The artwork for this roundup includes a detail of the cover of Lightspeed #172 by Tithi Luadthong (aka Grandfailure) / Shutterstock. More about the artist at https://tithi-luadthong.pixels.com/.
In
Haskins by Carson Winter at PseudoPod, narrated by Jess Lewis
At the fairgrounds, Jennifer arrived early to help set the stage. Her eye sockets hung loose and rubbery around her blue eyes. She was the first Jennifer to have blue eyes. The mane on top of her head was coarse and tawny. Flies buzzed in her stomach and she was thankful she was Jennifer because Jennifer always had to stay busy.
Obviously I had to read this story because it (literally) has my name on it, and wow, it's a knockout. It's unsettling and disturbing in a way that goes deeper than just freaky masks (and there are a lot of freaky masks in this story). The way Winter digs into the way we expect others to act, the way we assume roles, get assigned roles, get stuck in roles not of our own choosing, the way we judge others by the roles we've assigned them... all these things simmer beneath the surface of the rubbers masks in Haskins. It makes this a story that crept in under my skin and will likely stay there for a good while.
*
Colony
by Ben Murphy at Many Worlds
Fully three cycles had passed since their introduction into the universe, but neither Iyna nor Wem felt comfortable in their bodies. Flight, in particular, was a challenge, their wings easily used when they weren’t thinking about it but clumsy as soon as conscious control entered the equation. Iyna was vexed to be on equal, and awkward, footing with Wem, so many years her junior, but few cartographer-priests had passed time as a Coleomordax, which she felt was an acceptable excuse.
Fair warning that I am a a member of the Many Worlds collective, so I do have some interest in this story since it's published there, but beyond that, this is just a really great science fiction story. It has insectoid aliens, multiuniverse-academia, a hive in space, and it explores the complexities of belonging and identity when you're working undercover for science (indeed assuming a different body for that purpose), but find yourself unexpectedly becoming part of the society you are supposed to be studying. The ending is both tender and devastating, and there's a harrowing sense of loss and sadness running through every bit of this story.
*
Five
Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachael K. Jones in Lightspeed
Once a decade, a titanium-nosed shuttle plows through the rings of the planet Tartarus with a new batch of prisoners destined for the Orpheus Factory. The debris that makes up the rings is so thick that it thunders like a hailstorm, deafening the passengers. As the orbiting debris bounces and scrapes against the hull, the prisoners squeeze their eyes closed and beg the pilot to be more careful.
A perfectly constructed piece of flash fiction, building a world and a universe with beautifully effective strokes. Just over 500 words, and that's all that's needed. There's the mythology lurking beneath the science fiction (Tartarus, Orpheus), as Jones paints a picture of the prison planet, and in the end, the full darkness and tragedy of what is happening is revealed.
GaaS
by Meg Elison in Lightspeed
“How long do I have to have my membership with Juno before he proposes?”
“Well, is he subscribed, too?”
“Lifetime with Venus.”
“Girl.”
“What?”
“You got the wife package and he’s on the new-girl-every-week program. He’s never gonna propose.”
Lana sighed. “It’s been four years. We’ve been happy! Why not lock this thing down?”
Cryptid Car
Rental by Allison Pottern in Trollbreath Magazine
33 REPLIES:
1. Re: CRYPTID CAR RENTAL ANY GOOD????
Posted: 10-10-23
By: undead_darling149hi @veggie_dana, yes i have used cryptid many times and they are very affordable and discreet. but know they only take cash or blood donation.
This story is from the first issue of Trollbreath Magazine, "a journal of speculative fiction, poetry, and non-fiction... Our interests are as varied as the endless amount of genres, from dark fantasy to hope punk to surrealism, and everything in between." It's a very promising first issue and this story is a delightfully funny, quirky piece where we see a story unfold in the form of online posts, including several posts by "Abbadon the Despoiler, Supreme Ruler of the Bottomless Pit."
*
They Remember
Faces by Leo Oliveira in Radon Journal
I’ve never desired the crushing weight of a spotlight either (lest my poor bones shatter), nor have I harbored much need for luxuries beyond hot water and a stove. My childhood weaned me on charity: first with the roof my father shared, then with the opportunities the ravens traded me.
If you're a lover of birds, and of crows in particular, then this story is deliciously gruesome, dark, and grimly satisfying. A lesson learned: don't mess with corvids.
*
New
In Town by Corey Farrenkopf in Weird Horror #9
There is a crypt in the cemetery in the center of town. There is someone inside the crypt. Everyone in town knows who’s inside the crypt, but they won’t tell you. No name is written on the outside of the crypt. Just a date and a once-ornate angel with most of her details worn smooth with age. You are new in town. Your neighbors refuse to call you neighbor…not until you enter the crypt. Until you come out of the crypt. That is, if you come out of the crypt.
This is such a deliciously haunting, chilling, strange tale. I love how the narrating voice comes closer and closer in the telling, and by the end, it's right there next to you. Do you want to be part of this community? Are you ready to enter the crypt? Or are you not quite ready for it yet?
*
Another
Old Country by Nadia Radovich in Apparition Lit
There are at least three stories here. There’s a bird, there’s a goddess, there’s a high school student—they’re either three stories, or they’re the same one. For now, I’ll tell it like three.
Several stories - myth and legend and fairytale, past and present - entwine so beautifully in this story. I love the flow of the story and the way the stories come together and apart, creating a weave of tales. Gorgeous from start to finish.
*
Mammoth
by Manish Melwani in Nightmare Magazine
If you haven’t seen it yet, you will.
Three hooded figures sit cross-legged on the floor of a candle-lit warehouse. There’s something strange about the middle one: its torso somehow both too long and too hunched. The figure flickers, like a transcription error in crimson candlelight.
It gets stranger.
Nightmare keeps publishing some astoundingly good horror short fiction, and this story got me in all the best ways. It is eerie, creepy, chilling, with a voice that is strangely beguiling and also terrifying as the point of view seems to shift in the telling. This feels like the kind of story that is whispered in your ear in the dark, scaring the the crap out of you.
*
#000000:
From the Permanent Collection by LeeAnn Perry in Strange Horizons
Black Quadrangle, Mesolithic era
Unknown
Charcoal on sandstone
This work, created c. 15,000 BC (17,000 AS), precedes earliest surviving written texts. It was rediscovered alongside human remains and burnt carbon deposits, suggesting a role in a burial, sacrificial, or remembrance ritual.
Haunting and evocative, this story draws a story from a series of descriptive passages. I love how it tells a truly epic of tale of art, AI, humans, human society, space exploration, science, the fate of humanity, and what comes after, through these descriptions. A piece to read, savour, and re-read.
*
“Manywhere,
Manyone, Manything” by NM Whitley in Seize the Press Magazine
I. The torturers arrive, stocky and headless, clad only in loincloths.
Dark eyes scowl in their chests, noses protrude from their sternums. Their truculent sneers open like a slash across their bellies. At first, they ask no questions. They lash me to one of the long tables in the main cavity of the vessel-fish, they prod and poke and call me ‘old lizard woman’ and other cruel words that ring hollow, words I barely understand. Words that recall my erstwhile footman Erc.
This science fiction story has the texture of fantasy, as it tells the harrowing and totally trippy tale of spacefaring vessel-fish, its crew and its captain, and the ways in which they depend on and interact with each other. I really like the gritty, organic feel of the prose, and the way the story twists and turns as the fate of the "old lizard woman" is revealed. In his newsletter, Whitley says the story is "about a shipwrecked lizard queen who falls into the hands of some nefarious akephaloi (those mythical little no-head guys with their faces in their chest)." Akephaloi AND a lizard queen? I mean, how can you resist?
*
A Stranger
Knocks by Tananarive Due in Uncanny Magazine
“There’s a man on the front stoop.”
The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston Hughes poetry collection he was reading under the lamp in Professor Garrett’s parlor. Every window confirmed that it was long after dark, a full two hours since supper.
What a gorgeously wrought tale this is! Due weaves the kind of tale where you want to scream at the participants to turn back, to not follow, to not allow themselves to be seduced, and yet you know that their darkness coming for them cannot be stopped. I love how the horror here truly plays out like a seduction. The mood, the vibe, the vivid sense of time and place pulled me in deep, and then the horror lurking beneath is slowly revealed.
*
Here
in the Glittering Black, There is Hope by Monte Lin in GigaNotoSaurus
Kavita stepped into the communication booth on Artemis Station and put on the glasses. An image of David Worthington, Immortal of Solar Standard, Inc., appeared in front of her, as if they were both standing in the middle of a black void. There was still a couple of seconds delay in transmission between Artemis and Earth; even the Immortals hadn’t found a way to warp space-time. Yet Kavita felt if anyone could, Worthington would find a way to break physics, to survive even the heat death of the universe, if it kept him alive or made a profit.
Some of the best science fiction stories I've read in recent years were published in GigaNotoSaurus, and this is one of them. It's set in a future where crews haul freight over long distances of space and time, where long years pass for the people that hired them, and the people they might have left behind on Earth, as they travel through the far reaches of the solar system. Kavita works on one of these space freighters, caught up in a system that extracts wealth and profit for some, and gives the crews some kind of freedom and life they wouldn't have on a deteriorating Earth, but that also costs them a heck of a lot. The system doesn't care about relationships, crews, friends, or even people, and as Kavita's life plays out, we see the toll it takes on her. This is such a sharp, fierce, powerful story and I love every bit of it.
*
Bonus recommendations:
Novella: From These Dark Abodes, by Lyndsie Manusos - Beautifully written, dark and strange, this novella is full of dancing skeletons, shapeshifting revelers, and slipped skins. It's a realm of death where memories can be lost but where maybe love can be found.
Short story collection: The Coiled Snake by Camilla Grudova - A wickedly sharp and dark collection of short stories where the real twists inexorably into the surreal. I love how the world and the characters feel so rooted in the real world, yet drift so far and so deep into the utterly, and spectacularly, weird.
Short story anthology: Winter in the City: A Collection of Dark Speculative Fiction, edited by R.B. Wood and Anna Koon - I'm reading an advance reading copy of this anthology right now (it's out in December), and it contains a wealth of marvellous stories by Brian Evenson, Sarah Read, and many others.
Non-fiction reads:
Dance the
Exotic Dance for Me by Yoon Ha Lee in SFWA
We’re
Not Good Enough Not to Practice by Kiese Laymon (from 2015)
*
I have recently paused my Patreon, but I am still accepting tips on KoFi: https://ko-fi.com/mariahaskins
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