Questing in Shorts, December 2022

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 22

There's nothing that stands out particularly strongly in this issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but its an intriguingly wide ranging read nonetheless, starting with the surreal religious journey of Starblind, Booklost and Hearing the Songs of True Birds by Rudi Dornemann, and ending with Ciccio and the Wood Sprite, an original Italian folk story which takes folkloric elements like wishes and fairyland time weirdness and creating something timeless and intriguing. I felt The Garbage Girls by Nick Wolven slept on the most intriguing element of its premise: its set in a refugee camp in the USA taking in both climate refugees and homeless and vulnerable folks from the local community, but the story centres a group of privileged teenage girls volunteering to look good on college applications and resenting another girl who has had her emotions techologically altered to make her better at crisis response. The sociopolitical ramifications of this migration are ignored, and the camp residents are nothing more than set dressing against which the story of these privileged teens unfolds, but the dynamics between the girls is fun to read and raises interesting questions about philanthropy and our motives for doing the right thing. (Also, not to go too hard on faint praise but both this and "Ceremonials" by Robert Levy were both surprisingly good stories about teenage girls coming from men.)

Elsewhere in the issue, we've got The Collection by Charlie Hughes, a chilling and suspenseful intergenerational horror where a set of stories centred around a church heralds the end of a long-incomplete ritual, and protagonist Layla has to make choices about how to take up this legacy. The main story is interspersed with police interview tapes, giving that satisfying "I know this ends badly, I just don't know exactly how" narrative feeling that works great with this kind of bleak horror. Pair it with The Monster I Found In Third Grade by James Sutter, later in the issue for a one-two horror punch. A solid issue.

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction. ed. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight (Tor dot com, 2022)

Africa Risen pulls together a massive 500 pages of original fiction from a range of established and rising star authors from both the African continent and the diaspora. 32 original stories is a lot to pull together for an anthology, and there were more ups and downs than I was expecting during the first half of the anthology, where a lot of stories end with the results of their climactic actions left uncertain and often with their protagonist's journeys feeling incomplete. I have complained before about stories that specifically end with the line "there was so much work to do", and there aren't any here that actually do that (unless I've blocked them from my memory), but going from the post-climate-catastrophe water prophecies of "Mami Wataworks" by Russell Nichols to the time travel technothriller of "Door Crashers" by Franka Zeph and into the intergenerational magic of "The Soul Would Have No Rainbow" by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, I found myself getting pulled out of intriguing story worlds faster than I felt ready to leave them. I don't know whether any of the authors have longer stories to tell within these worlds, and if so I hope that this anthology provides the springboard for opportunities to do so - but as a reader it made for a bumpier ride than expected, one which I think a different story ordering would have mitigated.

Still, there's a lot of great stuff throughout, and the stories that left me unsatisfied mostly did so in a good way. I really liked Steven Barnes' "IRL", which sets out a future in which the reality and an online "game" world intertwine and people can be tried online for real-life crimes. When Shango, an extremely successful teenager gamer whose real life is falling apart, has his father targeted by a rival intent on taking him down, he has to confront the inequalities of the system and decide what actually matters to him. Continuing the theme of satisfying horror, "The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library" by Tobi Ogundiran tells a suspenseful, claustrophobic story of a man whose lost library book turns out to be from no ordinary library, and "A Soul of Small Places" by Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo is an outstanding monstrous coming-of-age about a girl (also called Woppa Diallo) who is sexually assaulted on her way to school and comes out of the experience with a taste for flesh that she uses to try and keep the other predators at bay. I also really enjoyed "Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition)" by Tlotlo Tsamaase, which takes on musical misogyny through the concept of a struggling music artist who gains the power to bring real women into his "dream videos". I love a good chapter heading conceit and the track titles on this fictional album really do it for me, as does the satisfying comeuppance of this asshole musician.

Shoreline of Infinity 32, Autumn 22

This is a special themed issue of Shoreline of Infinity, guest edited by Teika Bellamy and featuring science fiction fairy tales. We open with an Adam Roberts story which appears to be a woman, with no memory of herself or where she came from having a dialogue with a mysterious stranger about stories that involve bargains with the devil. Through the story, we learn more about the world she has come from and who, exactly, she is talking to, and it leads into an intriguing, Thousand Nights-esque bargain. Mary Berman's Cassandra Takes The Plunge features mermaids and an extreme detox from the modern world, as its protagonist "wins" a year in a submarine unplugged from modern conveniences in exchange for a significant (but not that significant) prize from a global megacorp on her return. After a fishing mishap leads to her meeting, and saving, said mermaid, Cassandra becomes enamoured and starts rethinking her life on the surface. Cassandra's adjustment to submarine life feels a little too easy, but her sense of helplessness at her situation, and the realisation that the only sense of agency she has is with her mermaid, are powerfully done.

Also worthy of note are A Good Morsel of Clay by Woody Dismukes, a myth about a mother and daughter whose job is to create worlds, and the lengthy reprint (so long that it's not even fully included in the print edition) of Fairy Tales for Robots by Sofia Samatar, which features a creator clandestinely telling an as yet unawakened robot the stories she thinks will be useful for its growth, interspersed with moments from her life. There's also a lovely Little Match Girl retelling, by Laura Scotland and a great three-paragraph flash piece, The Golden Circle Tour by Edmund Fines

Uncanny Magazine Issue 49, November/December 2022

This issue of Uncanny features Rabbit Test, one of the buzziest stories I've seen in 2022 so far. It's picking up attention for good reason, as a topical take on reproductive justice and forced birth with a focus on a late 21st century future in the USA, presenting echoes of historical resonance through the ages. At the story's centre is Grace, a teenager who has grown up in an evangelical anti-choice family where technological surveillance of people with uteruses has been normalised. When Grace becomes pregnant, she tries to find a way to abort the pregnancy, and the story follows her through thirty years of attempts to live her own life and help others to live theirs, without the threat of forced birth hanging over them after every sexual encounter. By interspersing Grace's story with vignettes of others (mostly women, but with recognition of men and non-binary folk who face the same challenges, as well as the way that options have historically differed for white, Black and indigenous people in the USA), Mills presents reproductive freedom as a struggle that has always involved choices and where the battle is never definitively won. It's timely, given the repeal of Roe in the USA and the rollback of reproductive freedoms elsewhere, and very well crafted.

I also dug "can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time", by Iori Kusano: the meme title is fun (she says, as an egg averse person) but it overlays a really heartfelt story about Matt, a young man who keeps getting in violent fights with a Waffle House chef who makes his egg order wrong every time. Except, it's not about the eggs at all, it's about Matt trying to process the emotions that Gary evokes in him, and the grief of losing his life and status in the fantasy world of Hirekkyo, a world which he'll never be able to return to. It's impressive to write a compelling emotional epilogue to a main story  we've never seen, and the denoument between Matt and Gary does just that. The grief of "Earth Dragon, Turning" by Anya Ow is also beautifully realised, and  "The Other Side of Mictlan" by Matthew Olivas offers up even more grief with a side of magical underworld legacy and familial acceptance, with three brothers journeying to save their mother from the underworld while also trying to talk through their own differences.

Questing Elsewhere:

It's been a long time since my last column, and there are things I fully intended to review during that time which are now too fuzzy in my memory to dive into in depth. For now, the things I want to highlight from that list are a pair of issues from different magazines: Mithila Review Issue 16 and Omenana Magazine issue 22. The theme of both of these issues is Democracy - they are both part of the same project by the National Democratic Institute - and both present intriguing sets of possibilities about the future of the world. Interestingly, both issues  also hit on "hopepunk" as an overriding theme, and while there are a few stories, like Harefoot Express by paolo de costa in Mithila, that aren't particularly positive in their depictions of humanity, most of the time these are stories about people struggling to make the world a better place, even in the face of challenging odds. There are some rough edges here and there (Omenana in particular is run on very few resources, and sometimes it shows in the editing), but I really enjoyed both of these issues and what they represent, and I'd love to see more globally-minded publications taking this topic on.

POSTED BY: Adri Joy is a co-editor at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, an international politics nerd, a converted Londoner and a whippet owner, who would live her life submerged in the ocean with a waterproof e-reader - if she only had gills. Find her on Twitter @adrijjy or Mastodon @arifel@wandering.shop.

Questing in Shorts: Nerds on Tour Special (Nov/Dec 2020)

Welcome to a special Nerds on Tour edition of Questing in Shorts, featuring anthologies from three different continents for your reading pleasure!

A Larger Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins ed. Libia Brenda

This anthology sprang from the Mexicanx initiative, a fundraising drive led by John Picacio in 2018 to sponsor 50 Mexicanx creators to attend that year's Worldcon in San Jose. In physical form, A Larger Reality is a flipbook, printed from one end in Spanish and the other in English, from Mexican and Mexican-American creators. Sadly, the flipbook formats doesn't quite translate to digital, and one of the stories doesn't make it into this edition too, meaning I wasn't able to read the contribution from Verónica Murgulía. Nevertheless, this anthology packs in twelve intriguing stories that cover a ton of ground, making this feel like a much longer anthology than it is. I was delighted by the graphic offering, "Rhizome" by Libia Brenda and Richard Zela, in which an interviewer turns up to interview their favourite speculative fiction writer, only to be let in to the secrets of time travel. The art style is simple, the panels focusing almost entirely on the two characters, but it's an intriguing dialogue and the expressions and visual cues really help to sell it. I also really appreciated "A Truth Universally Accepted" by Julia Rios, in which a dimension-hopping protagonist comes to grips with a failed relationship over the course of a conversation with a version of a trusted friend in the coffee shop where her ex- and/or would-be lover works. It's a story that lets the relationship itself, and the reader's judgement of it, unfold seamlessly over the story, and I left feeling really touched by its close.

Elsewhere, the anthology touches on themes that stick around for a couple of stories - I assume coincidentally - before morphing into something new. "The Binder" by Angela Lujan and "Ring a Ring 'o Roses" by Raquel Castro, tr. Ruth Clarke both involve young protagonists messing with the supernatural in weird and amusing ways: in "The Binder", a kid fights off a thief trying to steal their new piece of stationery and the experience transforms them into a superhero, fighting for justice for the binders of the world, deciding on their disappointingly narrow place in the world after some false starts and a run-in with another strangely specific superhero, the protagonist. "Ring a Ring 'o Roses" is the story of a child who brings a zombie into school for her kindergarten year, and the cheerfully morbid adventures which she and her murder-pal get up to as they terrorise the school and its inhabitants. I was surprised when I went back to check on this story, how short it is: it definitely stuck in my mind far more than the . Following seamlessly on is "Shoot" by Pepe Rojo, a stream-of-consciousness tale of zombie shoot-em-ups, digital crunch and losing sight of reality. The association-y curation of stories makes this a really fun, coherent set of tales despite the wide range of ground covered.

Omenana to Infinity ed. Chinelo Onwalu and Mazi Nwonwu

Omenana is a fixture of the speculative short fiction scene, and I was excited when I saw that the African SF storybundle from earlier this year contained the first anthology featuring some of its highlights from its six years of publication. This collection most certainly didn't disappoint - the only story I've previously read is the opener, "A Short History of Migration in Five Fragments of You" by Wole Talabi, which is an excellent intergenerational story about journeys and adaptation rooted in the experience of the transatlantic slave trade and the generations afterwards, so I knew I was in for more good things.

I've been gravitating towards quieter, gentler stories recently and Tiah Marie Beautement's "Memento Mori" really hit my sweet spot in that regard. It's the story of a woman with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome who begins taking visits from Death, who often brings gifts and eventually becomes a part of her family. It's a story that very much begins in media res - we never find out why Death might have started visiting this particular woman in the first place, just that their presence isn't a threat - but the growth of the relationship and the support they provide each other, juxtaposed against the protagonist's experience of disability, makes this a really heartwarming read. While it's a more challenging emotional ride, the payoff of "Tiny Bravery" by Ada Nandi is similarly sweet in how its group of youths affected by genetic mutations find belonging and courage with each other.

I also really appreciated some of the collection's urban fantasy or near-future offerings, from the culinary shenanigans of Suyi Davies Okungbowa's "Of Tarts and New Beginnings" to the dystopian company of Sanya Noel's "The Company". The other story which really stood out on this front was "Sin Eater" by Chikodili Emelumadu, whose protagonist gets a roommate, Nchedo, who ends up dragging her into a world of supernatural violence and justice through her Sin Eating abilities. The relationship between the two characters is fantastic, the protagonist going from terrified bystander to reluctant accomplice to something more, and her point of view comes with an empathy for Nchedo, her relationship with her sisters, and the challenges of her calling which humanises their relationship even as it doesn't sugar coat the horror of what Sin Eating entails in this world (it's gory, and only women can do it). All in all, this was a fantastic sampler for the world of Omenana, and while the anthology may not be available outside of the Storybundle it was presented in, I recommend looking up the table of contents if you're looking for places to start with this free online magazine.

The Book of Shanghai ed. Jin Li and Dai Congrong

This collection of ten stories, all set in the city in the title, might not be a speculative fiction collection per se, but even beyond stories by Chen Qiufan, Cai Jun and Shen Dacheng which quite definitely are SFF, almost all of these stories feature a sense of mystical impermanence about the lives of characters in Shanghai. All of its characters are thrown into a literary version of a city city where connections can be made and lost in heartbeats, the cost of living can be prohibitive on more than just the financial front, and repressive gender roles are alive and well, particularly for older women. Some of these stories are tragedies, like Wang Zhanhei's "The Story of Ah-Ming" (Tr. Christopher MacDonald), while others, like Ah Fang's Lamp (Wang Anyi tr. Helen Wang) and "Woman Dancing Under Stars" (Teng Xiaolan tr. Yu Yan Chen) offer bittersweet depictions of the challenges and unexpected beauty of city life. The latter story is particularly beautiful, in spite of its slightly uncritical attitude to the gendered expectations on its protagonist and her marriage to her husband. A recently-married woman meets a much older lady, Zhuge at a tea shop, their connection turning into a friendship full of quiet, beautiful moments and realisations, until the protagonist suddenly has to leave the city and accidentally severs their connection. "Snow", by Chen Danyan (tr. Paul Harris), feels almost like a mirror to Teng's story, with its protagonist, Zheng Ling, trying to hold on to a specific ideal of older womanhood while worrying about what people will think of her as a woman, alone, reading a book at a KFC, as the city moves on around her. Unlike Zhuge, Zhen Ling's experience of loneliness - even a temporary one - invokes a state of anxious soul-searching that doesn't really get resolved as the story comes to its close. Loneliness and connection is also a big part of "The Lost" by Fu Yuehui (tr. Carson Ramsdell) in which a man loses his phone - and with it, a substantial portion of his contacts - and grapples not just with the hardware loss but with a sense of isolation and existential angst that doesn't go away once he gets a replacement.

Being the kind of reader I am, the more speculative stories also worked really well for me. It's almost a spoiler to say that "The Novelist in the Attic" by Shen Dacheng (tr. Jack Hargreaves) is one of them, and I certainly didn't see its final twist coming; once it arrived, though, I really couldn't imagine the story being anything else. Cai Jun's "Suzhou River" (tr. Frances Nichol) is a dreamy, slipstreamy delight, with even its more mundane elements - the setup of a clandestine meeting between its protagonist and a mysterious woman called "Z" - feeling strange and uncanny. Rounding out the collection, Chen Qiufan's story (tr. Josh Stenberg) is a confusing, experimental but ultimately fascinating story of what seems to be a singularity of some sort, or at least a breakdown of individual human consciousness, in which some of the sequences were literally written by an AI trained on the writer's style. It's a story I come away from not fully understanding, but that's a great way to end this collection about a city that's bursting with strangeness and transience and incomprehensible happenings, at least from the telling of these authors.

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