This month I decided fuck it: If I’ve read a nonfiction piece over a certain wordcount, it may go in the diary, depending on whether my left leg itches or Mars is in the fifth spleen. I’m on a nonfiction kick lately. Maybe I’m aging into a nonfiction person, because like half of what I pick up from that pile makes me go “Wow, cool!”, which is a better hit rate than my usual.
Short stories and essays
“What Else, What Else, in the Joyous City?”
Another person doing versions of Omelas. I think I enjoyed this more than the last one. But Omelas stories are a bit too abstracted from real life for me. If there’s someone who gets through a week without being around a real child who’s been let to suffer, I’d like to know what rock they’re hiding under, and whether there’s space for me to take a nap down there.
“With Only a Razor Between” by Martin Cahill
A barber whose country is under occupation is made to serve one of the worst dogs of the dictators. I feel like this story had something very real in its grasp, then let it slip away in favor of a ‘good’ ending. Overall, worth reading.
“Ace Up Her Sleeve” by Genoveva Dimova
A witch cheats the devil at cards. This is set in an established fantasy city, besieged by monsters and protected by witches who ward homes against them. Unfortunately, like two weeks passed between me reading this story and me writing this entry, so I don’t remember much of the specific worldbuilding.
“I’m Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe” by Daryl Gregory
This one was fun. It’s about a dysfunctional guy whose aunt is an alien. Her Roomba is also an alien. So’s her couch, which needs moved across town as other, hostile aliens invade. There’s an afterword not quite to the end that spotlights/mourns for Iain Banks. More than anything, I appreciated that the first half of the story nailed the setup of all this strangeness and made me laugh. Kudos.
“Falling Forever” by Patricia Cornell
Cornell’s new story announcements are somehow always convenient to my schedule. This is a short-short story about being stranded in another universe and grieving a lost love. Tackles some of the same emotions as a WIP I read for a critique partner earlier this year.
“The Last Planet” by Naomi Kanakia
A story with a classic sci-fi feel, about what the last humans should do, having been chased to the edge of the galaxy after losing a catastrophic war.
“The Silent Madness of Whales” by Shantell Powell
A fascinating essay about whales and human relationships with them, centered on the impacts of our commercial activities.
I really enjoyed this one. A blue-collar guy who mines deuterium on Europa finds what appears to be an alien bone, and is so inspired that he fights like hell to get it looked at by experts.
“The Hater’s Guide to the AI Bubble” and “AI is a Money Trap” by Ed Zitron
Hoo boy. Read one of these if you want to feel like you know how the world’ll end. Unless you’re plugged into tech or financial reporting and you have a strong nose for bullshit, you probably can’t imagine the scariest stuff in here.
“Every Ghost Story” by Natalia Theodoridou
I swear I recognize this author, but I don’t have a record of when I last read his stuff. At any rate, this short story is about a camp for people who see ghosts where of course they end up turning into ghosts themselves. Wooooo, spooky. Probably it went over my head, because all I thought was, Didn’t Goosebumps do a book like this?
“In Connorville” by Kathleen Jennings
This I loved. Our narrator is back in Connorville for her wedding, sharing an attic room with her unnaturally beautiful Fane cousins. In turn, they each tell a story of the wild and wondrous things witnessed in youth. People in their hometown are often saved or damned by things-other-than-human. People in their hometown, if they’re assholes, often disappear.
The atmosphere in this is top-notch. The prose is gorgeous. This short story left me thinking, I want to write like this. It’s a darn shame that I had to read it in 200-300 word fragments over the span of a week, but it says everything that I scraped for time that hard. Definitely one of my favorites for year. I’m excited to read more from Kathleen Jennings.
Comics
I have not had this much fun reading a manga since Dungeon Meshi. After God takes place in a devastated Tokyo. Years ago, eastern Japan was invaded by six eldritch beings who toxify the land and air. These living natural disasters draw suicidal and reverent humans in, bestowing either death or special powers. 18-year-old Waka, having lost her best friend to god-assisted suicide, attempts to follow her FOOTsteps into the exclusion zone. She’s stopped by junior Anti-God researcher Tokinaga, but she wasn’t trying to die— She says she plans to kill the gods.
When she demonstrates supernatural abilities like those created at Tokinaga’s institute, through experiments combining human volunteers with godflesh, he realizes she actually means it. Waka may be an asset. And she’s certainly a wildcard, because she can’t explain how she came to be god-touched. Tokinaga helps the institute recruit her. Slowly, the reader learns that their lives were deeply entangled even before that.
After God’s pacing made my brain so happy. For at least the first sixty chapters, the action is tight and full of whiplash turns. The story always feels like it’s heading towards big things. And overall, despite the grim setting and tortured MCs, it’s funny! While the cast is populated with fantastical characters, they’re written with deeply human behavior. This means that, when it comes to the absurd, comedy and horror are two sides of the same coin. The sublime inspires deep emotion in us. So does a good burger. Eno does a fantastic job nailing this dynamic, weaving it into the propulsive force of the setting— A world where gods and humans are contaminating each other in an arms race, and the gods think we’re going to win.
A thriller about a guy who learns that his girlfriend is the ruler of brain-snatching parasites taking over Korea. Complete at 47 episodes. I love a story that actually has an ending.
Karsearin: Adventures of a Red Dragon by YKB, WM, and jg52
Another completed series. This is like what my friend told me Hunter x Hunter was: a shonen that casts a heroic, adventurous, powerful, nonconforming, determined protagonist, and then drills into how that behavior can actually be sociopathic. Karsearin is a red dragon hatchling who assumes a human disguise to have adventures. He’s like a cat innocently playing with mice— Sometimes, they go squish. Karsearin, or “Arin,” hasn’t had to develop empathy, as the coddled child of an all-powerful race who habitually toy with human lives.
The parallel plot is about an adventuring group of dragon slayers who’re undermining the political balance of the fantasy world with coups, assassinations, war, etc. In fact, initially, Karsearin is made a stooge to impersonate a princess on the aggressor’s side, taking her place at a diplomatic event while she secretly maneuvers for war. The story goes several places as Karsearin gathers companions and eagerly volunteers for their quests. But ultimately, it’s a tragedy where the villain wins, which I thought was interesting.