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, 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, January 2022: Saturation Part 2

 I said I'd be back for a second part of my short-fiction-of-2021-marathon wrap-up, and I'm here to make good on that promise! Let's talk about some more of my favourite short stories read in January, covering a whole bunch of magazine issues from last year. (Part 1 is here, if you missed it!)

Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness ed. dave ring

In just a couple of short years, Neon Hemlock have become one of my favourite publishers with their range of queer speculative fiction from diverse, boundary-pushing perspectives, and this collection is an excellent place to start if you haven't picked up one of their books before. Both the theme and the aesthetic are excellent: each story comes illustrated with a full page image from Matthew Spencer, and the stories involve a range of witchy and occult premises covering everything from space station cults and oxygen maintenance (Effects of Altitude on the Blood Elevations of Love by Marianne Kirby) to sapphic triads exacting supernatural revenge on their landlord (Love and Light by H.A. Clark). There's also two comics, some poetry and two narrative adventure games: Exterior, by Mercedes Acosta, about leaving the safety of your home into the unknowable dangers of the outside; and Hold the Dark, by Allie Bustion, about you and your coven preparing for a mysterious oncoming darkness. There's even some classifieds by Jordan Shiveley, of Dread Singles fame! It adds up to a really cool package where every piece of work contributes to an engaging whole.

 But let's talk about some of my favourite short stories! Kel Coleman (and, look, I could go off on another whole tangent about how many great stories Kel Coleman put out in 2021, but you should just go check them out and not take my word for it) knocks it out of the park with "Before, After, and the Space Between", a story about an innately talented witch and her daughter, growing up as outsiders in a society where magic has been co-opted by a dominant culture that requires artefacts imbued with spirits of the dead to conduct it. Sanguine's mother narrates the growing rift with her daughter as she grows up, the circumstances of her death, and their eventual attempts at reconciliation from beyond the grave. The way the story navigates prejudice and cultural domination, wrapped up in a story between mother and daughter who have to overcome enormous barriers to come to an understanding, makes it heartbreaking and powerful and very much worth reading. I also really liked "Sutekh: A Breath of Spring" by Sharang Biswas, which creates a world based on a fictional game with strong parallels to Hades, where Osiris tries to fight his brother Set, constantly being resurrected in a pool of blood in Isis's cave when he fails. Except one day he wakes up and it's Amun-Au, not Isis, who greets him, and the two strike up a flirtatious rapport that becomes a high point of Osiris' frequent deaths, and blossoms into romance. As the scope widens to show us that this is a mod, one which becomes unstable with a subsequent game patch and stops the player from being able to progress in that version of the game, the story raises some really interesting questions about how fan engagement builds queer content into works that don't canonically care about them, blurring the line between that meta-commentary and the feelings of the characters themselves. If anything, the strong parallels to Hades and its real life studio Supergiant were drawbacks for me (Hades itself has two significant and inescapably canonical m/m romances, no modding required) but it doesn't take much to look beyond that mismatch to the general point that Biswas's story makes, and it's a good one.

There are also several great stories which build around specific places, be those the magical houses of "The Passing of Sinclair Manor, or, The House of Magical Negroes" by Danny Lore and "FOR CLOSURE" by Tania Chen, the supernatural contemporary city of "Dizzy in the Weeds" by L.D. Lewis and the future capitalist dystopia of "Undercity Spellwork", or the otherwordly juxtaposition of a trendy underground-carpark-turned-hotel (except don't call it a hotel, it's a Transitory Dwelling Experience) with the group of Black men dressed in intricate animal masks who come for a late night check-in, in "Antelope Brother" by Craig L. Gidney. That last story is narrated to perfection by bored hospitality worker Malik, who spends his mostly-dead shift reading and talking to his friend Kiki before investigating a supposed disturbance that turns into something more involved than he expected, and the slow ramping up of supernatural elements makes for a really funny, engaging story. Honestly, though, there's just not a bad story in here, and Unfettered Hexes covers a really impressive amount of ground while keeping its theme at the heart of every story. Well worth investing the time in.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Between all the issues I read last month, Beneath Ceaseless Skies has really cemented itself as one of my favourite publications, and I'd particularly urge anyone looking for slice-of-life fantasy to give their short fiction a try. Sure, there's plenty of adventure and weirdness, but some of BCS's best stories involve presenting a small corner of a much larger world, focusing on unlikely protagonists or niche professions, and building out mythologies and worlds around those folks. So you get stories like The Fox's Daughter by Richard Parks, about the challenges a spirit faces while trying to foster a high ranking Kitsune's daughter, or the fussy, nervous travelogue of "Letters from a travelling man" by W.J. Tattersdill, whose protagonist writes about visiting the home of his elderly friend and the changes it has undergone since she left. Even stories with more "traditional" fantasy elements: like the dragon slaying in "The Lingering Weight of Estrian Steel" by Rajan Khanna, or the fae power struggle in March McCowan's "Song So Pure and Cruel" or the build-up of rebellion in "The Last Days of Summer in the City of Olives" by Filip Hajdar Drnovsek Zorko, focus heavily on the protagonists' lives and hopes and fears outside of their call to adventure. The old soldier of Khanna's story has defected from the army after losing his fight with the dragon and finding love and new perspectives in the village below; the story of the fairy goddess of "Song So Pure and Cruel" is told through a childhood companion whose only interest is playing with her and hanging out, an interest that is reciprocated in the goddess' current incarnation; and Drnovsek Zorko's story features a reluctant princess who refuses to take up the position of challenging her sister directly, questioning the foundation of the rebellion that seeks to make her its figurehead even as she comes around to their objectives. Reluctant protagonists aren't new to fantasy, but at shorter length it becomes easier for that day to day life to take centre stage, and to emphasise the weight of human (or, you know, fae, whatever) connections and finding a purpose that doesn't involve violence or scheming, and the result is a reading experience that really enriches my overall fantasy diet.

With that in mind, it's not a surprise that the two standout stories from my recent readings are epics of an unusual type. "Quintessence", by Andrew Dykstal, is about a group of miners wintering at the top of an impossibly high mountain, kept alive by supplements and unable to venture outside due to the cold and lack . When Loren's compatriots start dying of what should be a preventable illness, and the mine's witch refuses to release the cure that would help them, he ends up murdering her and being possessed by her soul (the relationship that develops out of this is not as grim as it possibly should be, with that setup, but go with it). Between them, Loren and Rose begin to unravel the mystery behind their circumstances and the deaths, and hatch a desperate plan to escape their situation. There's a bucketload of tension and danger, and Rose is a fantastic character who gets plenty of time to shine despite not getting what she deserves within the story itself. And "A Manslaughter of Crows" by Chris Willrich is a story I want to press into everyone's hands, because it's about electoral fraud and gerrymandering in a fantasy city built on the principles of pirate democracy (otherwise known as the "swabocracy"), and the protagonist is a sentient cat who is part of a special investigations unit. Shadowdrop and his group of friends and allies (including a seagull called Purloiner-of-Chips, Hope the very good dog, and assorted humans) need to rush to unravel the plot threatening the city's election, and its connection to the newly formed bird party, before the tenets of their democracy are overthrown altogether. It's an adventure from start to finish, and I will never not be here for fantasy electoral politics.

Adventures Elsewhere

I caught up on several issues of Uncanny Magazine, which delivered its usual high quality mix from a lot of authors I know I love. "Colours of the Immortal Palette" by Caroline M. Yoachim is a really engaging story about a mixed race 19th century woman aspiring to be an artist but being held back both by her race and gender, and working mostly as a model for more famous artists around her (including Monet). When she gets an offer from an immortal painter to become immortal herself, she is given more time to break through, even as her benefactor insists that her artistic perspective is the wrong one to be worth paying attention to. Yoachim's protagonist prevails, of course, but her immortality and the difficulty of outlasting her peers makes this both a satisfying and bittersweet conclusion. "Where Oaken Hearts do Gather" by Sarah Pinsker is a story told through what are effectively genius.com annotations against a set of folk song lyrics, simultaneously telling the story within the song while also building out the characters and the simultaneous story of the commentators, one of whom stops commenting after a visit to the location where the song allegedly took place. It's haunting stuff, and the out-of-chronology comments are handled really impressively to build the tension even with the early reveal that something is amiss. I was also really impressed by the emotional resonance of "For All Those Who Sheltered Here" by Del Sandeen, which tells the story of a lynching from the perspective of the tree, and the tentative healing when it comes to be part of a family's life much later.

The Future Fire continues to impress too, and the pair of novelettes in Issue 56 were a real highlight of my reading (yes, they came out almost a year ago, no I'm not sorry for only just reading them, stories do not have an expiry date! "k.a. (birthright) by Lam Ning is the story of two former soldiers, part of a criminal warlord's army, who after several years years and a spell in prison find themselves in medical services on the other side of the conflict. The whole story takes place in a broadly sketched hostile environment - it's a planet, maybe earth, but suits and oxygen masks are required to go outside, not to mention the ongoing conflicts and rampant death-capitalism - and it's a really interesting story about struggling to survive amidst hostility, no matter how ugly your past or present might look. Then there's Listener, by Sim Kern, which is about a woman who grows up with the ability to talk to trees and plants, and how that ability and the events around it shape her relationships with her family and her best friend Delia. It's told from the perspective of the main character returning for a reunion years later, so we can see how she has built her life around an ability that she has increasingly rejected, and how returning to her home and reuniting with her family also lets her reconnect with what's actually great about talking to trees (aaaaah, sun!) and to put the pain of the past into a context that lets her move forward with self-acceptance of all she is.

Finally, I have to throw in a word for an unconventional Twitter story: Unknown Number, by Azure Husky, is a Twitter thread of text message screenshots portraying a conversation where Gaby, a 46-year-old trans woman, is randomly contacted by an unknown number who turns out to be much closer to her than she realises. It's a powerful story of the decisions around transition, and how the smallest things can make that decision either possible and validating, or difficult to the point of impossibility. I think it's worth reading for how kind the two characters are to each other, and particularly the affirmations that Gaby gives her caller  as we realise how unworthy of love and validation they feel about themselves. It's a delight, is what I'm saying, and you should read it. That's all.

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, December 2021: Winterval Edition

So, uh, where were we? My notes tell me I managed four half-sentences of reviewing for a November column before getting distracted, and that I haven't tried to review anything else since then, and this tracks with the very large reading-shaped hole in my memory (and the correspondingly large "replaying Breath of the Wild and doing a lot of other nonsense" entries). But today happens to be a significant milestone in my personal progress through time (i.e. it's my birthday, go say nice things to me), and in keeping with tradition in some parts of the world, I am here to offer you a gift. By which I mean, here's a short fiction column! It's a bit small this month, but it still contains good things! Welcome.

This being the end of December, I'd like to be able to offer some form of reading statistics or a year in review or something. Unfortunately, the choice is between not worrying about those things and doing this column regardless; or worrying about them, not doing them, not doing anything else, and not writing. If you're reading this, you know I stuck to choice 1, and the world is richer for it. Statistics are for nerds, anyway.

From the Bookshelf:

Let's kick off with anthologies! Tis the season I finally got around to reading Sunspot Jungle Volume 2, the second half of Rosarium Press' excellent, wide-ranging survey of genre. Editor Bill Campbell has picked out a set of stories from a whole host of the best current speculative fiction authors: Rebecca Roanhorse's award-winning Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience is in here, as are stories by Ken Liu, Sheree Renée Thomas, Bogi Takács, Nalo Hopkinson, and far, far too many other exciting names to list here. It's a really good collection, and I'm not going to go into picking favourites, but I will pick out two fun reading experiences. First, I enjoyed rediscovering The Language of Knives by Haralambi Markov, a story I loved enough the first time around that it went on the first Hugo ballot I ever submitted (2016, what a year!). Markov's story of grief and ritual combines powerful emotions with an intentional, razor sharp use of body horror and taboo, and the result is something that has stayed with me very strongly. Second, I got to find out that T.L. Huchu's The Library of the Dead had a short story in the world first!  I really like the premise of this world and its Ghostalkers, and it's always fun to find out that there's more in a world that you haven't experienced.

I also read Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite, a YA vampire anthology! This is not a particularly common reading area for me, but there's always interesting potential in vampire stories, and as I had picked up the anthology to read SCKA finalist "In Kind" by Kayla Whaley, I wanted to check out the rest of it as well. There's some really strong stuff here, all digging into that intersection of power and sexuality and rules that do or don't keep us safe that is well served by both vampire literature and YA more generally. In Kind is a particularly great piece of writing, about Grace, a disabled girl left for dead by a caregiver father who then turns her death into a national campaign in which he is the victim because caring for her was difficult. This being a vampire anthology, Grace gets to become a vampire rather than die as a victim of caregiver violence, and with the help of her sire, Seanan, returns to take control of her own narrative from her father. We should totally also talk about "Mirrors, Windows and Selfies" by Mark Oshiro, a story in blog form about a teen vampire raised in isolation by controlling parents who insist there is nobody else like him, and that they'll be killed for revealing his existence, and "Vampires Never Say Die", by anthology editors Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, which is a wildly enjoyable story about a teenage Instagram influencer who strikes up an online friendship with New York's president of vampires (right?), and throws her a very ill-advised birthday party. Because vampires need pocket friends too, you know?

Apparition Lit, Issue 16

A new-to-the-column publication! Apparition is a quarterly speculative fiction magazine that came highly recommended over the course of my conversations with a fellow British Fantasy Award juror. I'm always happy to make space in my already bursting-at-the-seams magazine folder (cries) for another publication, and I was pretty impressed with Apparition's offering of fiction, poetry and non fiction.

There's some very cool weird stuff in here, notably "Cocoon" by Atreyee Gupta: a story about a woman's slow, strange transformation into rock while exploring a cave, her thoughts about impending death combining with reflections on caving, her former partner and their divorce. It's creepy and bleak, and probably one to avoid for anyone with a strong aversion to horror that plays on claustrophobia or being buried alive - but a really impressive story. Lavender, Juniper, Gunpowder, Smoke by Alyson Grauer is a painful but, in its way, very cute story about Marie, a high school witch being bullied who ends up summoning her first magic in the form of a candle wax dragon that comes to school with her and causes gradually more problems throughout the day. It's a pretty straightforward story about handling emotions and becoming resilient in the face of other peoples' opinions, and I appreciated its focus on Marie's journey and her excitement for her own potential in a way that isn't really relevant to her bullies, even as I might have liked to see some real comeuppance on that side of things.

Finally, I have a soft spot for secondary world god stories, and Apparition had me covered with A Home For the Hungry Tide by Alexandra Singer: in which Tailwind, a minor god, is tasked to drive a ghoul away from a nearby town, only to be drawn into a conversation with her as she challenges him on her right to survival, and even more importantly to ensuring the survival of her baby. It's a story that goes in unexpected directions, and the character voices at the heart of it -  pompous, heroic Tailwind and the no-nonsense ghoul - are entertaining and brilliantly written. Excellent stuff.

Questing Elsewhere

I had high expectations for Martin Cahill's The Fifth Horseman, in Fireside's October 2021 issue, after seeing Twitter recommendations for it, and wow, this story does not disappoint. Its the story of the youngest sister of War, Pestilence, Famine and Death, who comes after her siblings and visits the few things remaining in an apocalyptic world after their devastation has been through. It's packed with grief, and the bitterness of endings, and the ways that we can be kind in those spaces anyway, and it's wonderful and heartbreaking to see the combination of the fifth horseman's work itself and her musings about always being behind her siblings, her loneliness and wish to be known. You have to read the story to learn what Cahill calls this fifth horseman: all I'll say about that is it really, really works.

"Traces" by A.E. Decker, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 328, deals with a man who appears to have been captured in a fae realm by a "master" who buys memories from humans and keeps Chaser's in a box inside his coat. When he is called on to track a woman whose husband has sold the time he "owns" with her, Chaser instead becomes invested in breaking his master's hold and helping her to escape, but that escape plan also involves regaining his own memories and leaving his current identity behind, a result which he becomes more and more apprehensive of as the story progresses. The story does a great job of making Chaser's character compelling, and despite the horrors of his memory-less situation, making his choices to remain as who he is now and not return to a previous version of himself sympathetic and believable.

Finally, let's talk about Uncanny Issue 38, which contains the highly entertaining "Femme and Sundance" by Christopher Caldwell (a gay Black man and his new lover commit magic crimes and then go on the run from the magic police), the highly creepy "Tyrannosaurus Hex" by Sam J. Miller (at a fancy parents' brunch, an older kid checks in on what their younger friend is watching on his VR implants and discovers a very unpleasant procedurally generated world that his parents have no idea he's immersed himself in), and the highly feels-inducing "A House Full of Voices is Never Empty" by Miyuki Jane Pinckard. Pinckard's story is about two second generation immigrant sisters, one of whom still lives in a house packed with hoarded possessions that she hears speaking to her and that keep her company even as her family leave, and its a powerful take on heritage and what we hold on to through grief and change, with a much happier resolution than I dared hope for. It's rare I am disappointed when sitting down for an issue of Uncanny, and this one certainly delivers the goods.

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

Questing in Shorts, July 2021: Lovely Weather for Shorts

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

 

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

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

Fantasy Magazine

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

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

FIYAH

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

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

Podcastle

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

Other Highlights

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

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

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

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

 

Short Fiction Round Up: June 2021

Finals season is back for German grad school (please don't ask me how our semesters work, I don't understand it either, I'm just suffering at this point) but despite that, I have some excellent recs coming your way! Second-world fantasies dominate our selection this month, though there's a touch of horror and a touch of literary fiction to add some variety. Enjoy!

The Lay of Lilyfinger by GV Anderson (Tor.com)
Anderson’s newest fantasy novelette about a scaled musician, her apprentice, and a complex and culturally fraught song was genuinely the standout in my June reading. Anderson’s deft touch with complex and layered situations is perfect. The humanity that each and every character in this densely populated novelette shows is perfect. Both these elements combine into a very enjoyable meditation on art, colonization, and memory. Highly recommended, especially for people who loved the complicated worldbuilding of RB Lemberg’s Four Profound Weaves. 

All This Darkness by Jennifer Donahue (Apex)
Written in the third person plural, this Donahue story follows an amorphous group of children of coal miners as they slowly get drawn in by the mountain. As someone currently living in Germany’s mining area, it’s unsurprising that this story hooked me in. The plot is creepy, the writing is stunning, and the imagery is haunting. I think about this first line every time I walk by my decommissioned coal mines now: “Nobody ever says we have coal in our veins; they don’t have to.” Chills!

Thirteen of the Secrets in My Purse by Rachel Swirsky (Uncanny)
The skill with which Swirsky weaves this small flash piece together is unmistakable: the lipstick, wallet and keys, the three things first mentioned, begin to affect the narrator: the tension rises quickly, until the end feels like a deeply satisfying relief.   

Hassan the Executioner Walks Out of Jawasar for the Last Time by RK Duncan (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
I love stories that play with structure, and that’s exactly what this second-world fantasy story by Duncan does: it begins at the end. The story opens with powerful sorceress and authoritarian ruler Lamia dying, and tells the story of her closest friend, Hassan, leaving the city. The setting is rich and well-described – the desert city’s newly emancipated criminals as well as its angry and oppressed occupants are happy to turn on Hassan, and as her fends them off with his slowly failing magic powers, Hassan reflects on how much of the city's anger is deserved.  

All The Ophelias In My Flat by N Theodoridou (Silvia Magazine)
Theodoridou’s literary flash piece about dozens of versions of Ophelia coexisting in a single apartment and trying to move forward with their life is heartbreaking, beautifully written, and wonderfully stylistic. Again, I don’t want to say too much about it and dull it’s effects, so all I will say is read it and weep.

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

Short Fiction Round Up: March and April 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Fiction Round Up: February 2021

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

Mr. Death by Alix E. Harrow (Apex)

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

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

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

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

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

#Selfcare by Annalee Newitz (Tor.com)

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

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

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

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

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

Questing in Shorts: 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