Maria's Reading: Maria's Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Short Fiction Roundup #7 2024

The artwork for this roundup includes a detail of the cover art for FIYAH #31 by Kaitlin Edwards. Find out more about the artist at https://www.instagram.com/kaitlin_june/.

And to Their Shining Palaces Go by Betsy Aoki in Asimov’s September/October 2024

When my parents heard I was selected to serve in the Alariel’s shining palaces, I think it broke them.
Letters made of actual paper were so expensive that I ran as soon as the drone handed the envelope to me. I banged open the front door of our tiny apartment and rushed into my mother’s study.
Shaking, I broke the filmy seal and read them my acceptance to become a worker-in-residence in the San Francisco Dome. I was to work with the Alariel on the Great Game, the global virtual experience that tied humanity together and kept the peace with our interplanetary overlords.

After an alien invasion (which is followed by a lot of destruction and death), giant glittering domes appear in cities across the world and the brightest minds on Earth are called to work there, including Mayumi. The project, a game, is meant to benefit humanity but is also a scientific investigation and/or experiment by the aliens. It's a virtual reality everyone on Earth plays, and when Mayumi is called, she is thrilled (in spite of her parents' misgivings). Once she arrives, she is awed by the tech the aliens are using, but she eventually encounters the dark side behind the glittering curtain. I especially like how Aoki allows for shades of grey for both the alien overlords and the other characters as Mayumi's compliance and admiration change into confusion and horror, and then into resistance. Aoki gives us such a rich and textured world and a cast of characters, human and alien, that is compelling and complex. It's a story that has stuck with me long after reading.

"And to Their Shining Palaces Go" is a stand-alone story set in the Many Worlds shared multiverse.

What He Woke by Jess Whitecroft at PseudoPod (narrated by Kat Day)

Everything was woke. Lawyers were woke. The media was woke. Even Strictly was woke now, with same sex couples dancing together and all. Blue hair, almond milk, lattes, tofu, lifeboats, LGBTQ or however many letters they had in it these days – all dreadfully woke. The condemnation of tofu as a malign left-wing influence should have been a tip-off really, especially coming from the lips of the Home Secretary herself, but it was still a shock when Caroline discovered that even her breakfast was woke now.

A savagely hilarious horror story that is both brilliant, funny, and razor-sharp. Present-day politics mingled with horror makes for one heck of a combo here, and the narration adds another layer of awesome to this story. Also: DO NOT miss Alasdair Stuart's outro! I mean it!

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune in Reactor

He goes to a mirror. Looks at his reflection. He doesn’t look like Jesse or Jenna or Ronnie or Simon. He does not have hair on his head or face. He does not have eyebrows. His lips are thin. Ears small. He pulls at the skin on his face and arms that covers metal and wires. It stretches, stretches, and when he lets go, it snaps back into place.

A thought enters his head, foreign and loud. Run, it tells him. You could run. See how far you can get before the fail-safe triggers. Perhaps it’s farther than you think.

One of my favourite science fiction stories that I've read this year. Klune's story is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and bittersweet story about an android who has known nothing but work, wor, and more work his whole life, and has now come to the end of his lifespan. At the end, the android gets a few days to live his life in the outside world, to meet people, to do something other than work, before he has to report back to be destroyed and recycled. There's a tenderness to this quietly devastating story that broke my heart.

Rachel Is at a Protest, by Esther Alter in The Deadlands

There’s a new speaker, a Palestinian immigrant. He’s condemning Israel’s use of white phosphorous. He starts to describe how the weapon burns its victims’ clothing and skin before he abruptly stops, overcome by emotion. The crowd, maybe a couple hundred people, is shouting “SHAME! SHAME!” at Israel. Loudest of all are the handful of Jews. Not in our name. Never again.

Any story that deals with the conflict between Israel and Palestinians is going to cut and bruise you, and that is certainly true of Alter's powerful and unflinching tale. This story is excellent but gutting and I highly recommend reading Catherine E. Tobler's Editor's Note for this issue of The Deadlands before reading "Rachel Is at a Protest".

Way Up In De Middle Of De Air By Jamie Roballo in Fiyah #31

“I musta been thirteen, the night the stars fell.”

Papa Ezekiel sits in the rocking chair, boards creaking as the ancient porch sags beneath his weight. His hand drums on the arm rest, and a flake of the long-faded paint drifts down to the boards below. June watches it fall. She loves to watch things fall.

“Tell me again,” she says. She’s heard the story as long as she’s been alive; hell, like as not she’s heard it longer.

Roballo's story is a quiet and lyrical with a heart-piercing emotional sharpness that gave me goosebumps as I read it. June's grandfather is telling her the story of a starfall he experienced as a child, a story he has told her before, but this time he is telling the story to her in a different way, revealing a secret at the heart of it that changed him and maybe changed the world.

The Darkness Between the Stars by Richard Thomas in Lightspeed

Buddy and I were the only kin either of us had left, really, the only ones we could trust. The summer days were dwindling and the final year lay before us. Beyond that, trade schools, and sorted employment, mundane tasks, and a vague promise of marital bliss—an apparent guarantee of soft flesh that we hardly understood.

Thomas's story is a coming-of-age tale woven into a story of time travel that beings on an old, dilapidated fairground, giving me vibes of both Bradbury and Stephen King. One twist I appreciated here is that the starting point for the story is not our present but a near future version of our world. There's a wistful tinge to the horror in Thomas's prose that really resonated with me.

Our Lady of the Clay by Daniela Tomova in Apex

No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here like Ansel has. He knows it by the way the ground softens underfoot and becomes springy like the flesh of a mushroom; by the way the dry weeds and runty wild apples start to lean back, as if recoiling; by the stars above.

A harrowing story about a terrible tragedy and a desperate attempt to set things right by appealing to a mysterious power. The real world entwines so tightly with the darkest kind of fairytale and magic here, and at the end, maybe a glimmer of light.

A Botanist’s Guide to Memory and Forgetting by E. M. Linden in Small Wonders

Plants that wipe memories are illegal, and for good reason. Too much potential for misuse, or just miscalculation. I don’t mean potatoes or hops, fermented into alcohol. I mean the real stuff, the heavy-duty blank-slate memory launders. Cloud-frond, for example. Too strong a dose will scour everything away, from the name of your lover to how to boil an egg. Too weak and it’ll backfire; whatever you try to forget will haunt you forever.

Oh, what a beautifully twisted little tale about memory and forgetting. I love the enigmatic and looping nature of the story. It's sharp, with some barbs and maybe some poison in the mix.

The Goddess of Loneliness and Misfortune by Anna Bendiy in Khoreo

Bohdana takes a sip. Scrunches up her nose. Then smiles. Baba Dasha hasn’t gotten any better at this over the years. Or maybe it’s the tired, untilled soil—too bitter to make good wine, no sweetness left for the grapes. Bohdana’s mother would say, This land eats everything up. You stay here long enough, myla, it will eat you up, too.

This is a wonderfully quirky and piercing story that includes a grumpy, grouchy goddess who looks nothing like you'd expect from a divine being, but that doesn't mean she doesn't wield some power. For me, this story captures the feeling, good and bad and points in between, of coming home and finding that both the place you returned to, and you, have changed. I love the way Bendiy eschews maudlin sentimentality, and instead goes for the harder, deeper truths of family, memory, grief, and belated homecomings.

In Tandem by Emilee Prado in Diabolical Plots

Sephina first noticed me when we were partnered for the three-legged race. It was Field Day, the last hurrah of eighth grade. I wasn’t quite as tall as her, wasn’t quite as lithe, but when we set off, it was as if our hips and knees and ankles were pistons that had always fired together. “One, two, one, two, one, two,” we counted, miles ahead of the others. We were surging so full of glee that we stumbled over the finish line and tumbled hard into the grass. But still, we’d won.

I love stories about friendship, and I love twisted stories about friendship. This one is definitely a twisted friendship story, and it's also an absolute delight. It has darkness and tragedy, it has a real edge, but it also captures the warmth and the fun that brought the friends together in the first place, long before the darkness overwhelmed them.

Operating Within Normal Parameters by Irette Y. Patterson in Translunar Travelers Lounge

Things run out. Everyone knows that. That’s life. But I never knew the last time I said goodnight – her in her cradle, me in my bed, would be the last time we’d talked. There was no warning, none at all.

I’d gotten back from my silver sneakers walk with the gang and she’d already been settled in her cradle. I didn’t think much of it at the time, suspecting it may be because she was older like me. After all, already her manufacturer had started pinging me about possible upgrades.

I've said it before: I am a sucker for wistful, bittersweet robot stories (really, I'm a sucker for most robot stories), and Patterson's tale is a beautifully told science fiction tale with a robot at its center. It's a a story about loneliness, and about overcoming loneliness, and it's about finding a purpose and companionship even when you thought you couldn't. This is gentle, hopeful scifi, and I love every bit of it.

Once There Was Water by Katie McIvor in The Dark

In the cold dawn light, they carry the child out of the big house and down to the pond. The water is grey with submerged ice, striated mud frozen hard to its banks, and the reeds are swollen within whitish sheaths. The child is sickly. It shrieks and shrieks as they lower its thin body into the water.

This story winds its way through centuries, through geology, through the water. I love the way this movement through time, and through the landscape, gives the story its texture and presence. There's a darkness there, a strange and mostly hidden magic that stirs or sleeps and can be woken. McIvor gives the story a rich, haunting, gothic vibe and it's the kind of horror that pulls you deeper and deeper into the darkness as the story is told.

There’s Always a Dragon by Jac Morris in Kaleidotrope

Maddie straddles the branch of the lilac tree, her skirt bunched up to her waist, but there’s no one to see her knickers and in any case the lime-green leaves hide everything except her scuffed school shoes. Tree bark chafes her thighs. It’s a price she’s willing to pay for riding bareback on a flying horse above the jungles of Africa. The air is heavy with floral scent, a potion created by an Archimage to befuddle and bewitch. Bees buzz in the center of the purple flowers, doing all they can to save Maddie from enchantment.

A brilliant and shattering story about childhood and the power of storytelling and fantasy. I love how this story captures the way a child thinks about stories, about imagination, and how it shows that playing out in the context of a very real and sometimes terrible world.