Yaga myth.

Other highlights:

After a year off from subscribing, I'm rediscovering exactly why enjoy Beneath Ceaseless Skies' brand of "adventure fantasy". The story that took my breath away this time was "Concerto for Winds and Resistance" by Cara Masten DiGirolamo, which tells the story of a city under repressive rule from the perspective of four members of a wind orchestra and the curious, magical piece their new conductor puts in front of them. On the subject of favourite city stories, "The City, My Love" by Alexandra Seidel (The Future Fire 57) covers centuries or development and migration from the perspective of a city and the humans it loves within it

"Just Enough Rain", by P.H. Lee, is available on Giganotosaurus (it's their May story) and I loved its matter-of-fact religious exploration and its hilarious romance, and the mother-daughter relationship at its heart. I also want to mention "A Remembered Kind of Dream" by Rei Rosenquist, one of very few short stories from 2021 I read at the start of this year: it's a post-apocalyptic queer found family story that's got that perfect combination of biopunk and hopelessness and human grit and I'm glad it's stuck with me to make it into this column.

Finally, Anathema brings its usual blend of heartbreak and hope to Issue 12 after an issue off (though their December showcase is, of course, very much worth your time). This time, there's more of the latter than the former: "Cirque Mécanique" broke my heart most successfully, but "Lady Fortune" and "To Rise, Blown Open" put it together again.

From the Bookshelves:

My lack of short fiction reading has stretched to anthologies and collections, but I did finally get through Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap, which is a showcase from an outstanding short fiction writer. The stories that draw on modern Filipino events and culture are my favourites: Asphalt, River, Mother, Child, the story of an afterlife where innocent victims of Duterte's war on drugs have found themselves stuck, is powerful and brilliant in its characters and the way it presents their journey, and "Have you heard the one about Anamaria Marquez" is a creepy take on schoolyard rumour. There's also a new novella in this collection: "A Spell for Foolish Hearts" is about a mostly-closeted witch who starts to fall in love with a beautiful man at his workplace, with adorable and very supernaturally satisfying results. I had high expectations for this collection and it certainly didn't disappoint, and I feel like I've left this collection with even more love for Isabel Yap's storytelling than I had before.

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

Interview: LaShawn Wanak, editor of GigaNotoSaurus

We all love short stories.  On the days that you are itching for something a little longer than a short story, but a little shorter than a novel, the webzine GigaNotoSaurus has you covered.  Started in 2010 by Ann Leckie, GigaNotoSaurus has become know for keeping it simple, and doing it right. The 'zine has little in the way of bells and whistles, and lots in the way of high word counts,  high levels of diversity, and high quality fiction that you get to spend a little more time with, due to that high word count. All fiction published by GigaNotoSaurus can be read for free at the 'zine's website.

I was lucky enough to meet LaShawn Wanak at a convention back in 2019, and then saw her speak at a virtual convention in 2020.  Her excitement about editing longer fiction at GigaNotoSaurus was infectious, and I knew I needed to learn more about her and the 'zine.  My only regret is that it took me so long to do so.    If you're a regular at GenCon or WisCon, or a regular reader of Lightspeed Magazine, Uncanny, FIYAH, Strange Horizons and other popular magazines, you'll recognize Wanak's name, as her short fiction, essays, and book reviews have appeared regularly in many publications since 2005.  You can learn more about Wanak by following her on twitter at @TboneJenkins and checking out her website, The Cafe In the Woods.

Wanak has been the editor at GigaNotoSaurus since September 2019, and since then she's brought in slush readers, defined her editorial style, and made a deep dive into the process of editing longer short stories and running a webzine. She was kind enough to let me pick her brain about her experiences as an editor, how she keeps everything organized, and how much the online writing sphere has changed since she starting publishing.  Let's get to the interview! 

NOAF: One day in summer of 2019 it was a regular day, and the next day you were the new editor at GigaNotoSaurus! How did you become the editor of the magazine? What were those early conversations like? Once you were settled into the role, how did you know what to do?

LaShawn Wanak: It seems like a long time ago! At the time, I wasn't looking for an editing gig. I had just moved to a new position at the dayjob that freed up my time to dedicate towards more writing. I got an email from Anna Schwind, who used to be one of my editors at PodCastle. She mentioned that Ann Leckie, who was the main editor of GigaNotoSaurus, was looking for someone to take over the editorial duties while she moved to more of a publisher role. It had intrigued me, because I had deeply loved my time at PodCastle, but had to step down due to the dayjob stuff. Now, the timing was right, so I said yes.

NOAF: GigaNotoSaurus isn't your first editing gig! Back in the day, you were an associate editor at PodCastle. What are some of the biggest differences between editorial duties at PodCastle and GigaNotoSaurus? Do the two 'zines have any at all in common?

LW: It feels weird to be at the helm of deciding what stories come into GNS. Luckily, my experience at PodCastle taught me well. I also learned a lot from Anna Schwind and Dave Thompson, who were my editors at the time and made the final decision on what stories to publish. They valued my input on the stories I passed along to them, and they trusted me to know what stories fit in Podcastle and what didn't. I'm now encouraging the same input and feedback with my own slush readers.

NOAF: You've now been at the helm of GigaNotoSaurus for around a year and a half. What do you know about editing the magazine now, that you wish you'd know when you started? 

LW: That it's okay to ask for help. It took a long time before I realized I needed help managing the slush, and to do that, I had to bring on my own team of slush readers. The team I have now is sooooo helpful in getting things to the point that I can focus on reading and purchasing stories. I do feel like I'm still learning the job, though, especially since we've only just opened up submissions again in January, so we're still finding our rhythm.

Another thing I like about my team is that I can discuss the stories I have in mind for publishing. I wanted my team to be diverse so that they can catch things that I, a Black woman but who's also cishet and abled, would miss.

NOAF: Give us a behind the scenes of GigaNotoSaurus. What is a typical week like for you? How far in advance are you buying stories to publish? 

LW: Usually a typical week is reading. Lots and lots of reading. Sometimes I jump in and help with the slush. Other times, I'm doing deeper reads of the stories that are passed on to me. When I read a story, I like to do it a couple of times and see if I really want to publish it. On the rare occasion, there are stories that so drag me in that I know right away that I'm buying it. There are others where I need to seriously think. Maybe there's something about the story that pulled me in, but there's just one thing that's off--maybe it's pacing, maybe there's character's action that doesn't sit well with me, or maybe there's something about the world-building that isn't clear. If it's a good enough story that I still want to publish it, I usually ask for a rewrite.

Other weeks I reserve on getting the story ready for publication, or sending rejects and or acceptances. I've just now settled into a routine that works, at least for now. I try to buy stories two or three months in advance, although now that submissions are open again, I want to expand that to at least six months in advance.

NOAF: What types of stories is GigaNotoSaurus looking to publish? Are there particular subgenres you are seeking, or any particular subgenres of types of stories that you are bored with, or sick of seeing? 

LW: That's hard to say! I'm a sucker for literary fantasy stories with lush worldbuilding, but I also like engaging science fiction. I also like stories that use genre to delve into identity, race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, etc. But I'm also like stories that make me laugh out loud. I don't know, I guess the best thing to say is surprise me.

What I'm not a big fan of is the standard sword and sorcery stories, where a guy goes out to save the world, or is the chosen one. I'm also not huge into blood and gore. Also, stories that have violence against women and/or children are a very, very hard sell for me. This goes for 'fem sexbot' stories, which for some reason we get a lot of--I don't know why.

NOAF: When stories are in the 2,500 – 7,500 word range, a slush reader or editor can get through the submissions pile in a timely fashion. GigaNotoSaurus is famous for publishing longer works, up to 25,000 words, around five times the length of the typical short story. How long does it take you to get through the submissions pile? Do you have a team of slush readers who helps you?

LW: Again, we just opened up, so we're still finding our groove. The good news is that the stories I have under second consideration are stories from when we first opened up this year, so if you haven't heard on your story that you submitted in January 2021, it means it's with me.

NOAF: What advice do you have for someone who wants to get into editing? As far as skillsets and processes, what's the major difference between and author and an editor (if there are any)?

LW: You need to be organized. I had to put together an editorial calendar that has deadlines for when I send out acceptances, contracts, editing a story and getting it ready for publication. Having a set schedule is new to me; as a writer, I'm a lot more loose in scheduling things. With GNS, I can't let a deadline slip. I've made it a goal to have a story published every 1st of the month, and I'm happy to say that I've pretty much stuck to that goal.

NOAF: You've been publishing poetry, short fiction, interviews, essays, and blogging online since 2006. What changes have you seen in the online sphere over the years?

LW: Oh boy, lots of things. I feel in many ways stories have gotten easier to publish, and paradoxically, harder to publish. In the past year alone, there has so much done to highlight Black writers, which has been such a boon On the other hand, the pushback has been fierce and disheartening, and it's just a microcosm of what's happening outside of genre over the past decade. I've seen the writing community yell at each other, but I've also seen it come together and fight to get more stories heard from vulnerable communities. It makes me proud to be part of that, even if all I'm doing is finding stories that I like and then publishing them.

NOAF: Thank you so much for this behind the scenes look at GigaNotoSaurus!

POSTED BY: Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. She can be found on twitter, @redhead5318 , where she posts about books, food, and assorted nerdery. 

Questing in Shorts: September 2020

Over the past month, I've found myself struggling to get much reading done again, as the various stresses of trying to live through Interesting Times have continued to take their toll. However, what I have found this month is that short fiction has come into its own for me: even when I'm not able to get myself motivated to read a novel, I've been able to pick up a story or two and my magazine folder is looking much healthier for it (on the other hand, let's not talk about my ARC folder...). It's not where I wanted to be at with my reading at this point in the year, but I'll take what I can get these days. So, let's see what's been on the menu this month:

Giganotosaurus July - September

I read the last three months of Giganotosaurus stories this month, all of which were excellent if very different in tone and outlook. "Miss Bulletproof Comes out of Retirement" by Louis Evans (August 2020) is an intriguingly meaty deity-superhero type setting with a main character taking on One Last Job which brings her into a conspiracy of the kind she's no longer as prepared to deal with as she used to; the worldbuilding here is first rate as are the relationships between the main characters. "The Pandora", by Stephanie Charette (July 2020), is unpleasant and claustrophobic, dealing with a girl who has been taken in by an abusive older man to shape her into a "perfect wife". Stripped of everything up to and including her own name, "Portia" (Jane) finds a lifeline in a doll which turns out to be sentient and able to enact a body swap, leaving Jane safe inside the Pandora's body while the Pandora withstands the various punishments and trials she is subjected to. The creepy doll trope is cleverly deployed here, leaving us, like Jane, uncertain about the Pandora's motives and unable to decide where to place our trust.

Then there's September's story, "A Wild Divinity" by Rebecca Schneider. This is the tale of Nassa, a woman who is dedicated to the god of reason, until he starts turning up in unexpected places and trying to impregnate her. She ends up taking refuge in the temple of the god most opposed to hers: the Queen of Delight. Initially worried and uncertain about her new situation, Nassa starts to appreciate this new divinity and particularly to forge a bond with Eidel, one of the devotees of Delight. Beautifully paced and set in a world that feels like it could support a whole lot more narrative, Nassa's specific journey, with Eidel and with her gods, is a delight from start to finish, giving space to her growth and tying everything together extremely satisfyingly at the conclusion.

Homesick by Nino Cipri

I've been meaning to read more of Nino Cipri's work for a while and this collection, bringing together 9 of their works, did not disappoint. As the title and the gorgeous cover suggest, this is a collection that's very much about homes: having them, leaving them, and what happens when we are set adrift both emotionally and (this is a speculative anthology after all) in the fabric of reality. Insofar as this collection has a centrepiece, it's the outstanding "The Shape of my Name", originally published on the tor.com website. This is the story of a family in possession of a time travelling device, narrated through the perspective of someone navigating a relationship with their mother as they both work through different points in time and the protagonist comes to terms with her trans identity. The way the time travel affects the relationships here is beautifully done and it's a story that weaves its fantasy and mundane elements together to offer a wonderful, heartbreaking experience.

It's difficult to pick other favourites in here: I enjoyed the novelty of "Which Super Little Dead Girl(TM) Are You", told in the form of a multiple choice quiz about a fictional doll franchise with exactly the premise you'd think; I also highly enjoyed "Not an Ocean but the Sea", and the weird, minor hauntings of "Presque Vue", whose protagonist keeps pulling keys out of their throat and is otherwise trying to live as normal a life as possible around that, as those around him deal with haunting circumstances of their own. All in all, though, this is one of those collections that just works as a whole, and I definitely recommend picking it up to appreciate Cipri's brilliance in this form.

Augur Magazine Issue 3.1

This is my first issue of Augur! And its an interesting, if rather grim place to start: this is an issue themed around "grief, giving and gateways". There are a ton of great poems, stories and even a cute comic, and all in all it was well worth overcoming my usual aversions to PDF for. The issue opens with "Prism" by S.D. Brown, which really sets the tone for what's to come: this is the story of a woman who has a child in prison who is taken away from her, and her attempts to take herself out of her grim reality and find ways to seek him out in the outside world. The horrors of the protagonist's treatment in prison, and the heartbreakingly small glimpses she gets of her son as he grows up under the care of another family, make for a grim but effective exploration of the brutality of the prison system and the racism inherent in the system. One to read the content warnings for, but very effective. Similarly affecting for me was "What Lies Within" by Isha Karki, the story of Swarna, a migrant woman married to a man from another country, who misses the chickpeas cooked by her mother in a way that seems linked to her inability to sleep in her new home. The "princess and the pea" overtones are evident, but this is no story of sensitive royalty and Swarna's experiences are of abuse, forced assimilation and mistreatment at the hands of the doctor brought in to treat her, all leading up to a sudden, devastating ending which feels deeply fitting even as it pulls the rug from under the reader.

My other favourite from this issue was "She Lies an Island", by Michelle Payne. In it, woman who returns to Ireland to see the body of a slain giant which has become a tourist attraction; she is going on the journey for her grandmother, who claims to have met a giant in her own youth. The story juxtaposes the tragedy of the giant's story and the protagonist's grief around her grandmother with an excruciatingly good representation of a sordid tourist experience. From the sleazy tour guide who ended up being the protagonist's uncharacteristic one-night stand from the previous evening, to the awkward behaviour of the other members of the tour group, to the awful activities organised for them when they get to the giant (the done thing is to take a bow and arrow and shoot at its face), it's evocative in a way that only enhances the inherent beauty and mystery of the dead giant herself. In a way, the ending (and yes, this is another grim one) comes as a release, a point of escape from the utterly cringey, miserable situation of the characters even as it ends in total disaster for almost everyone involved. The giant gets a fitting ending, though, and that's sort of all that matters.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 35

I'm behind with my Uncanny reading - in fact, it's possible my subscription has lapsed without me noticing, because those are the kind of times we live in now, folks - and some of the stories in this next-most-recent (I think?) issue worked better for me than others. Firmly on the "yay" side of that equation was "The Inaccessibility of Heaven" by Aliette de Bodard, a story of fallen angels and the humans who live alongside them (I'm not sure if this is in the same universe as The Dominion of the Fallen, though it definitely doesn't feel the same or contain any characters I recognise). It's a tight, intriguing murder mystery that puts its human protagonist in the centre of magical happenings which the Fallen in their life would prefer they stayed out of. Also fun was "The Ruby of the Summer King" by Mari Ness, a fable about the titular character trying to woo the Winter Queen and getting himself, and the entire seasonal realm, into a bit of a pickle over the whole thing. It's a story that takes fairly well-worn tropes and makes something that feels fairly timeless, but which nevertheless had me feeling that I genuinely didn't know how everything was going to turn out. And then there's "A Pale Horse" by M. Evan MacGriogair, which makes up for the sin of having my least favourite story ending line (please, please, stop telling me how much work the characters have to do as you close out your stories, I'm begging you, it drives me up the wall): a story whose plot hasn't stayed with me, but whose evocative sense of place and culture on the West Coast of Scotland, the relationships it forges between its characters, including a protagonist who is seeking belonging across different communities and languages, and the overall sense of an overwhelmed, dying near-future world which nevertheless is full of hope, all adds up to an excellent experience.

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

Questing in Shorts: April 2020

Happy Thursday, friends! April has been a month of ups and downs but I'm tentatively celebrating the return of my reading mojo to, if not normal, then at least to an acceptable pandemic level. I've been a little low on magazines this month, but I do have a full length round-up for you and I'm once again making the resolution to give my full-to-bursting Kindle magazine folder some love in the next month.
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu (Head of Zeus, 2020)

Ken Liu's fantasy series and translation work are both very familiar to me, but I've experienced less of his short fiction - so when the opportunity arose to own this super colourful collection (seriously, my copy is an orange hardcover with purple sprayed edges - it doesn't get more delightfully clashy than that) it was not in my power to resist. What I got was a wide-ranging collection with an interesting focus on the development of artificial consciousness and how humans might look at the singularity from both sides of the technological divide: what we gain from technological advancement, and what we might leave behind. Stories from the nested tales of interplanetary adaptation of "Ghost Days", to the slow decaying heartbreak of "Staying Behind" to the surprising time dilation of "Seven Birthdays" deal with migration and intergenerational communication, giving both older and younger generations things to offer to each other even when the characters themselves don't realise it. A couple of interesting shared universes (or maybe one big shared universe?) offer continuity within the middle part of the collection: in particular, the trilogy of "The Gods Will Not Be Chained", "The Gods Will Not Be Slain" and "The Gods Have Not Died In Vain" tell the single story of a girl who has lost her technological genius father, only to rediscover him via an emoji-heavy chat programme, once again looking at communication across a gulf but in a very different way to the classic "parent child" dynamic. There's also an apparently shared conception of the singularity which offers a very human, understandable sense of what it might be like to be a consciousness that no longer lives in the human world. I'm not sure I'm ready to live in a fourteen-dimensional hypercube myself, but Liu's vision of our possible technological future makes it feel like something tangible and lived in, rather than acting as the death of all we currently hold valuable.

There are some fantasy stories here as well, including an excerpt from the final book in the Dandelion Dynasty trilogy (a satisfyingly standalone piece, but I'm now even more impatient for 2021), the intriguing "Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard" about a trio of shapeshifters, and the title story, "The Hidden Girl", in which the youngest of three sisters raised as assassins decides, on her first mission, to save her target and defeat her siblings instead. All in all, this is exactly the level of accomplishment I'd expect from Liu, and I'm already making plans to hunt down his first collection and stuff that into my eyeballs someday as well.

Giganotosaurus: February, March, April 2020

Three stories over three months for the dinosaur semiprozine: February brings "Thin Red Jellies" by Lina Rather, the story of a near future where it is possible to save and reimplant a human's consciousness after their death, either in an artificial body or compartmentalised into the brain of another person. When Amy's girlfriend Jess dies in a car accident, she offers her brain as a stopgap, but the long-term solution for two young women without good health insurance in a future USA is further out of reach than they thought. It's a story which deals with intrusion: the challenges faced by both women as they adjust to life and communication in one body, the accommodations and sacrifices each has to make for the other, and the horrifying assumptions which a privatised health system and the companies which own it make about workers' autonomy and quality of life. Rather doesn't pull punches about what this does to Jess and Amy's relatively new relationship, and the story's abrupt ending doesn't offer much in the way of catharsis but it does underscore the inescapable nature of their situation.

March's story, by ZZ Claybourne, is "The Air in My House Tastes Like Sugar", a very atmospheric piece about nomadic witches : very atmospheric story about a family of nomadic witches whose youngest member, Amnandi, is trying to overcome the loneliness of her situation. And April gives us "A Wild Patience" by Gwynne Garfinkle, a story that literally had me grinning from ear-to-ear in the first twenty percent once I realised what was going on. In a town where a large number of men have always had perfect, home-making wives, things start to get a bit... messy... when the doctor dies, and Gretchen and Jessica suddenly find their Mom is more interested in reading the poetry of Adrienne Rich and discussing self-actualisation with the other mothers than fulfilling her role. Turns out, there's a semi-secret robot-wife cult in town, and neither the mothers themselves nor their daughters and the other women around them are interested in keeping the mens' dirty little secret. What I enjoyed most about this story was the focus on Gretchen and Jessica's wellbeing and the caring, if different, relationship they build with their Mom once her secret is revealed; every attempt at the men in the story to reclaim authority and project threat is laughed off and non-violently swatted down, leaving the misogynists of the story looking ridiculous and exposed as their "perfect" lives cease to be.

Summoned to Destiny Ed. Julie Czerneda (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2004)

I've had this cute looking older anthology on my physical TBR for a while, having picked it up as an impulse buy in Forbidden Planet back in the days when in-person book browsing was a thing. It finally called to me last week, and I discovered a fun fantasy collection of shorts that deal in some way with coming of age or call to action moments for their various protagonists, from magical awakenings to bardic apprenticeships to rituals of power. That focus on the call to action lends itself a little bit to a "the end of the story is where the novel would begin" sequence, and while none of the stories explicitly end with "they smiled: there was so much work to do" - my least favourite story ending ever - it felt like a close thing. But there's a great range of worldbuilding (especially when it comes to developing the sacred) and character development here which overcomes the sense of reading a series of prologues, and makes this an intriguing collection in its own right.

The story I enjoyed most is by far the longest in the anthology: "The Colors of Augustine" by Michelle West (Michelle Sagara). This is the story of Joseph, an orphaned boy in a world where some people are able to paint visions of the future, who discovers he is talented but whose colourblindness (and implied neurodivergence) makes use of that talent challenging without the constant help of his friend Caroline. When both are picked up for an apprenticeship by another member of the Augustine Painters (and a former orphan himself) they are thrown into a world with a mixture of magical and mundane threats, and pushed into service to try and avert danger to the King while also staying alive themselves and protecting Caroline from a predatory Count who has his eyes on her. Unlike many of the other stories, which focus on a single unique young person finding their way into life-changing situations, West's story explicitly focuses on the relationship between Joseph and Caroline and the way that they support each other to shape the future together. While it's Joseph who is more outwardly "special", Caroline's role in the story and in his success, and her own independent strengths, are treated with constant respect by other sympathetic characters and by the narrative itself.


FIYAH Literary Magazine Issue 14

No novelette in this quarter's unthemed issue of FIYAH, but four interesting short stories that range from epic fantasy to cyber thriller via a pair of urban speculative stories that straddle each side of the science/magic divide. On the fantasy side, Tobi Ogundiran's "Guardian of the Gods" packs a great deal of adventure into its short length, telling the story of Ashâke, an acolyte who has been left behind by her classmates because she can't hear the gods. When she learns the forbidden truth behind the place she's been brought up, Ashâke has a crisis of faith and returns to right the wrongs she feels has been done to her - only to find out the truth isn't nearly so straightforward. I could happily read a full novel set in this world, and the same goes for the issue's other fantasy story, "Your Rover is Here" by LP Kindred, which offers a high-action magical altercation in an urban fantasy world where bigotry and economic inequality looks much the same as it does in our own. The 2,000 words of this story do an amazing job of sketching a world with various types of magic, political structures at play, and putting an interesting character at the heart of it all.

On the science fictional side, "A Terminal Kind of Love" by Veronica Henry is the story of a tech genius who is in the process of divorcing her unfaithful husband, who unfortunately also happens to take away the company they helped build together. When Athena tries to get her revenge, it winds up not working exactly to plan and brings their problems to a head in an unexpected way. While the prose in this one is a little "explain-y", the emotional weight of the situation is well handled and I liked the touches of Freetown in the setting. "Uniform" by Errick Nunnally rounds out this quartet with another deeply emotional story, this one about a Marine veteran who was turned into a mechanised soldier following fatal injuries, and who is now attempting to find his place in a world where he is regarded as a killing machine. The story turns from a touching slice of life moment to an unexpected opportunity for heroism, and while the ending feels a little neat, it still allows the protagonist a moment of choice and recognition which allows it to be earned and for some of the themes of the story to be laid to rest.

Bonus Round: Prose and Politics

Over the past couple of months, I've read some interesting works that combine fiction and non-fiction in different ways. Europa28, edited by Edited by Sophie Hughes & Sarah Cleave from Comma Press, incorporates fiction that ranged from dreamy slipstream to continental personifications to mythical retellings within a set of mostly non fiction essays, all written by women from different countries in Europe. It's a tricky book to review in this context, as none of the fiction entries really stand up on their own as stories; what makes them interesting is how they juxtapose with the memoirs and analyses of other parts of the collection to build up a patchwork of perspectives that coalesce into a snapshot of a complex, fractured continent grappling with ghosts of the past and the inequalities of today. It may just be the cynical former EU intern in me, but the project of creating shared European cultural identity can be prone to simplifications that are cringey at best, and enormously problematic and neo-colonialist at worst. Europa28 does occasionally veer into cringe (the story "In Human Form", about an entity coming to Earth to learn about what it is to be "Europe", and the extended metaphor of "Europe as a house" gave me the feeling most persistently) but it's more than balanced out by the nuance in many of the more geographically focused pieces, and I particularly appreciated works from Eastern European perspectives which are less regularly heard in English-language conversations.

I've also made some progress on my resolution to read more of PM Press' Outspoken Authors series, a series of short collections or novellas which combine fiction, non fiction and an interview from a particular author, often highlighting work that hasn't been collected elsewhere. Nisi Shawl's Talk Like A Man is one such collection and one of the series' more recent titles, bringing together a handful of short stories, a long essay on the relationship between science fiction and religion through the lens of Shawl's practice of Ifa, a West African religion, and a long, wide-ranging interview with series editor Terry Bisson. The setup here is more "traditional" with non-fiction coming after the fiction, but there's still a sense of getting to know an author over the course of the collection that feels qualitatively different somehow from reading a normal collection, despite the shorter length. The highlight of the fiction pieces here was "Walk Like a Man", a story that combines a gritty, aggressive version of female adolescence with a cyberpunky aesthetic exploring reality, relationships and belonging.

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

Questing in Shorts: January 2020

Hello, friends, and welcome to a new year of short fiction adventures! I'm back after a little unplanned hiatus at the end of next year, and ready to tackle what 2020 has in store - ready, that is, once I've finished with the desperate project of reading all the things for 2019. As a result, this roundup is going to mostly be a selection of stuff I've been reading to round out my experiences of last year's shorts, and having made a few sloooow novel choices recently (*glares at Black Leopard, Red Wolf*) I've found a lot of time to pick up magazines and anthologies in the time between, or in the middle of, longer works.

I'm expecting to jump into 2020 fiction with a vengeance next month, and to that end I'm in the process of mixing up my short fiction subscriptions for this year, partly for variety and partly to realign what I want to read and by whom. One big part of this is that I'm actively seeking out publications whose editorial staff are PoC and/or LGBTQIA+; if you have any favourites that you'd like to shout out, please do so in the comments below. I should note that I very rarely manage to read magazines that don't have some form of ebook available, so if you'd like me to check something out, that's sort of a prerequisite, but I have a few things on the radar that I'm going to attempt to make exceptions for.

Without further ado, let's get into the things:


FIYAH Literary Magazine, Issue 12: "Chains"

Of all the magazines I've kept up with over the last year, FIYAH delivers one of the most consistently enjoyable experiences, and this issue, "Chains", is another delight. As you'd expect, the issue takes a sensitive and resonant topic for Black speculative fiction and offers a quartet of stories which interpret it in  different and unexpected ways, with three short stories and a long novelette. Of the short stories, I very much enjoyed "The Midnight Hose", a creepy rural ghost story by Gregory Neil Harris in which two kids trying to take a shortcut through their weird neighbour's fields at night (what are you doing) come face to face with the legacy of sharecropping in a rather literal way. It takes all their adventurous resourcefulness to get themselves out, and to grapple with the ghosts of the farm's past (metaphorically and literally), in a story which brings a satisfying children's horror aesthetic and takes it to a more sophisticated level. Of equal note is "Reclaiming Tess", a more meditative story about a woman considering her family legacy after inheriting a bond with a minor god from her grandmother despite being considered the "weakest" candidate among her relatives (grandmother included). Tess' journey is heartbreaking, but the story does a brilliant job of showing us, in a relatively short space of time, where her true support network lies, while also painting the deeply complex emotions she has about the members of her family. "Corialis" - a story about exoplanet colonisation which deserves to be up there with "Semiosis" and "To Be Taught, If Fortunate" in the conversation about human adaptation for space - and "An Irrational Love", a retelling of the minotaur myth, round out the experience. I say it every time I review them, but: don't sleep on FIYAH, folks.

(Incidentally, I like to choose the first review based in part on which book or magazine cover I want showing up on our Twitter previews. Sometimes this is a tricky decision, sometimes an arbitrary one, but never have I been so sure about a choice than I am about putting Sophie Zarders' gloriously weird cover art for this issue. What on earth is going on there? I don't know, go with it)

GigaNotoSaurus: 2019 Selection

GigaNotoSaurus took a couple of breaks last year, but I've been slowly making my way through the six stories they published in 2019, and I'm halfway there. Of the three stories I've read so far, December's is particularly worthy of note: "The Devil Squid Apocalypse", by Alex Acks, tells the story of an elderly woman playing in a teen rock band when aliens happen to invade earth, destroying much of the population and leading the rest into internment camps. From its opening countdown - a device whose omniscient narration feels straight out of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett - this is a wild ride of a story, and Marcia, the character at its heart, is just wonderful. As an asexual Latina woman who has spent her entire life working hard for very little, Marcy has earned every last one of the fucks she doesn't give, and her post-retirement career as a rock guitarist comes about after an impromptu audition for her teen weed dealer's new band. The rest of the band, Cameron, Darnel, and Lang, all get their moments too, particularly once the invasion itself is over and they find themselves in an internment camp with a bunch of humans who have brought rather too much of the old order with them. Acks' story blends the terrifying, pulpy thrills of a hostile alien invasion with the very real social prejudices and hierarchies that come out when humans are under pressure, and distilling through the lens of a character who is bone tired of all of it makes for a tense, hilarious story that will keep you reading until the very end.

At the other end of the year, "Hand-Me-Downs" by Maria Haskins is a shorter-than-usual story for the publication, but it packs a huge punch into short story length. Tilda is a troll, the child of migrants who has grown up amongst humans who, while generally accepting, are all too keen to remind her of her differences even when ostensibly trying to help her celebrate her culture, and among whom she is warned that she can never practice her natural magic. As a talented dancer, Tilda is preparing to dance in a show which could be her gateway to a professional career, but everything about the performance she's being encouraged into feels stereotyped and wrong, and Tilda is caught between trying to pursue her passion at the expense of her integrity, or bowing to her father's demand that she stop dancing entirely in order to protect her dignity. As an audience, we're never in too much doubt about what Tilda's ultimate choice is going to be, but its still wonderful to watch her make it, and there are bonus points for a fabulous grandma who comes in at exactly the right time to help move things along.

Strange Horizons: Brazilian Special Issue (September 30)

Strange Horizons' Brazilian issue, developed as a 2018 Patreon reward, dropped at the end of September, but the magazine's ebook production has been a bit delayed recently and I've only just got hold of it in my preferred reading format. I thus spent quite a while admiring the slice of life scene depicted in the art for "Replacement" (story by Isa Prospero, art by Juliana Pinho) without knowing much about the story itself behind it. The heartbreak of these kids' story perhaps even had more impact thanks to my familiarity: Marcos and Jô are kids from the favelas of Sao Paolo, in a future where the poor often make ends meet by selling limbs and body parts to the wealthy. Its a circumstance that entrenches discrimination against them, as their replacement limbs mark their status, and while Jô  has more or less resigned himself to his life, Marcos has managed to avoid most replacements until circumstances make it impossible for him to stay away any longer. As an extension of the very real poverty traps which exist in our world today, its a plausible and challenging science fictional world, told through a pair of characters its impossible to not want the best for.

"Replacement" sets a high bar for the remainder of the issue, but its a strong one from start to finish. "Progression" by Heitor Zen and "Spider" by Sérgio Motta are both weird as hell and great for it, and "Ajé" by H. Pueyo offers an outwardly gentle but deeply challenging story of love and magic, both lost and found, with a father and son visiting an old friend of the father's only to discover that this friend has lost her connection to magic and gained an abusive relationship. In trying to find a way out for both her and her daughter, the story explores themes of connection, self-actualisation and intergenerational sacrifice, ultimately having its characters make choices that are both frustrating and sadly believable. The quiet heartbreak of "Ajé" is followed by the delightfully snarky flash piece "High Hopes" by Kali de los Santos, which offers a fast-forwarded look at the development of Brazilian society following the introduction of flying cars. Its a great way to tie up a really strong set of prose stories, and this is a collection of work that I'd certainly recommend to anyone looking to increase the geographical scope of their reading to include a scene that rarely gets much coverage in English-language publications.


Clarkesworld: Issue 157 (October 2019)

Most of Clarkesworld's October issue was underwhelming for me: there are several stories that end with final lines that skirt very close to "there was so much work to do", which is by far my least favourite trope in short fiction and guaranteed to make me very grumpy about the story that preceded it. Even the ones that don't, like "The National Center for the Preservation of Human Dignity" and "Song Xiuyun" end in some pretty depressing, final places, and while I appreciated the quiet, stoic desperation of these stories and their technologically advanced but emotionally stunted futures, both left me feeling pretty miserable. I persevered, however, and was rewarded at the end of the issue by the excellent "How Alike Are We", by Bo-Young Kim, Tr. Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar. This is a novella about a rescue mission to Titan which goes wrong when something ends up fragmenting the crew. What makes this novella compelling is that it's narrated by the ship's Crisis Management AI, which has been downloaded into a human body at its own request but, due to a memory fault, now can't remember why it would have made the request in the first place. The claustrophobia of the shipboard setting and the unsettling insistence of the AI that there's "something missing" from its understanding - something beyond the memory issue - add up to a tense mystery whose resolution, when it comes, is at once strikingly simple and surprisingly powerful. It's a story that has grown on me the more I think about it, and well worth the time - although it carries a content warning for attempted sexual assault.

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