Every month is a great month for speculative short fiction, but if we as readers and writers want to enjoy these stories we really should try to support the publications that bring these stories into the world.
If you read a story you like, even if it’s free to read online, and you have a few extra bucks kicking around, it’s a great idea to buy an issue, pick up a subscription, support them on Patreon, or throw some coins in their tip-jar if they have one.
Ava Paints the Horses, by Ville Meriläinen in Cast
of Wonders (narrated by Katrin Kania)
Some stories just grab you by the heart and soul and sink deep inside you
because they feel so painfully true and piercingly, devastatingly beautiful.
Meriläinen’s story about a young girl is quiet and subtle, and it brilliantly
captures the darkness and isolation that grief, depression, and sadness can
bring. With carefully crafted prose, Meriläinen also captures the way you see
the world, the way the world feels, when you’re in a dark place and
you don’t quite know how to get out of it. It is an exceptional piece of
fiction, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Impostor/Impostor,
by Ian Muneshwar in Black Static #65
A loving couple lives in what seems like domestic bliss, until one
partner’s mother comes to visit. As soon as she arrives (or maybe it starts
before?), the old woman’s presence eats away at their peaceful existence (or
was it perhaps already deteriorating beneath the surface?), and soon, seemingly
impossible things start to happen. Muneshwar’s story is a deliciously
disturbing slice of horror, twisting reality in small but strikingly effective
ways throughout the story, creating the kind of nightmare that feels like
everyday reality until it clearly is something else – something much, much
darker. Quiet and deadly sharp horror.
STET, by Sarah
Gailey in Fireside Fiction
This story is written as comments and footnotes to an academic paper.
Visually, that makes it rather different than most short stories I read. Using
this slightly unsettling form, Gailey tells a perceptive, powerful, and
thought-provoking story that explores grief and anger, human and artificial
intelligence (and the limits of both). It also explores the inability and
unwillingness of corporations, scientists, and governments to consider the way
their own prejudices might influence their work, and the risks and human costs
of business, and technological “progress”. I don’t have words to properly
explain how powerful and striking this unusual (and unusually brilliant) story
is, but I highly recommend it.
Dead Things,
by Becca De La Rosa in Shimmer
A lovely and singularly gorgeous story about death, and about how love
finds its way into the world of the dead, changing the people it touches. I
love how De La Rosa creates a vivid and evocative version of the afterlife that
is rooted in old myths and legends, yet manages to be strikingly original. This
story is from the penultimate issue of Shimmer, and if you want to
know what a “shimmery” story is, then this is a prime example. A brilliant piece
of deep, dark fantasy.
The
Analogue of Empathy by Joanna Berry in Interzone #277
A fascinating and gripping story about a future where a great war has taken
place. In the post-war world, still obsessed with defeating the other side, one
scientist is working on a project that involves artificial intelligence. He
receives his research-funding as part of a military project, but is secretly
trying to achieve a different kind of solution to the conflict. The story is
told from the point of view of the AI, and Berry vividly captures the
fragmented, adapting, and developing mind of the AI as it tries to make sense
of its purpose in the world. Riveting from start to finish.
Saudade,
by Nelson Rolon in Fiyah #8
Action-packed and as immersive as a really good movie, this is a
rollicking, multi-layered, and entertaining blast of science fiction that grabs
you by the gills from the first paragraph and does not. let. go. It follows the
trials and tribulations (and fights!) of Menino and Vida as they fight and
drink, duck and weave through a future that is shaped by powerful technology,
greedy corporations, and the struggle to survive no matter where in the solar
system you’ve ended up. Rolon’s story is full of fantastic world-building,
great dialogue, and the characters just pop off the page. A must-read
from Fiyah’s Pilgrimage issue.
This Will Not Happen To You, by Marissa Lingen in Uncanny
Magazine
“I got sick.
This will not happen to you.”
Lingen’s story from Uncanny’s special issue Disabled
People Destroy Science Fiction is a shatteringly powerful story about
a devastating disease caused by fungal spores, and the things we tell ourselves
to keep ourselves feeling safe and protected from what happens to “other
people”. We won’t get sick, we won’t be in
pain or need medical treatment we can’t afford, we will be
protected, we are safe in our lives and our bodies. Except, of
course, we’re not. Lingen’s prose gets under your skin, stripping away the
comforting lies we tell ourselves: “…everyone knows that if someone says
that it‘s 95% odds, that means no one you know will get it. Because
surely you don‘t know twenty people. You are not one in twenty people. Surely.”
Every word of this story carries so much weight and power.
The Inconvenient God, by Francesca Forrest published
by Annorlunda Enterprises
A richly layered and quietly subversive tale about what happens when a
community tries to get rid of a god who isn’t ready to be relieved of his
duties. That’s sort of the surface of the story – beneath that, this is also a
story that deals with questions of power and memory, language and history. I
love this story manages to go so deep without ever feeling heavy or ponderous,
and it made me think about things like how we choose to live our lives, what we
choose to fight for, and what we decide to dedicate our lives to. A wonderful
read.
(Originally published at mariahaskins.com)