97 posts tagged with fiction by brainwane.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 97.
"I want my life to flash before your eyes."
"And every minute you spend with me is a minute that they too get to look for beauty." "The Unweaving of a Beautiful Thing" by atb depicts a battle between a witch and Death. It was posted to the Effective Altruism forum but is much more about character than calculations. 'There were two words that Superman lived by, and they were “pay me”.' Over on Archive of Our Own, "A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good" by cthulhuraejepsen is an unfinished narrative of "Clark Kent, effective altruist" that addresses "the Crank Problem".
"clipping each word so it faced the world alone"
"I’ve no fixed place on account of I’m often late from my shift." "Churched" by Maria Farrell is a short story that is about, among other things, "the marooned generations of Irish in London – people who came over from the 1950s onward, pushed out by economic and social stagnation, and who rarely got home again." And resolving a little mystery about a man who starts acting oddly in church. [more inside]
"is there a loathly lady in the tale? well SORT OF"
"The Seven Daughters Of The Cailleach Foraoise" by Dyce (Sarah Blackwell) is tagged "new fairy tales / going old school with this one / threes and sevens and animals in danger and trick questions / the lot / enjoy": "Being kind of heart, he wrapped his hands in his cloak to protect them, and freed the young fox despite its attempts to bite him." Thematically related: Kate Clayborn writes a Twitter thread on the Canterbury Tales, the loathly lady, and 'a quest to find a true answer to the question "what do women most desire"' (nitter view, Threadreader view): "i really need to say a word on behalf of my old friend the wife of bath" [Content note for mention of rape in Twitter thread.]
Dragons, governance, teaching, inheritance, transformation
"The Divine votaries in the roadside temples become easier to convince as Tishrel goes higher into the foothills, recognising on sight what he is. It’s Tishrel himself who is forgetting now, with words from his past drifting in fragments through his mind. All this is yours, Tishrel. One foot after another. Before the individual, the state." "To Embody a Wildfire Starting" is a fantasy novelette by Iona Datt Sharma (previously), published this year. Their summary: "Now the revolution has come, Tishrel is on his way home to the Eyrie, the socialist dragonish community of his upbringing; it turns out that both he and it have changed." [more inside]
"But enough with the veiled warnings."
"There are a lot more seems-haunted old-house-turned-traveller’s-rest places than most people think, and in my experience most night auditors are hollow-eyed, faintly eldritch, and disinclined to let someone check in just before dawn." "The Late Traveller" by dyce (Sarah Blackwell) is a short fantasy story set at "a little old hotel in the middle of nowhere, with a creaking wooden sign instead of neon".
“A language?” “Sure. Between Japanese and English.”
"You shall not bear a child, but a language.” "Annunciation" by P. Akasaka (a Japanese writer living in the UK), published last month in Strange Horizons, is a short, fantastical story about an unexpected pregnancy.
"the distance between reader and character or narrator"
Using "second person" (using "you" for the point-of-view character) in English-language speculative fiction is often discouraged. "Why Writing Second Person POV Appeals To Marginalized Writers" by Valerie Valdes notes: "We often have to code-switch to engage with others, so it can feel more natural for us to accept and inhabit different selves without fear of losing the core of who we are." "thoughts on second person." by Arkady Martine suggests: "there are actually three kinds [of second person]... audience-oriented, coercive, and transparent." [more inside]
"My best friend is a dolphin and sometimes it’s weird."
"In your first conversations with them, you’ll probably want to refer to all you’ve learned in the past year’s intensive study of dolphin history, culture, and ritual. Maybe you want to put them at ease, or maybe you kind of want to show off. I’m telling you not to do that, because you know nothing." The science fiction short story "Share Your Flavor" by Jenifer K. Leigh has a fun friendship between a human and a dolphin who commiserate about their relationship issues. [more inside]
"he might wake up one morning to find his writing done"
Two long, mysterious fictional stories about death, art, and family, both with ambiguous endings. "The Drowned Father" by Pamela Sargent: "Old memories were coming back to him, of sitting in other buses and expounding on his own fictitious accomplishments." "Darkroom" by Geoff Manaugh: "The documentary was vital, and, though Jay didn’t want to admit it, a film about his mom’s sisters‚ his dead aunts, was his only idea."
5 short Diwali stories
By Iona Datt Sharma (previously
on Diwali): "Light
and fire: five stories for Diwali (2018)", a collection of miniature
stories for the festival.
low orbit and a salmon run
Two speculative stories about young people escaping bad situations (bullying, homophobia, sizeism, etc.). "How to Make Friends in Seventh Grade" by Nick Poniatowski: "But the worst thing about it was that I didn't help him." "Riparian" by Seanan McGuire: "Molly begged her mother to let her start mermaid lessons for five years before she finally received her starter tail, a glorious confection of silicon and spandex..."
"They left the sukkah standing when they fled."
Two speculative stories in which girls and women disagree about how to cope with change, both published this year. "A Stone’s Throw from You" by Jenn Reese in Mermaids Monthly: "And then I told you I was leaving. That I’d been called to the sea." "For Future Generations" by Rachel Gutin in khōréō ("a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction and migration"): "Of all the Jewish holidays, Sukkot was the hardest to celebrate in space."
Word-portals between worlds
Two scifi stories about literary professions in uncertain futures. "The Bookstore at the End of America" by Charlie Jane Anders, about a bookseller at the border between California and America: "Some of those screaming people were old enough to have grown up in the United States of America, but they acted as though these two lands had always been enemies." "Apologia" by Vajra Chandrasekera, about a poet visiting "the committee’s carefully Chosen Moments of history": "This guilty poet, this raging poet, he could retroactively make the apologies that we had never made the first time around. It was, or would be, never too late for the big sorry."
innovation, death, sorcery and meaning
Two short, triumphant fantasy stories about well-worn prophecies and magical customs that take a left turn. "Another End of the Empire" by Tim Pratt (audio version): "The probability witches hit an impasse." A short story by Dyce (a.k.a. Sarah Blackwell): "No, I was resigned to death. I was only angry that my death would be so meaningless."
Bear, hot spring waterfall, horse, rowan, river, alder
Three short, eerie fantasy stories about water and beasts. "Hokkaido Green" by by Aidan Doyle (2010) is bittersweet fantasy about emotions, grief, and tradeoffs. "Talisman" by Tracina Jackson-Adams (2002): Horses, a family feud, dark ceremonies in the wood, high stakes and slow-burn reveals. "Riverine" by Danielle Jorgensen Murray (March 2021): the river man, his bride, permission, respect and care. [more inside]
languages, customs, avatars, and nasty safeguards
"But no matter: you can be made perfect; you can put on the immerser and become someone else, someone pale-skinned and tall and beautiful." "Immersion" is a short science fiction story by French-Vietnamese author Aliette de Bodard that won the 2012 Nebula Award and Locus Award for Best Short Story. It never explicitly uses the word "assimilation," or "immigrant."
"Your grandpa was a lot of things in the old days"
Two short speculative stories about growing up in a powerful family. "Horangi", fantasy by Thomas Ha (reminds me a little of Ursula Vernon's Grandma Harken stories): “I’m sorry to hear that,” my grandfather responded politely, and he gave a smile that I’d often seen him give to the customers in his shoe repair shop, respectful, but with a little firmness to it. “I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. My family doesn’t work for yours anymore, Mr. Yong.” "Urban Fanfare", science fiction by Jared Oliver Adams: It was a cool idea. One of Mom’s best, really. But the problem with it was the music the committee chose.
"the flavors you teach them to desire"
"A perfect egg is a slash of light on a gray day." "The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes" by Siobhan Carroll is a bittersweet short fantasy story about cooking, grief, beauty in the midst of war, and teaching the next generation. (Previously.) "On the Feeding Habits of Humans: A Firsthand Account" by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali and Rachael K. Jones is a short and bittersweet, but mostly hopeful, science fiction story about foodways: Feeder TikTik approaches the [human] Feeder with their haustellums extended and extrudes the greeting-scent. Also available as a one-hour audio recording. [more inside]
Ecologies, empathy, parenting, robots, and unanticipated consequences
Two scifi stories about tech inventions that don't work out as their designers planned. Ken Liu's "Quality Time" (from last year) looks into "unsolved problems in home automation" and a friendship at a startup. "Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterhoeven, with Personal Notes" by Jane Espenson (published this month) is an epistolary piece by an unreliable narrator: "My problem was the subjectivity of pain." (Yes, this is the Jane Espenson who wrote the "I Was Made to Love You" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the "Dirty Hands" episode of Battlestar Galactica.)
"The Computronic Program-o-Mat was deeply unpopular"
"i am assuming for these purposes that wayne enterprises is a privately held conglomerate..." Kitty Unpretty (previously) lays out a plausible corporate structure for Wayne Enterprises (the fictional company owned by Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman). Highlights include the health division: "Anyone who tries to make anything brain-related gets the side-eye these days. They’ve been burned too many times before. 'And it’s definitely not supposed to be used to read or control minds?' any engineer working on a brain-related project will be asked, repeatedly, forever." and "Spite: A Valid Way To Run A Business Since 1864". [more inside]
sign read: "PERMANENTLY CLOSED." The lock on the door was busted.
Two short, bittersweet scifi stories about people changing their journeys. "Personal Trainer" by Meg Elison has a new way to exercise and a new kind of hammock to relax in. "Wait Calculation" by Derrick Boden has political intrigue aboard a generation ship.
"I am here on business and my accountant's a real wizard."
Alexandra Erin (previously) posts short speculative fiction stories on her Patreon, including a one-sided conversation about dead people posting status updates on Facebook, a fairy tale about a healer's price, a political horror story about scars that don't go away, and a card game in space (part of a series). (Disclaimer: a friend.)
"People like him love standard procedure"
Two short scifi/fantasy stories in which customer service folks get to reward customers who treat them well, or punish those who treat them badly. Dyce writes about an isolated refueling station: "Out-of-hours fuelling requires a prior appointment." Aimee Ogden writes about a coffeeshop: "his coffee comes with a nice cantrip that'll help him send all his emails for the next week with zero typos and exactly the right number of exclamation marks."
moments of rest and ease from unexpected corners
John Wiswell has written a few short fantasy stories about domestic settings that turn eerily comfortable or appealing: "Open House on Haunted Hill" and "For Lack of a Bed".
retail, disability, zombies, etc.
A few short scifi/fantasy stories about dark situations that turn out surprisingly well. The day nearly everyone at Evil-Mart called in sick, and the sequel. One person who gets bitten by a zombie.... yet never turns. And some survivors of the robot apocalypse getting an unexpected invitation from their new overlords.
"None of this is going as planned."
"I hate Original Diana immediately, or at least I want to hate her." "The Failed Dianas" is a short, emotional science fiction story by Monique Laban (Clarkesworld, February 2021) in which our Asian-American protagonist struggles with whether it is possible to make her parents happy. It was P H Lee's favorite story of the month.
Daycare worker, waitress, mountain guide, paramedic
A few short fantasy stories about serving other people during times of death and peril. A daycare worker at the end of the world, and a restaurant server at a different end. A mountain guide who always finds what is lost. And the funniest one: a necromancer who doesn't realize they're a necromancer, and thinks they're just a really good paramedic.
a few short happy-ending sf/f stories
Short, optimistic scifi/fantasy fiction stories: "It’s not a bad boarding house, as these things go." "If your suit watch is correct, you should have ran out of air… three weeks ago?" "The first time the humans told us they sang their way through subspace, we thought it a translation error." "A human. On Captain Diii’s ship." "'May you have a life of safety and peace', said the witch, cursing the bloodthirsty warrior." "What is the harm in one more lie?" All self-published by the authors on Tumblr.
Grieving, loss, futility, diaspora, and broken connections
Two melancholy short scifi and fantasy stories, new this year, about grieving the loss of parents. "Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core" is by Wole Talabi: "So you’ve been using the money they left us to develop this thing?" "All Worlds Left Behind" is by Iona Datt Sharma: "I, uh, used to come here with my dad? I don't speak the language as well as he did."
"an empty crib and a raven with a scroll in its beak"
"I am concerned that you did not receive my previous missive, although my raven reports that you took the letter and appeared to read it." "The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly" by Alix E. Harrow, an epistolary short story published last year in Fireside. Content note [spoiler, so, in extended description]. [more inside]
"baking stories are another of my go to story types"
Two Ladybusiness contributors "explore their feels about 'soft' or low-stakes SFF short fiction, and rec a whole bunch of stories for you to enjoy." Links to twenty-two science fiction and fantasy stories that make the recommenders feel soft or hopeful, especially "domestic stories and stories that are good people doing their best".
whether visuospatial, phonological, conceptual or emotional
"Flight from one, toward differing focus. Then, the suspended-semi-mixture of the two; absence and prospect." The content management/site-building platform Cargo has a weird blog.
"I needed a better excuse than glory."
"A Non-Hero’s Guide to The Road of Monsters" by A.T. Greenblatt (previously mentioned in a list of recommended sf/f from 2017) is a light adventure tale of a sidekick-turned-blogger/entrepreneur. "So why do I bother running a business like this? Because monsters are remarkable, unexpected, and totally worth the wait." [more inside]
What would you change?
"Cascade" by A.J. Fitzwater (published July 2020) is (as reviewer Vanessa Fogg says) "an unusual story of time travel, in which a group of grieving friends discuss what steps they would take to change the past without changing the current world too much—and only for the better." Or, as the author puts it, "This story is about a trans guy mourning the death of his best friend, and in a drunken state with his other friends manifesting a Goddess of Change into the world." Lots of queer representation; content note for mention of a trans person's suicide before the story starts.
“sentenced the petitioner to a life term, but how long is a life?”
Sci Phi Journal is an online magazine that "wishes to provide a platform for idea-driven fiction, as opposed to the ‘character-driven’ mode that has come to predominate speculative fiction." A few short stories they've published: "Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Directors of CYBIMPLANT INC held at 10:00 AM on 14 May 2036" by Rick Novy (October 2020), the futuristic legal what-if "Habeas Corpus Callosum" by Jay WerkHeiser (January 2017; content note for rape), a fictional FIFA ruling in "Red Card" by Madeline Barnicle (June 2020), and an academic investigation of the missing Pope "John XX" by Timons Esaias (March 2020).
"The Kents didn't have an alarm system for him to disable"
"Clark Kent invites Bruce Wayne and Diana of Themyscira to his parents' house for Christmas. It goes, in general, pretty okay." "Christmas in Kansas" by unpretty is a cute, sweet, funny fanfiction piece about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman with tags "Christmas, Fluff, PTSD, the only real violence is in flashback form, aka that one scene that every single thing with batman has to have". An ebook with a pretty cover is available (although you can also download from Archive Of Our Own as ePub/MOBI/AZW3/PDF). Part of unpretty's "DC universe where moms are awesome and raise their kids right. Now with more melanin and queerness."
Coincidence, backstabbing, obligation, tradition, and tech support
Four scifi stories about jobs, loyalty, and navigating difficult politics and priorities. In the happiest of the four, "Happenstance" by Fran Wilde (2017), an engineer of serendipity has to subvert residents' expectations and a skeevy executive's plans. "Sweet Marrow" by Vajra Chandrasekera (2016) (audio) portrays the fraught relationship between a journalist and a government worker in a turbulent time. "Exile’s End" by Carolyn Ives Gilman (August 2020) is "a complex, sometimes uncomfortable examination of artifact repatriation and cultural appropriation." And in "Thank You For Your Patience" by Rebecca Campbell (March 2020), Mark's stuck doing tech support while the world slow-motion falls apart outside.
Exploration, separatism, yearning, and hopeful stories
Two short scifi stories about space programs run by brown and Black people: the optimistic "Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness" by Iona Datt Sharma (published August 2020) and the mostly optimistic "At the Village Vanguard (Ruminations on Blacktopia)" by Maurice Broaddus. Datt Sharma's story is also listed in Ladybusiness's recommendation list of eight short & sweet stories published in 2020: "I found all of these stories hopeful."
"smiling, creases around her eyes like a soft-worn blanket."
Arsenika "is a quarterly journal of speculative poetry and flash fiction." "Flash" means very short. "Mother?" by Cynthia So (starts with the protagonist's mother dead, but no new grief after that): "I came out to a moth, because I couldn’t come out to my mother." "Not an Ocean, But the Sea" by Nino Cipri: "The ocean behind the couch, she thought, had probably not been ordered from Ikea or Electrolux."
Fires, homemade pills, and gardens
Stories about how we cope with disasters, in the short and the long term. "Ambient and Isolated Effects of Fine Particulate Matter" by Emery Robin (horror-y), published in April, and the more hopeful "Growing Resistance" by Juliet Kemp (audio and text at that link), first published in August 2019. [more inside]
"The words barely stick in her throat at all."
"The Avengers’ training regime will start soon; today is for her to relearn the world." "Pour Back The Ocean" by imperfectcircle (Katherine Fabian) is a sweet fanfiction story depicting Wanda Maximoff after the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Age of Ultron. As the author puts it, "Wanda has to find a new place in the world. Contains team training exercises, expected grief and unexpected kindness." There are also cute dogs.
"I don't believe in haunted games," Carrie said. She was lying.
Four short fantasy stories in which unpleasant things happen to characters who (kinda?) seem to deserve them. "The Wolf and the Woodsman" by T. Kingfisher (a.k.a. Ursula Vernon), a darkly funny "Little Red Riding Hood" retelling about a That Guy. "The Vampire of Kovácspéter" by P H Lee (2020; author interview) is witty: "The village of Kovácspéter was plagued by a vampire, which was increasingly embarrassing." And "Nobody Gets Out Alive" by George R. Galuschak (2020), a thriller about a livestreaming celebrity getting back at her stalker. [more inside]
"Was it rude to tell your boss she was growing scales?"
Since September 1, 2010, Daily Science Fiction has published a new short scifi/fantasy story each weekday. The easiest way to navigate the archives is probably by story topic, so you get titles, author names, and excerpts (example). Here are six very short stories you might like. [more inside]
“you got two options. Wallow in guilt like a hero, or do something.”
Two short speculative stories featuring computers with consciousness. "Batteries For Your Doombot5000 Are Not Included" by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (published this year) is a light sf/f story about an ex-supervillain who gets a second chance at talking with a woman she had a crush on. "Applied Cenotaphics in the Long, Long Longitudes" by Vajra Chandrasekera (audio) is "an RFC 9481-compatible full personalytic profile recorded in Binara-Unduvap 2561 (Sep-Dec 2018 in the Christian calendar) at R. Satka's home and studio in the New City in the Autonomous Territory of Vilacem. The interview interprets itself in real time as each interviewer asks their questions...Since Satka's death, this interview is her primary being-in-the-world, and retains executive authority over her estate."
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"
Four sweet pieces of fan fiction in which characters watch election returns come in. The one for which you least need to know the underlying canon: "A Great and Gruesome Height" by Jae Gecko, a queer romance that pays homage to the Dar Williams song "Iowa" along with The West Wing. "It's 1998, Josiah Bartlet is the Democratic nominee battling sitting Republican President Lawrence Armstrong for the Oval Office, and back in Iowa, Republican campaign coordinator Megan Richter is about to fall from a great and gruesome height." (This is a Yuletide story, and you can sign up for this year's Yuletide exchange between now and 9am UTC on 26 October.) [more inside]
"I don't like the look in his eye as he watches me."
Three fantasy stories about magic, gender oppression, and fights that, as it turns out, aren't finished. "Many Mansions" by K.J. Parker, published September 2020, a sort of cat-and-mouse tale. "Charms" by Shweta Narayan, 2009: "Women's magic, she says, is like everything else. Not good enough for girls these days." "True Names" by Stephanie Burgis, 2009, is the most triumphant of the three: "The bell rings again while I'm still standing rigid as a rock in pure astonishment, right in the middle of the kitchen with a frying pan in my hand." [more inside]
"Three thousand bucks a blast. The council only bought one shot."
Two short, exciting scifi stories in which underdogs fight battles. "The Hard Quarry" by Caleb Huitt, published this year, has a solo asteroid miner outwitting pirates: "The only statement the regs make on going extravehicular at speed is not to." "Corporate Robo Renegade Piston" by Nicholas Sugarman (2017) has an underfunded mecha pilot strapping in to fight a kaiju: "it hurt his pride knowing his face was plastered onto a waffle iron. He sighed, comforting himself with the knowledge that at least he wasn't on the kaiju cleanup team."
"'Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,' said she."
Two stories about making shocking decisions to use color to change our perceptions. "The Regime of Austerity" by Veronica Schanoes (2009, science fiction): "These days there are a lot of gray people walking around in bright blue coats with green shoes. Lately it's become popular to use color on the inner walls of your home." "The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1832, allegorical/romantic/dark/didactic fiction): "On a nearer view it seemed to consist of two folds of crepe, which entirely concealed his features, except the mouth and chin, but probably did not intercept his sight, further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things." Kind of a Johnny Cash "Man in Black" vibe on that one. [more inside]
“You know that, right? You can do anything.”
Two scifi stories about the work we offload to robots. "Drones Don’t Kill People" by Annalee Newitz (a bunch of violence): "You learn a lot by seeing what people do when they think they’re in private. Most of it I found confusingly irrelevant to assassination." "Cleaning Lady" by J. Kyle Turner (no violence): "Her listing says All Cleaning Done By Hand so she makes a big show of unpacking her bag, laying out her tools, and rolling up her sleeves."
"It's an interesting flavor profile. It has potential."
"Baking Bad" by heyjupiter: "Jesse Pinkman and his former home-ec teacher Walter White are co-owners of Heisenbrew's Uncertainty, an up-and-coming food truck." A Breaking Bad fanfic with a happy ending, tags: "Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Father-Son Relationship, Drug Addiction, Recovery, Minor Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort". Found via capricorn on MeFi five years ago. Also: "Illicit Alchemy" by Eric Lewis (published this year), a short fantasy story about an alchemist who gets way deeper into her employers' business than she wants.
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