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"He gazed at the sky. Hannah went back to thinning carrots."
"The Dryad’s Shoe" by Ursula Vernon (as T. Kingfisher) is a fun Cinderella retelling about a girl who has zero desire to attend a ball.
It is not much use being angry when you are eleven years old, because a grown-up will always explain to you why you are wrong to feel that way and very likely you will have to apologize to someone for it, so Hannah sat on the edge of the raised bed and drummed her heels and thought fixedly about when the next sowing of beets would have to be planted.
Fictional stories about space fiction
Two scifi/fantasy stories about space exploration, fiction, lies, and exuberant adventure. "The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales" by Fei Dao, translated by Ken Liu, sort of a Stanislaw Lem-feeling yarn, and "Four Kinds of Cargo" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse), a bit of Firefly-ish wackiness with a touch of pathos.
"It is illogical to allow you to suffer"
Two lovely, sweet, heartwarming short pieces of Star Trek fan fiction that take place in the reboot universe (that is, the recent films, starting with the first JJ Abrams entry). "Lunch and Other Obscenities" by Rheanna presents the culture clash between Nyota Uhura and her Orion roommate, Gaila, in their first year at Starfleet Academy. Includes a Vulcan restaurant with a fitting name, people overcoming misunderstandings, and two shared meals that make me happily tear up. And "Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit" by lazulisong shows us James T. Kirk at the Academy, avoiding anyone finding out just how brilliant he is, intertwined with the point of view of his Vulcan mentor. Includes amazing curses, a tour of Portland, Oregon, and someone saying to a child, "I propose to treat you as a rational being capable of rational thought."
"let them know you are strong and peaceful"
Three scifi/fantasy stories on caretaking. "Callme and Mink" (text and audio) by Brenda Cooper (published this month) has cute dogs and an ill child: "Not lying to him meant she didn’t signal emotions she didn’t believe were appropriate. She could signal most feelings back to humans, but they were always a lie." That one feels reasonably happy, despite its implied postapocalyptic setting. Two more are more wrenching, including one by a MeFite.
Changing the timeline
Two short scifi stories about changing history, in the small and in the large. "The Day Alan Turing Came Out" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse), wish-fulfillment alternate history. "Turing reaches for the RUN button in the corner and my breath catches. This is the moment when I always found that I had mistyped a line and had to go through the magazine listing again, looking for errors. Turing does not worry." "This Must Be the Place" by Elly Bangs, a partially-requited romance with a "deterministic dolt." "It's probably simplest to say that I first met Loren Wells in a club in San Francisco. We'll set aside for the moment that it wasn't the first time he'd met me."
Romance, pregnancy, time travel, supervillains & the best/worst ob-gyn
Two scifi/fantasy stories, both from 2009, about women superheroes. "Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut" by Cat Rambo is light: "They have gone through twenty-two candidates, making notes, asking questions. The twenty-third arrives, dressed in black and steel." "Origin" by Ari Goelman is alternately silly and serious: "'I should never date other supers,' I say, not for the first time. I put my hand on my stomach. Crap. I can barely keep a spider plant alive. There's no way I'm ready to be a mother."
“Want to go throw some dry ice in the River Styx?”
Two speculative stories about romance, mourning, and life-changing journeys. "The Four Generations of Chang E" by Zen Cho starts with someone winning the moon lottery: "Chang E sold everything she had: the car, the family heirloom enamel hairpin collection, her external brain. Humans were so much less intelligent than Moonites anyway. The extra brain would have made little difference." In "Three Petitions to the Queen of Hell" by Tim Pratt, "Marla and Zufi, the reigning queens of Hell, were eight years into a meaningless spat, living more as roommates than lovers" -- but then a mortal woman successfully makes it across the Styx to save her girlfriend.
Vanessa has never complained about your own oddities
Eight scifi/fantasy stories about people in tough situations trying to help each other, including three by Susan Palwick (previously).
"Steve Rogers isn't a self-made man."
"Known Associates" by thingswithwings is a nearly 300,000-word fan fiction novel about Steve Rogers (Captain America), gender, activism, self-discovery, queer life in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s, sex, disability, solidarity, and the joys of making friends on the Internet. It was longlisted for the 2017 Otherwise Award.
"You've got no right to be fussy when someone is being so generous"
Read Paper Republic publishes English translations of Chinese fiction, usually new short stories. The short story "Saint Marie" by Da Si, translated by Caroline Mason, portrays a student's gradual discontentment with a French landlady whose hospitality proves stifling (in a way that goes beyond Ask vs. Guess cultures). "If Marie had made it plain before I moved in that she wanted my company, I would never have chosen to live with her."
"Fools lack the insight needed to digest and appreciate my book."
Samovar "is a quarterly magazine of and about translated speculative fiction", a regular special issue of the magazine Strange Horizons. For Samovar, Brishti Guha translated a (wacky, in my opinion) 11th-century Sanskrit piece by Kshemendra about language misunderstandings and an angry scholar. "...the reason the meat was so poor was because hunters couldn’t get hold of any well-fed animals. All the animals wanted to listen to Gunadhya’s story even more than they wanted to eat!" (Previously.)
“'Everyone’s got to live somewhere,' she says.”
Three scifi/fantasy stories about people finding friends and discovering places they fit in. "Women Making Bees In Public" by Alexandra Erin is a short fantasy story about two women making friends, overcoming being interrupted by men, and discussing free will, chaos, brains, and what they want. "You Have to Follow the Rules" by Ada Hoffmann (audio) gives a girl a quiet, roomy escape at a scifi convention. And "Programmer at Large" by David R. MacIver is a web serial about a progammer-archaeologist who discovers some oddities in their ship's social graph.
“you have a message I am unable to read aloud.”
"CARBORUNDORUM > /DEV/NULL" by Annalee Flower Horne is a ten-minutes-into-the-future science fiction short story that works as a feminist Parker Lewis Can't Lose/Ferris Bueller's Day Off homage/critique, and as a cri de coeur on teen girl agency. Thematically related short scifi stories: Claire Humphrey's "Four Steps to the Perfect Smoky Eye" on teen girls and those who restrict them, and Cory Doctorow's "Party Discipline", another celebration of teen girl hackers. [Content warning: rape]
Fix-it fic in Gatsby's pool
"'Do you think you could call me "Nick" from time to time?' I asked him. At the time, I was not sure why it suddenly mattered." "To Stay at the Scene of a Crime" by Prix is a short fanfiction story with an alternate ending for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.
"Parts Unknown: Bajor" -- with fake ads
"The Hasperat has his eyes watering." fresne's fanfic short story "Parts Unknown: Bajor" takes Anthony Bourdain on a tour of Deep Space Nine and the planet Bajor. Includes commercial breaks: "Some of the inspiration for the sponsor breaks come from some conversations I’ve been having with friends about what a Star Trek show that wasn’t about Starfleet would be like." (Bourdain fanfic previously.)
The rest of the church noticed the dog during the Sign of Peace
Three scifi/fantasy stories about surprising connections with animals. "Fetch" by David Moles is a melancholy alt-history about trying to rescue Laika. "St. Ailbe's Hall" by Naomi Kritzer (part 2) portrays a priest overcoming prejudice while figuring out how to deal with a new sentient dog in his congregation. And "The Night Sun" by Zin E. Rocklyn (published this year) is a dark but ultimately triumphant story of a couple's weekend trip to a cabin gone horribly sideways. (Content note for danger or harm to animals in all three stories.)
under all circumstances leave the tower library and rose bower intact
Two fantasy stories: "La Bête" by Leah Bobet (audio), published this year. "It would require work to make the château habitable; the Dowager had confined herself, in the end, to the library, kitchen, and a small suite of rooms, and the rest was in disrepair." "The Huntsman and the Beast" by Carrie Vaughn, originally published 2018.
"Jack said, 'Then take me. I will serve. Let him go and take me instead, please.' The beast hesitated, and that told Jack he might have a chance. 'I swear to you I will stay in his place, but you must let him go free.'"
a story about agri-bots, machine life, and emergent intelligence
"Tierra y libertad" by Madeline Ashby is a short scifi story about "a robot rebellion in the pistachio fields." Published in MIT Technology Review in 2018. “I have protocols for that.” Dash made for the door. She flashed her watch. “I’m the analyst in charge. The mind in that vault is my op.”
a horror story from 2003
"Kathleen Murphy gripped her can of Mace tightly as she rode the Red Line to work, hands sweating inside the latex of her surgical gloves. All around her, her fellow T riders were openly clutching Mace or pepper spray as well, all glancing around the car from behind safety goggles and surgical masks." "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great" by Jennifer Pelland is a short, dark science fiction story, published in 2003, about an epidemic and the religious cult that aims to spread it.
A fairy tale about loyalty, a quest, surprise, and triumph
"Once upon a time, in a very small kingdom, there was a king with one
daughter. His wife had died, and he had not remarried. This is not the
fairy tale where the king decides to marry his own daughter, don’t
worry. This king was a completely different sort of terrible father: he
believed that his daughter should earn his love, and nothing she did was
ever good enough." Naomi
Kritzer's short fantasy story "A Star Without Shine" is part of the
fundraiser The New
Decameron.
"standing side by side at the sink, talking softly as they clean"
ShanaStoryteller retells fairytales (such as "The stepsisters and Cinderella band together to survive their mother’s abusive treatment.") and Greek and Roman mythology (as with Arachne: "She is not honest as a virtue, but as a vice.").
AI, aliens, rain control, & how voting/election systems might change
"One Hundred Sentences About the City of the Future: A Jeremiad" by Alex Irvine (2008) and "Reliable People" by Charlie Jane Anders (March 2020) depict future elections, including personal media feeds, aliens, and Humans of Distributed Network Origin. And: in October 2018, Mozilla invited two speculative fiction authors to describe elections in the future. "Hello, I’m Your Election" by Genevieve Valentine (caution: dark) and "Candidate Y" by Malka Older (audio for both) take different approaches to integrating data mining and Q&A into voting processes.
"T’Pring was too dignified to seethe."
"Matchmaker of Mars" by Rachel Manija Brown (writing as Edonohana) is a short, funny, sweet fan fiction story in which "John W. Campbell accidentally matchmakes T'Pring and Uhura." Tags: T'Pring (Star Trek), Nyota Uhura, John W. Campbell Jr., 1930s Science Fiction Writer Alternate Universe, Pastiche, Epistolary, Fiction within fiction, Bigotry & Prejudice, Baking. Should be understandable even if you're not a Star Trek fan.
Zadie Smith on the urge "to be good. To be seen to be good."
"Now More Than Ever" is a short absurdist story by Zadie Smith about shunning, denouncing, and philosophical stances and etiquette rules (The New Yorker, July 16, 2018 - available in text & audio). "I bumped into someone on Bleecker who was beyond the pale. I felt like talking to him so I did. As we talked I kept thinking, But you’re beyond the pale, yet instead of that stopping us from talking we started to talk more and more frantically..." Related: her October 2019 essay "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction" (previously). "...we seek to shore up the act of writing with false defenses, like the dubious idea that one could ever be absolutely 'correct' when it comes to representing fictional human behavior."
"shortly before his troubling and inexplicable disappearance"
Three soooooorta vampire-y short stories. Benjamin Rosenbaum's short story "The Book of Jashar" purports to be a recently unearthed text that "proved to be a transcription of Biblical Hebrew originally written as early as the First Temple Period" and concerns "Mezipatheh, who drank the blood of men". Claire Humphrey's "Who in Mortal Chains" and "Le lundi de la matraque (Nightstick Monday)" (audio) feature Augusta Susan Hillyard, who says of herself, "It’s in my nature, violence; it’s on my back closer than a shirt. It’s in my nature to hate it, also, and to turn from it, when I can."
Scifi about social services, transit, reparations, & a support dog
Four science fiction stories about how we could better help each other. Two optimistic ones: "‘I’m with Muni — how can I help?’ Annalee Newitz’s short fiction imagines a new kind of social support system in San Francisco", and "Number One Draft Pick" by Claire Humphrey, in which Reshma trains a service dog to help mitigate Tyler's seizure disorder so he can keep playing pro hockey. And two cautionary stories: "A Burden Shared" by Jo Walton, on carework and chronic pain, and "How to Pay Reparations: a Documentary" by Tochi Onyebuchi, about a US city that tries to use an algorithm, plus money from defunding police, to pay reparations. (Response essay by Charlton McIlwain.)
Short fantasy stories about a diminished hero and an exiled villain
"Captain Midrise" by Jim Marino is a loving description of a flying, people-helping superhero who loses some of his oomph but keeps on going, from the point of view of a journalist trying to cover the story responsibly. "Would the paper be liable if he stopped helping in emergencies? Would we just get sued forever until we died?" "Tuesdays With Molakesh the Destroyer" by Megan Grey is a humorous, then bittersweet short fantasy about a bullied fifteen-year-old shoveling her demonic neighbor's driveway and coming over for hot chocolate. "Destroyer he may be called, but he kept his yard tidy and pulled in his trash cans at night, so the Homeowners Association turned their scowls on other targets."
"no, working with the WRONG people is how you get caught"
Four gripping, provocative, sometimes uncomfortable scifi/fantasy stories about violence and sacrifice in defense of communities and ideals. Three by Margaret Killjoy (previously) and one by Elizabeth Crowe.
Stories of transness, a proposal, family, aliens, religion, & tamales
Four fantasy or scifi stories (funny, heartwarming, searching) about trans experiences. The funniest of them: “Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman” by Rebecca Fraimow. "Now perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, 'What kind of a man is this Yudah Cohen after all, to boast of his ability to lie? Certainly he won’t make any kind of rabbi!'"
Math heists, time travel, aliens, and creepy predictions
The Society of Actuaries has held a regular speculative fiction contest since 1995. Actuaries write science fiction about actuarial work, insurance, advances in prediction, and more. In the 13th contest (2019), the winner of the "Most novel prediction forming the basis for the narrative" prize focused on on insurance companies' role in fighting climate change: "We All Have a Green Heart" by Anna Bearrood. (The following links include a lot of PDFs, at least one ZIP file, and scores of of mostly math-heavy science fiction stories, written by amateur authors, often focusing on death, murder, surveillance, creepy conspiracies, implants, and behavior modification.)
"Do that one again, you whispered."
"There's a ghost in your house. There has been since you moved in. You don't call the house 'haunted'; it isn't scary. The ghost is quiet and kind. They seem to care about you." "Ghosts" is a story by Blue Neustifter about "identity, support, and choosing to live." YouTube video (11 minutes, captioned) of the author reading it aloud. Neustifter posted an earlier version of this story as a Twitter thread. Content notes by the author: "second-person ('you') protagonist that is implied to be transfeminine; dysphoria; depression".
"I'd had dreams about motherhood before."
"Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world." "Sarah's Child" by trans author Susan Jane Bigelow, published in 2014 at Strange Horizons, is a short story about a trans woman who starts dreaming about an alternate life. Audio version available; here's another podcast version from Glittership.
"Suhela is a constant, like the acceleration of gravity"
"In the capital, where our Queen lives, there are two universities." "Fifty Years in the Virtuous City" by Leo Mandel (originally published on Archive Of Our Own as part of a fanworks exchange) is a short story, told in glimpses over fifty years, about two women growing as scientists, administrators, and rivals in a utopian alternate-history South Asia. Audio version available; Seth Dickinson interviews the author. Mandel's fanfiction responds to "Sultana's Dream," a 1905 utopian feminist short story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.
Apprenticeship, vulnerability, wigs, shipwreck, & watching wisdom grow
“I didn’t ask you to meet me here to reminisce,” said Suradanna. She turned the guest-cup upside down and placed it carefully on her desk, signaling that business negotiations were about to begin. “I want to hire you.” "Suradanna and the Sea" by Rebecca Fraimow (published 2016) is a fantasy novella that -- as the author puts it -- "features trade routes, magical fertilizer, and one girl's centuries-long effort to impress a woman who is already in a committed relationship with a boat."
"took out a sheaf of papers and shook them in the miners’ faces"
"'I am in desperate country,' she said, after swallowing, 'and I need all the bravery I can get. But I will have nothing of resignation.' She spat out a wad of wet pulp." "What I Assume You Shall Assume" by Ken Liu is a short fantasy story published in June, about 1890s Idaho, Chinese and Chinese-American experiences, violence, the magic of words, solidarity, and grit.
"Talitha is smiling at her, tentative, luminous."
"'It's like mathematics,' Cat says. 'Once it’s written, it can't not be true. See?' She takes the swan back and adds a descending stroke to the character on the neck. It takes flight and flutters around Toby’s head." "Flightcraft" is a short fantasy story which author Iona Datt Sharma describes: "A romance in its beginning, an ancient craft, and an aeroplane named for a traitor."
"I knew I was in over my head when Punzie's mother called"
"And you know if we both have to spend our time with dragons, at least yours is a cute one." "The Thing In the Walls Wants Your Small Change" by Virginia M. Mohlere (published 2018) is a short fantasy story about recovery from abuse, a tiny cute dragon, and how we protect each other. On a similar theme: "Four Things that Weren't Adequately Covered in Mulan's R.A. Training" by NaomiK, a short fan fiction piece published in 2013. "Mulan is a Resident Assistant on a dormitory floor at a college. Gosh, some of the students on her floor come from really screwed-up families."
"Cookie deeply aware this highly problematic."
"Exclusive Content" is a charming piece of fan fiction by ellen_fremedon about Sesame Street, tagged "backstage drama, issues of representation, muppet identity politics, literary adapations, kind of a lot of annotations". "In old days, Cookie think, just having monsters on television was spooky. Monsters doing classy drama was transgressive. Transgressive mean it a thing that people not expect you to do, and they think you strange when you do it. It special kind of surprise."
"No, chairs can be even worse," said Coco.
A short, kind fantasy story about ghosts: "起狮，行礼 (Rising Lion — The Lion Bows)" by Zen Cho: "Gwailo have no sense. They treat the past like it's just an old movie. Like it's not serious."
"Her branches creaked as she walked the outer gardens"
Four scifi/fantasy stories published this year about the strange and ordinary things (our) bodies (might) do or be: "AirBody" by Sameem Siddiqui, "The Bee Thing" by Maggie Damken, "The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea-Fish" by Jo Miles, and "Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse" by Rae Carson. All are also available as audio/podcasts.
"Let me guess: fuel is sacred too."
InterGalactic Medicine Show was an online magazine publishing short science fiction and fantasy stories. After it ceased publication in 2019, it took down its paywall so now all its archives -- hundreds of original short stories and reprints, with original illustrations, and some also available as audio -- are free to read. Includes stories by Naomi Kritzer, Holli Mintzer, and Tim Pratt. Title is from the sweet, comic "For Sale: Veterinary Practice On Sigma 4; Certain Conditions Apply" by Jared Oliver Adams from the final issue.
"I decide that it is practical for me to find it attractive"
Silly, fun, or heartwarming scifi stories published this year about robots & AI include "A Guide for Working Breeds" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (author of "Fandom for Robots" (2017), previously), "Custom Options Available" by Amy Griswold, and "Rager in Space" by Charlie Jane Anders.
"I apologize for disturbing you, Ensign"
Eight tiny scifi/fantasy stories and what-if suggestions about aliens, monsters, etc. trying to understand humans, and vice versa. Including "I dunno, dude. This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. I mean, how do we know it’s even real?" and "This is both relateable and aspirational in some fashion, for, alive humans SUCH AS OURSELVES… self-deprecating remark…"
"spotted cool things their listing bots had mislabeled and underpriced"
"Mika was careful. But you heard stories." In the short, sweet scifi story "Legal Salvage" by Holli Mintzer, a vintage seller navigates a forgotten building of self-storage lockers, an unfamiliar sorting bot, Geoff the sentient traffic light, and a party. Part of Slate's Future Tense Fiction series, in partnership with Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination. Thematically related to Mintzer's "Tomorrow Is Waiting" (previously; MeFi's Own!).
How does "you guys" work in English? Linguistically?
Linguist Bronwyn M. Bjorkman considers the English phrase "you guys". "...you guys looks like an English pronoun (or at least not like an ordinary noun phrase) in its irregular possessive morphology and in allowing bound variable interpretations, but unlike a pronoun in its position with verb particles and in resisting repetition." She discusses whether the phrase "perpetuates the idea that masculine is the default, and so is something we should avoid using".
neuroatypicality in the workplace
"should I tell future managers about my ADHD?" Advice from Ask A Manager, and many comments from people with ADHD about how to handle it in job searches and in the workplace. A followup to "how to succeed at work when you’re not neurotypical... an open thread for readers who aren’t neurotypical about what’s been useful for you". Relatedly: "mental health/neurodivergent symptoms as strengths, a [Twitter] thread.... 'Doesn't pick up on social cues' -> Immune to attempts to distract with indirect digs or insulting tone. Unflappable; focused."
XQs: Interviews about South Asian Studies
Starting in 2013, Chapati Mystery (previously) has hosted interviews with scholars about their research in South Asian Studies. "The XQs (Ten Questions) series is a conversation with first-book authors in South Asian Studies (broadly understood). Our aim is not to 'review' but to contextualize, historicize, and promote new scholarship." Recent interviews discuss "jihadism" and the problems of doing anthropological work during the War On Terror, the trading world of the medieval Indian Ocean, demarcation of cities and the stigmas on "slums", and the "fascinating quasi-ethnographer-poet-journalist-reformer" Behramji Merwanji Malabari (1853-1912).
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Deanna (TNG edition)
A funny Star Trek: The Next Generation fanvid by avocet, celebrating Deanna Troi. [via mefi projects]
April Foods (or Fool's) Day 2020
"Can we agree this year's April Fool's pranks will consist only of delicious desserts disgusted as boring, less-delicious foods?" and "the only april fools jokes i wanna see tomorrow are like: i baked bread today. april fools, i actually baked a cake" share a common sentiment: instead of pranks that might materially deceive anyone on April Fool's Day 2020, let's do silly food-related things. Or make a food bank donation. (Not following those guidelines: the fake announcement "Today Google stops funding climate change deniers" advocating Extinction Rebellion.)
"I think it's probably time to just own it."
Nicole Cliffe, writing in her Substack newsletter, catalogues her childhood ("Childhood was a nightmare. I did so much masking, which I didn’t know was masking until…a few years ago?") and reflects on her hyperlexia, stimming, difficulty with peer interactions and excessive sensory input, and academic career. She concludes, "I am probably autistic." and comments, "I have been saying 'I've got a lot of autistic traits' for a while, I've been saying 'I'm not precisely neurotypical' for a while, but I think it's probably time to just own it."
Salafi Islamic economics and a different definition of capitalism
An answer to the question: "what is ISIS's economic policy?" discusses the Salafi view on capitalism, Zakat (a wealth tax to fund welfare programs) and Jizyah (a tax punishing non-Muslims), the prohibition of Riba (interest), anti-trust laws, women in the workplace, labor unions, and more. (Single Tumblr link, found via thetransintransgenic)