419 posts tagged with shortstory.
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fast food, slow reflection, aliens, alienation, research, & authenticity
Graduate Assistant Four Fronds Turning had made the best guacamole that Mike had ever tasted in his original or post-revival life, and it was all wrong. "The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday #37" by Stephen Granade is a short, bittersweet science fiction story (published in April in Strange Horizons) in which Mike makes a few meals and a few friends. Content warnings are available behind the "show warnings" button at the top.
Sex, drugs, pedicabbing, a landscaping convention, and lots of dread
The convention seemed endless. We wandered into Hall J. Everywhere, people clamored to shake the Palm Tree Wholesaler’s hand, either nervously introducing themselves or trying to hide their dismay as they reminded him of their names. I asked if he had a booth at the conference, if he was here to sell trees, and he said, “I’m on the board of the association. I’m the keynote speaker this year.” from The Smoke of the Land Went Up a short story by Andrew Cominelli [Guernica]
“The Mist” is a novella
"half-remembered and half-created, neither real nor ideal"
Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. B. Pladek's new short fantasy story "The Spindle of Necessity" (published in the May 20th, 2024 issue of Strange Horizons) is a captivating, closely-observed story of longing, literary connection, insecurity, queer community, and how we make use of the past. I think this will resonate with a lot of readers who wrestle with questions about representation and what used to be called #OwnVoices in fiction, and mixed feelings about art we love. [more inside]
"Not-pleasant! I am causing you not-pleasant!"
The short science fiction story "Hello! Hello! Hello!" by Fiona Jones (published March 2024 in Clarkesworld) begins:
I express greetings and most joyful salutations!
I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your movement has been aimless, and I express concern!
"Animals speak their own language... it’s a lot simpler to figure out."
Ghosting
"Ghosting" by Kelly Lagor (2023) is an uncomfortable science fiction novella involving reinvention, memory, betrayal, drugs, sex, and a drier, hotter Southern California. She thought of her trunk, covered in stickers from places she could only confirm she’d been to by looking at entries she had no memory of putting in her diary. But these people were fellow like-minded misfits. They felt like a kind of home. She didn’t want to lie. Author's commentary.
"I wake up later and I can’t pretend anymore."
Maureen F. McHugh (previously) wrote two short scifi stories recently in which folks navigate modern uncertainty with a fantastical twist. In "The Goldfish Man" (2022), "Before everything went to hell I was making double vases." In "Liminal Spaces" (2024) (which feels in conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin's Changing Planes), "There was a broad corridor going off to the left that she definitely didn’t remember. It shook her out of her ruminations." [more inside]
“Maybe the kid in the hole was always a bad idea.”
WHY DON'T WE JUST KILL THE KID IN THE OMELAS HOLE, by Isabel J. Kim. An excellent Omelas riff that's just what it sounds like.
suffering most efficiently humanizes the unfeeling universe
Noted author, past North Carolina Poet Laureate, and beloved teacher Fred Chappell has died at the age of 87. Chappell at the Poetry Foundation. Chappell on PBS. Chappell at the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. [more inside]
It became real when I saw the list. When I saw the rubric.
The Placeholder Girlfriend // a short story by Conor Barnes.
"Knowing what is missing is an important first step."
Zachary Turpin (Commonplace, 10/2023), "Have You Seen Me?: Missing Works of Nineteenth-Century American Literature": "To students new to the study of nineteenth-century American literature, it may seem that the field has been so thoroughly studied and catalogued that there can be very little left to discover about it. This could hardly be further from the truth." Partially inspired by Johanna Ortner (2015), "Lost No More: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Forest Leaves": "Having done my secondary source reading on her, I knew that Forest Leaves was deemed lost. Call it my naiveté as a young graduate student, but I figured I might as well type in the title in the society's catalogue."
the difference between a story and a painting or photograph
From 1986, Susan Sontag's short story "The Way We Live Now." (SL New Yorker) (I only just came across this story yesterday and loved it and thought I would share it with you.)
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Call me Mister Diamond Hands.”
Government-approved “private detectives” and “private security services”—they have their exams and licenses, and all that crap. That’s gatekeeping meant to distract the sheeple from the power of peer-to-peer, decentralized, distributed knowledge. I didn’t need a stinkin’ badge. Crypto is a private banking system, and I was a private bank guard—that was easy.
Money in the Bank - new fiction from John Kessel and Bruce Sterling.
"I found it interesting and rewarding"
Jim Ray riffs on the satirical 2021 tweet about "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" with a short fiction story told as a thread on Mastodon starting: "Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about the launch of The Torment Nexus, the opening of the Xthonic Gateway, and release of the arch-demon Tzaunh MAY HIS REIGN BE DARK AND ETERNAL, who has begun his foretold 10,000 years of suffering and torment. I figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company." The skewerings in the 17 following posts call to my mind The Bug by Ellen Ullman or the Knives Out films. Ray noted, "The Call of PMthulu writes itself". [more inside]
"Instantly, we took a dislike."
The Little Widow From the Capital is a short story by Yohanca Delgado. It appears in the Best American Short Stories 2022. The link gives just the first three pages of the story but you can listen to it whole at NPR's Selected Shorts. Scroll down to "Best American Short Stories", story starts at 5min 30s. [more inside]
“What did you mean, ‘Not again?’”
A new wrinkle on the old story of three wishes, set after the end of the world. "As Good As New", by Charlie Jane Anders, published on Tor.com in 2014. "The door to the panic room wouldn’t actually open when Marisol finally decided it had been a couple months since the last quake and it was time to go the hell out there. She had to kick the door a few dozen times, until she dislodged enough of the debris blocking it to stagger out into the wasteland." A short fantasy story with no villain, where two people work together to make stuff. It’s a hopeful story -- with creativity and love and working together and systematic thought, we can turn things around.
“I just wanted to make food,” Lou said.
"Please be informed, the notification read, that your business, the Sunlight Cafe, has been designated a Moderately Impactful Business. This replaces your current designation as a Negligibly Impactful Business. The Moderately Impactful Business designation comes with increased governance requirements which are listed below. Note that our decision may be appealed and is considered probationary until the appeals process is complete." In the short scifi story "Sunlight" by Shauna Gordon-McKeon, one woman loves that the little café she runs with her wife has become a community space. But her wife doesn't. [Disclaimer: Shauna is a friend.]
Jormus! I hate that guy
"Egregore," by merritt k, is a short story about what happens when you make up a guy to get mad at and the guy gets mad at you back. [more inside]
love, beauty, sparkly song, shattering, joy
"Edie tilted her head to listen. It was catchy, full of bouncy rhythms. It made Edie think of sparkly outfits and dancing.....The name of the singer had been said so quickly, and besides that, all musicians gave themselves funny names. They’d done that even when Edie was young." In the short science fiction story "Always and Forever, Only You" by Iona Datt Sharma (previously on MetaFilter), a woman in "what the Sunshine Care Home called Independent Sheltered Living" experiences joy, heartbreak, and togetherness.
“the ‘aliens’ destroying this world are us”
“Heat Death” might not at first reading strike the reader as science fiction at all. It contains no bug-eyed monsters, interplanetary flights, postapocalyptic worlds, or technological marvels. It focuses not on outer space as much as it does inner space—notably that of a woman—and the geography of the mundane—that of the home and the supermarket—rather than the fantastic or extraordinary.– A Space of Her Own by Mary E. Papke, is an essay about Pamela Zoline and her 1967 science fiction story The Heat Death of the Universe.
rescue, bandages, and smoke
A few very different wish-fulfillment pieces of speculative fiction. Stories by lyricwritesprose and by dalekteaservice give us alien points of view on what humans could offer to a troubled universe. And in "Burning Men" by Maria Farrell, certain people start spontaneously combusting. (Author's commentary: it's "about a world where the cost of sexual violence is born by the perpetrators and how that changes everything" as well as "the mood music of brexit and covid.") [more inside]
that’s sweet and stings
beestung has published some glorious and heart wrenching stories recently. Beautiful Meanings in Beautiful Things by Avery Briar explores variations on intergenerational queer acceptance, both incomplete and unconditional. Goldie Peacock provides glimpses of nonbinary euphoria and stomaches in "2010" and "notes from the past 24 hours in my androgynous apartment" (content warning for drug use). [more inside]
"our duty of care outweighs such emotional considerations"
"We believe close partners should be candid with each other when misunderstandings occur. As such, we wish to respond to certain inaccurate statements made today by British officials and media regarding our archaeological activities." From MeFi's own adrianhon, a short science fiction story: "The Taking of Stonehenge".
"i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing"
Do you perhaps like your historical/fantasy fiction short and silly? "first day as a second century warlord..." starts a 16-paragraph farce of mistakes, crucial conversations gone wrong, and accidental intrigue. Found via unpretty.
a funnel, the tinsel, sifting, forgetting, remembering
Here, have 2 heartwrenching short speculative fiction stories where parents, trying their best, say or do terrible yet ordinary things; their children eventually find imperfect ways to cope or heal. "Coming Through in Waves" by Samantha Murray -- content notes at the top -- "[My mother's] sentences all sound … reasonable on the surface. She’s pulling any immediate clues from the environment, from my expression, from words that knit well together, to cover the gaping wound which is her mind.". Summary of "Sand" by Jasmin Kirkbride: When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done. And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
Collaboration?
To stop comparing myself to her. I can't help but envy the lives of those pairs who are perfect complements. One acts, the other manages. One writes, the other edits. The model inspiring the artist. The muse amusing her echo. Or even both doing the exact same job, wearing the same clothes, favoring the same perfumes, marrying the same man-nɒm. How lovely that must be, to be at ease with your reflection, to never be alone, to always have a partner. [more inside]
In the Stacks (Maisie's Tune)
In the Stacks (Maisie's Tune) by Robin Sloan is both a synthesizer with knobs you can fiddle with and a short story you can read.
"The warlock said, 'These are not new jokes.'"
Three fantastical stories about trying to heal. "Isabel said, 'I think I’m being possessed.' You said, 'You’re not being possessed.' You also said, 'Don’t be so dramatic,' which you would later look back on and regret." "Spirochete" by Anneke Schwob (please note the content warnings on that page) has a demanding friendship and a chronic illness. “Did you regret what you said before Carl passed?” "Reprise" by Samantha Lane Murphy (please note the content warnings on that page too) portrays the end of a car ride, over and over. "Traditional witches and green witches don’t always see eye to eye. With a life on the line, Berthe is very persuasive." "Berthe the Green Witch" by Catelyn Winona (Caffeine and Magix on Tumblr) features a snob getting comeuppance. [more inside]
"the service, which centred on themes of growth and renewal"
Iona Datt Sharma (previously) is a lawyer and author of science and fantasy fiction that I love and frequently recommend. They often write about the legal and social infrastructure of fantastical places. "Are you here to bang on about cultural ties and the longitudinal view of history?" "Light, Like a Candle Flame" (2017) reckons with the aftermath of a generation ship, sewage treatment, and the fear of "repeating all the old mistakes". "And it is the oldest settled law of our people that where signene lies, no cause of action can." "One-Day Listing" (2014) depicts attorneys taking care of refugees and each other, and grief. [more inside]
"resentment is an essential survival skill"
A few short scifi pieces by BIPOC authors whose work I love and I frequently recommend. "As a low-quality person waiting for slaughter, Helena understands how those cows feel." "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (January 2017) (previously) portrays a beef forger, stuck with an awful job, who makes an unexpected friend. "I’m a very expensive prototype but there will be efficiencies at scale." "Left of Bang: Preemptive Self-Actualization for Autonomous Systems" by Vajra Chandrasekera (April 2017), on training in surviving and committing violence, is short and brutal. [more inside]
"I grabbed a seat in the reality opposite her."
Three short science fiction stories written by people of color and published this year (and thus eligible for you to nominate for 2022 awards). "there’s official information, but it’s never enough. And there are rumors, but you can’t trust them. This is almost like…in between." "Shared Data" by Malka Older imagines us joining forces to share information as mutual aid. "What he wanted was to leave reality." "Simulations" by Danilo Campos portrays an AI who gives a tech CEO surprising advice. Vaughn reached inside herself experimentally, tentatively, looking for anger, and found only fear again. "All That Burns Unseen" by Premee Mohamed depicts firefighting, eldercare, and a new friend. [more inside]
"I can’t tell you what a relief it was to find this place!"
Two short speculative stories, written by people of color, that use a fantastically cozy teashop and restaurant to depict comfort and care. "Speaking of the service! They’re LGBTQ+ and undead-friendly, obviously, so that’s a plus." "Review for: Izakaya Tanuki" by J. L. Akagi praises a hard-to-find ozoni vendor. "Who’s that interesting hominid you were talking to?" In "Liz's Tea House" by Rodrigo Culagovski (MetaFilter's Own signal), space newbie Ana stumbles through a lot of beloved scifi stories on the way to making a home for herself. [more inside]
We are a family that has always been very close in spirit.
Goodbye, My Brother is a short story by John Cheever. ""What are the realities?" he said. "Diana is a foolish and a promiscuous woman. So is
Odette. Mother is an alcoholic. If she doesn't discipline herself, she'll be in a hospital in a year or
two. Chaddy is dishonest. He always has been. The house is going to fall into the sea." He looked at me and added, as an afterthought, "You're a fool."
"You're a gloomy son of a bitch," I said. "You're a gloomy son of a bitch."" [more inside]
"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".
Djibouti
"Madam, where you from?", asks the driver as they crawl under the Stepney bridge. His accent sounds gruff and manufactured. She squints at his nametag on the dashboard, but without her glasses there is only a smudge that extends the length of the photograph. In Sri Lanka, every stranger has an opinion on her. She sees it beneath each unctuous smile. In Europe, no one knows nor cares, so she gets to be from wherever she chooses. These days, her job is to brag about her country to strangers who couldn't care less. [more inside]
"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]
Whatever the fresh hell this is, leave me out of it
Greg Egan's Dream Factory is a story about the ethics of turning cats into entertainment devices with brain electrodes.
"I found myself at a total loss"
Machado de Assis (1870), "Captain Mendonça": "'So you think her eyes are pretty?' 'As I said, they have the rarest beauty.' 'Would you like to have them?' the old man asked." Quotes from other stories by Machado de Assis appear throughout Paul Christopher Johnson's prize-winning open access book Automatic Religion, which "reanimates one of the most mysterious ... questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?" in discussions of "hysteria" and Charcot's monkey [PDF], the trial of a "possession priest," the popular saint Escrava Anastácia [PDF], Ajeeb the chess automaton, the spiritist Chico Xavier, Locke's Brazilian parrot, and more. See also suggestions made by P. Gabrielle Foreman, et al., in "Writing about Slavery/Teaching about Slavery: This Might Help."
"I don’t personally vet every prophecy that comes through these halls"
Catelyn Winona (Caffeine and Magix) has published several short stories or vignettes recently that subvert epic fantasy or superhero tropes. Here are three: "No Heroes Here" ("Daz was raised by a hero. That’s probably why she isn’t one."); a piece in which the Chosen One immediately takes up the Dark Lord's offer to join their cause; and "Wizards Stole My Brother" ("Being the Chosen One fucking sucks. That’s why Erika is furious when she finds out her brother got picked.").
"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.]
"This thing is the most difficult for a person to understand"
A brief survey of the short story, part 56: Clarice Lispector (+ a few stories) - 'In Brazil (her family, fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms, emigrated from Ukraine in 1921 when she was still an infant), Clarice Lispector became that unusual combination: an avant-garde artist who is also a household name. Fame arrived in the 1960s, two decades after she published her first book and a decade before she died, aged 56, from ovarian cancer. She had no particular desire for fame, just as she had no particular desire to be identified as an experimental writer. She never understood why readers found her work opaque, while the fact that she consistently attempted new things in her writing was, for her, simply necessary to her aim: "In painting, as in music and literature, what is called abstract so often seems to me the figurative of a more delicate and more difficult reality, less visible to the naked eye."' [more inside]
"reform all the tawdry inefficiencies"
"Running Walden Three is not a feel-good exercise. It is a job, and it is a difficult one. We can make an executive love Walden Three, but we can’t make a fool into an executive." "Tomorrow’s Dictator" is a short, dark scifi story by Rahul Kanakia, published in 2012, in which it's hard to hire good brainwashers, er, community managers.
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".
It was always summer on the mountain.
Wood Sorrel House is a short (horror?) story by Zach Williams. Content warning for themes of child neglect and abuse. The author discusses his story here. Archive link.
“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.
Family reconciliation near the risen water
"The distance from the Stop & Go to his childhood home is the length of time it took to eat a bag of spicy pork skins and throw the evidence in a neighbor’s garbage can so his mom wouldn’t know he’d been ruining his dinner. But he’d measured it in a teenage boy’s appetite, and the walk seems quicker now. The streets narrower, the telephone poles shorter, the sky closer, everything more squat, and the gritty smell of the marsh clinging on even two blocks up the street." "Babang Luksa" by Nicasio Andres Reed is a short speculative story published last month in Reckoning, a journal of creative writing on environmental justice.
Bitrot that doesn't kill posts makes them stronger
> comp.basilisk - Frequently Asked Questions :: Is it just an urban legend that the first basilisk destroyed its creator?
Almost everything about the incident at the Cambridge IV supercomputer facility where Berryman conducted his last experiments has been suppressed and classified as highly undesirable knowledge. It's generally believed that Berryman and most of the facility staff died. Subsequently, copies of basilisk B-1 leaked out. This image is famously known as the Parrot for its shape when blurred enough to allow safe viewing. B-1 remains the favorite choice of urban terrorists who use aerosols and stencils to spray basilisk images on walls by night. But others were at work on Berryman's speculations... [more inside]
Almost everything about the incident at the Cambridge IV supercomputer facility where Berryman conducted his last experiments has been suppressed and classified as highly undesirable knowledge. It's generally believed that Berryman and most of the facility staff died. Subsequently, copies of basilisk B-1 leaked out. This image is famously known as the Parrot for its shape when blurred enough to allow safe viewing. B-1 remains the favorite choice of urban terrorists who use aerosols and stencils to spray basilisk images on walls by night. But others were at work on Berryman's speculations... [more inside]
Tomorrow is Waiting (Still)
brainwane has posted extraordinary numbers of wonderful stories to MetaFilter - but my very favorite was posted back in 2013. "Tomorrow Is Waiting", a short science fiction story by Holli Mintzer, published in Strange Horizons, finds a student's half-hearted AI project gone delightfully out of control. It is the best story about Kermit the Frog you will ever read. Author Holli Mintzer appeared in the original post. Happy Doubles Jubilee!