372 posts tagged with story.
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Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists for the Nebula Awards. [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.
"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."
What's an Enter Key?
A story about plumbing and people, and a man called Fran: Here was the amazing thing—both men were skilled, even brilliant plumbers.
They loved to talk about their craft, and I enjoy being around people like that.
They told stories about horrible, disgusting situations they’d been involved in,
Ones that left them covered in shit or “things you don’t want to know about.”
They admired our guest-room bathroom’s toilet, where the smoke had been.
It was vintage. “That is one of the best flushing toilets ever made,” Greg said.
He assured me that some people would pay real money to own one of those.
Better Living Through Algorithms
Naomi Kritzer has a new story out. An app that tells you what to do? Turns creepy, then beneficial/friendly, takes turns that fit with our era. Somewhat reminiscent of Cat Pictures Please. [more inside]
Refresh your memory for the next big Zelda game.
Relive the Story of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild [Story Recap Trailer][YouTube][Spoilers] “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is only a week [2 days, 16 hours, 12 min.] away from release, and many Nintendo Switch owners may be saying to themselves, “Oh, yeah, what exactly happened in Breath of the Wild?” After all, it’s been more than six years since Breath of the Wild landed on Switch (and Wii U), and a refresher may be in order. [...] To get players back up to speed for Link’s next adventure, Nintendo has condensed the story of Breath of the Wild into a six-minute video. It explains why Link was taking a 100-year nap, reminds you of Zelda’s very important role in containing the evil of Calamity Ganon, and touches on where Link and Zelda wound up at the end of the game. A good portion of Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild story recap video is about the century before the events of the game itself, and it’s pretty high-level stuff. The video doesn’t touch on many of the side characters or supplementary stories of Breath of the Wild, but it’s a solid primer for players jumping into Tears of the Kingdom.” [The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Trailers: #1 #2 #3]
Question Mark, Ohio
Question Mark, Ohio is a new immersive internet mystery from Joe Meno and Dan Sinker that attempts to recapture the wonder of the early internet; follow along on Instagram as Violet Bookman investigates the case. More about the project here and here.
man is unsure if the woman at the yoga spot is flirting w him
yoga dad bod “You look really cute in your yoga outfit,” she said. Cute? Who did she think she was talking to? This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me—ever. I was wearing red athletic shorts and a yellow hoodie. I am not a fashion expert, but I know enough about fashion to know that my “outfit” was nothing to write home about, unless of course, you happen to be a correspondent for the Unfashionable Male. “My wife picks out my clothes,” I blurted out. “I just grab whatever is clean, and throw it on.”
The Lathe of Heaven
Kelly Link in Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin's Genuine Magic - "It is also, notably, Le Guin's deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick's territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other's work and occasional correspondents." [more inside]
Books of the Year, etc.
In a long article similar to a recent Meta, "The White Review asks friends and contributors what books they've enjoyed reading and rereading." This year, Sofia Samatar (previously) suggests books such as Amina Cain's A Horse at Night: On Writing, and Elvia Wilk (previously) suggests books such as Ned Beauman's Venomous Lumpsucker. [more inside]
Far out!! Wow!! YES!! Lynda Barry #1!!
New York Times Magazine: A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous [more inside]
"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.").
"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.
"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 Whole Forming a Constellation of Horror!!!
Ann Lemoine, publisher (1800 [1st ed.]), New Lights from the World of Darkness; or the Midnight Messenger; with Solemn Signals from the World of Spirits: "The wife of a very eminent bookseller in the city, who died soon after her husband, in 1790, used frequently to appear to a friend of her husband's, near Charles's Square, entirely encircled in a thick blue vapour, and which, upon her disappearing, always left a very strong scent." At The Women's Print History Project (home of a database listing >10k publications), Sara Penn discusses "England's First Female Chapbook Publisher" and "Ann Lemoine's 'Haunted Castle'" [the text]. See also Jonathan Barry's publishing history of supernatural tales [PDF] and Angela Koch's checklist of Gothic bluebooks. Previously: Weird Tales from the 18th Century.
"And if your boyfriend has wings: how?"
"This is a story about how you are not supposed to knit a sweater for your boyfriend." "Entanglement, or How I Failed to Knit a Sweater for My Boyfriend," is a short story by Carrie Vaughn featuring the dreaded "sweater curse" and how to knit for the man who has wings. Interview with the author about the story's origins can be found here. [more inside]
"In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange"
Christine Riding, "Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime": Being "a subject that encourages the spectator to imagine 'pain and danger' and 'self-preservation,' 'without being actually in such circumstances' may well be why shipwreck ... was suited to the sublime." Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator [PDF; chapter summaries: 1 + 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]: "Humans live their lives and build their institutions on dry land. Nevertheless, they seek to grasp the movement of their existence above all through a metaphorics of the perilous sea voyage." Supplementing many previouslies, a number of shipwreck narratives offer further occasions for reflection. [more inside]
True Philippine Ghost Stories
Romano Santos (Vice, 10/27/2021), "Remembering the Thrill of Reading 'True Philippine Ghost Stories'": "'Very chilling stories, indeed. I can't imagine ever seeing someone's doppelgänger. But for sure, I am not looking forward to seeing mine,' Mendoza said. As gripping as these stories are, she believes the books offer something much deeper than an easy scare." True Philippine Ghost Stories #1 [Internet Archive].
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."
"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]
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.)
"they were persuaded by the immediacy of suffering"
"Byzantine Empathy" is a novelette by Ken Liu about virtual reality, moral reasoning, atrocities, institutional philanthropy, geopolitics, and two very determined women at odds with each other. Content note: violence, including harm to children.
Three and/or Sixty-One Literary Bears
Patricia Lockwood (LRB, 08/12/2021), "Pull Off My Head": "Is Bear one of those 1970s books about growing out your armpit hair? Kind of, but not only. Is it a metaphor for our relationship to nature? Fuck off." Marlena Williams (LitHub, 10/23/2020), "Sylvia Plath... Nature Writer?": "'The Fifty-Ninth Bear' taught me about the darker, sulfuric thing bubbling under the surface of love, and I became a person suspicious of heterosexual romance, uninterested in marriage." Naomi Ishiguro (Granta, 02/03/2020), "Bear": "For a moment I was almost proud of her, even if it did mean we had to bring back this vast sixty-five-pound bear, to share our home with us."
"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".
"'Is this everything you will be trading in?' I ask. "
"Retriever" by Stephen Kearse is a short science fiction story about an employee of the United States Federal Gun Retrieval Agency: "I’m an agent of the 28th Amendment, the abolition of the 2nd." Published October 2020.
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".
Castles in the Sky
"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]