June was a month full of excellent speculative fiction, and hey, that seems to be the thing for every month. I picked 8 wonderful stories for my blog, and also featured 10 excellent stories in my roundup at B&N’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.
Revival, by
Lisa M. Bradley in Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“The preacher burns too bright to look at, bright as summer sun spearing the
tin-framed mirror in Tía’s parlor, and Carmen cowers before his gaze, as she
does before all mirrors, feeling the shadows shrink around her, every
supplicant incited.”
A dark, powerful, and moving story about Carmen, who visits the revival tent
set up by a traveling preacher on her family’s land and meets a strange and
mysterious man there who calls himself Swift. The preacher heals people with
various afflictions, and Swift has followed him, hoping to find a cure for a
mysterious ailment he won’t name at first. As Carmen becomes more and more
interested in Swift, the dangerous truth of his condition comes back to haunt
both him and Carmen. I just LOVE the character of Carmen, she is clever,
resourceful and devastatingly brave, a real fairy-tale heroine.
Mother Ocean, by
Vandana Singh in Current Futures
“In the ocean, Paro sometimes forgets she’s human. It’s partly because water is
her element, and water, as we all know, obscures, blurs and dilutes all
boundaries. She doesn’t remember the name her grandmother gave her when she was
born – it is lost among the fragments of memory that remain of those early,
difficult years.”
What can I say, except: this is a new story by Vandana Singh and you should
read it. It is about Paro who swims with and talks to a whale, it’s about
environmental destruction and hope. It is beautiful and full of darkness and
light. It’s part of Current Futures, an online anthology with stories by
amazing writers. Also, if you haven’t yet read Singh’s short story collection
Ambiguity Machines, it’s a definite must-read.
In the Beginning, by Tyhitia Green in Nightlight
Nightlight is a podcast featuring horror stories written and narrated by
Black creatives. This story by Green is harrowing and also flat-out fantastic.
A woman is being held captive by her husband in their home. She tries to find a
way to escape, but he will not let her. I won’t say much more about it, but do
give this a listen. It’s an unsettling horror tale that definitely will stay
with me.
A
Catalog of Love at First Sight, by Brit E.B. Hvide in Uncanny
Magazine
“Cold and wet and smacked with air. I scream until I feel a familiar heartbeat.
Smell of milk, and beyond that, the smell of lavender. Blooming in fields that
stretch to touch the horizon. Home. Safe. Warm. Warm like the burning sun in
the burning sky.”
There are many ways to tell a story about the apocalypse, about the harsh
and difficult world that might await us in the not too distant future. What
makes E.B. Hvide’s story stand out is the way she weaves in so much love and
hope and longing in a story that also holds a lot of despair and loss. A
beautifully told science fiction tale.
The Night Princes, by Megan Arkenberg in Nightmare
“I’m going to tell you a story,” she says. “And when the story is
finished, this will all be over.”
A gorgeously wrought story about Death, and about telling stories and
trying to care for each other, to keep fear and despair at bay while the
darkness falls. I love stories told within stories, and Megan Arkenberg creates
a wonderful, intimate world that burrowed into me as I read it and lingered
long after I stopped reading.
A Warm,
Dark Place in the Earth, Mackenzie Kincaid in Zooscape
“Gwyn the hedgewitch had her home in the ground.
It was a matter of comfort and practicality, because Gwyn had been a simple
badger before she’d ever been a hedgewitch, but it also tended to put off
visitors, which was just as Gwyn wished it.”
A wonderful, darkly funny fairytale (and it really feels like an old-school
fairytale) about a badger hedgewitch who takes on the task of building an
underground dwelling for a rich local nobleman and his….unusual… new wife.
Zooscape is a new acquaintance for me, they are “an e-zine of fantastic furry
fiction. Here the animals can talk, magic flows, and the stars are in reach.”
I’ve really enjoyed the tales in their current issue, and will be reading more!
Risk, by
Rachel Hylton in Foreshadow YA
“We, the sophomore girls of Carol Moseley Braun High School, would like to set
the record straight.
We were there for Marnie Vega long before she became a lobster.”
Foreshadow has become one of my favourite places for SFF fiction (though they
also publish mainstream fiction, most of their stories have some kind of
speculative vibe). This story is a great example of the kind of fiction they’ve
been publishing. It’s dark and strange and subtly funny, and features young
protagonists who have a mind, and a strong will, of their own. What happens
after Marnie turns into a giant lobster is both terrible and wonderful, and the
story captures both the rivalry, and the friendship, that can play out in a
group of young girls.
How
to Confront the Sphinx Haunting Your Garden, by Alexei Collier in Flash
Fiction Online
“The sphinx’s presence in your garden should come as no surprise. Sphinxes
make their homes in the cracks between realities, which abound in overgrown
gardens like yours.”
Flash Fiction Online is another one of my favourite zines, partly because I
love flash fiction so much, and also because FFO publishes some of the best
flash stories in the SFF field. This story mixes a sense of humour and whimsy,
but it’s also moving, in a quiet way.
(Originally published at mariahaskins.com)