Scrapbooking the things I read each month is turning out to be a great idea. It’s so nice to be able to find links again easily, reflecting on stories helps my creative process, and I’m happy to discover that I read a lot more than I thought. I’m going to continue making posts like this for the foreseeable future.
In other news, I’m finally querying again (albeit slowly). A good friend dragged me kicking and screaming back to Twitter, for the sake of pitch contests. I would rather not be on the Musk site! But it can’t be beat when it comes to networking with other book people, unfortunately. It took me three days to finally finish sending off queries to agents who liked my pitches this week. (Don’t be impressed! I’m *slow*.)
Short Stories
Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors contest collection by Grist Magazine
Grist published twelve stories about building a sustainable future. Great collection of climate fiction, which is very much taking off as a genre, and for good reason. Science fiction always reflects present anxieties. That’s why I love it. Each story was beautifully illustrated. Click through the link to see the fullsize art in full quality!
Of these, I read the following this month:
“To Labor for the Hive” by Jamie Liu
About Huaxin, a grouchy, bitterly single, luddite beekeeper who’s overdue to meet new people. This was the winning story. Huaxin reminds me so much of both my brothers-in-law, who at least lucked into finding each other.
“The Last Almond” by Zoe Young
The last almond farm in California must be flooded; the Sacramento River needs to overrun its banks. The owner’s been through this before, preceding the farm. It was worse then.
This story really got to me. It’s near-future, sure, but the future it went with is barely removed from the present day. The things Richard Wallace faced are already happening to people. It’s getting hard. Rain and drought, flood and failure. We’re still going to be here— Just not all of us. That sucks. But beauty persists.
I’ll have to read the other 10 stories later. Moving on to stuff that isn’t from Grist:
“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A Garcia
Loooooved this one. Nebula Award recipient, and so very well deserved. Tantie Merle’s daughter gifts her a nanobot-embodied AI to help her with her goat. Tantie Merle decides the Farmhand 4200 is as good as family. The goat decides it’s as good as lunch; fortunately, these Farmhand 4200s are sturdy, flexible problem-solvers.
“I here in Trinidad minding my own business, how I cause global farm machine uprising?”
“The Institute of Harmony” by J. C. Snow
A woman is kidnapped from her conquered people and imprisoned at the empire’s institute for training war wizards. The institute intends to simply kill her, until another woman steps in to teach her obedience as survival. But it’s not obedience that proves her salvation; it’s the love that grows between them. This story was very well done, and I’m saying this as someone whose eyes glaze over at most sword-and-sorcery fantasy.
“The Colors of Money” by Nisi Shawl
Another Everfair story, set in a magical, steampunk alternate history version of Africa. There’s a lot going on— So much so that I feel like this needed to be at least a novella, to allow the story room to breathe. The central conflict is between a pair of siblings, one loyal to Everfair and one a tool of British colonialism. It’s engaging, but the barrage of world details and supporting characters is challenging to follow, especially in the opening.
“The Job at the End of the World” by Ray Nayler
Climate change fiction about a guy with a career scraping up disaster after disaster after disaster. Very near-future; I’ve met people who already live this life.
“Detonation Boulevard” by Alistair Reynolds
If you’ve seen the Redline anime film by Takeshi Koike—go do that, it’s excellent—this story is like that. Futuristic car racing on a hostile alien planet. In this case, the emphasis is on a heroine who chooses not to buy into death games; winning isn’t everything.
A delightful story about assistive devices and student activism!
“The Last Time My Twin Destroyed the World…” by Michael Barron
Twin gods, locked in a cycle of destroying and rebuilding the universe, argue over the point of creation.
“Evan: A Remainder” by Jordan Kurella
Evan, whose life is a disaster, starts coughing up bones. Eventually, enough bones to assemble into a skeleton who becomes his boyfriend. I dunno. I read this three days before now, when I’m trying to write out thoughts while covered in suppurating wounds and sipping whiskey to cope. The whiskey’s not even good. I’d only drink more than a couple ounces of this if it was somehow a panacea that would stop me leaving little blots of yellow ooze on everything I touch.
Skeleton Boyfriend represents all of the pieces of himself that Evan tried to bury and leave behind, regurgitated over the course of months. My body-horror boyfriend-self would have to be represented by all of the skin that’s violently sloughed off my breathing corpse. I have no clue what’s wrong with me*, but who says privatized healthcare gets you in to see a doctor faster? Bullshit. I’m going to end up having waited almost a full week.
*It turned out to be poison ivy. I did not touch the poison ivy. My partners touched the poison ivy and then I did their laundry and died. They’re BOTH immune. I’m mostly healed as of July 4th, but still mad about it.
“Ten Ways of Looking at Snow, Reflected Off an Obsidian Armor” by Ava Margariti
Bargains, ice, and becoming what stalks the dark in fairytales. Lyrical prose. This got rec’d to me by a huge fan of Ava’s; I see why they love her stories so much. I’m a big fan of doomed love as well.
“Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune
The only thing incredible in this premise is the idea that capitalists would crack the technology required for android labor, but give said android a week out in the world every 10 years. I admit to reading this before breakfast on a Saturday and crying over it. This story hit a full spread of my weakpoints. The android goes to a gay bar, is welcomed because everyone is welcome there, and makes human connections that cause him to question his fate. He clings to those memories after his mind is wiped again. Like, fuck.
Also, right after reading this, I tried to hang out with two of my buddies who tend to work surprise overnight shifts. One of them was running on six hours of sleep over the past 48. He got called back into work for another emergency overnight fewer than 12 hours after escaping his previous shift. Like, a whole week off as a thank you for your service, for an android that’s allegedly not a person and slated to be hard rebooted? Damn, sounds cushy.
“The High Cost of Heat” by Kelly Robson
A strange fantasy story about a king who tries to eat the moon, personified as a beautiful young goddess, and thereby gain both her power and eternal life. Objectively well done. Didn’t land for me at all. Might be because of the femininity-as-vulnerability baked into the world.
“Imagine Yourself Happy” by Premee Mohamed
Flash fiction from Small Wonders. A dying scientist leaves their last words.
“So You Want to Eat an Omnalik Starfish” by Brian Hugenbruch
About an alien ritual of grief and goodbyes. I had no idea where it was going at first, but it got under my skin by the end.
“A City On Its Tentacles” by R. B. Lemberg
I discovered Lemberg because they were part of a panel discussion on making memorable worlds at the 2024 SFWA Nebula Conference. They made a ton of excellent points on cultural background and shared their story of diaspora. This short story of theirs does something interesting with perspective. The MC grows a pearl behind her eyes, which represents dreams, and repeatedly has it cut out and sold in exchange for medicine for her daughter. After she does so, metaphor and texture is stripped out of her narrative perspective.
“To Balance the Weight of Khalem” by R. B. Lemberg
Oh hey, another Lemberg story! Turns out I’ve had this tab open for…uh, at least four years. Honestly, serendipitous. Now was the right time for me to read this. While I had that tab sitting open, unread, I’d blindly done proof-of-concept pieces for a novel that shares a few elements with this short story (though not its setting, tropes, or anything you’d use to talk about what happens): the narrative tone, nourishment and starvation, home versus diaspora, veneration of artistry in a fractious era, and a protagonist driven to learn, be loved, and survive. What Lemberg does here centers on a student refugee in Khalem, a city suspended by chains, who’s forced by starvation to sail to a distant shore with only an onion as memento. The onion is their life and their passion and their anchor and the city condensed. Their love is a manta maiden from the sea, their journey is of the self, and they give up the symbol of what they carry in an act of grace. This story was a joy to read.
(If you dig, you can find a “Fell Daughter” tag somewhere on this blog, where I previously posted a short conceptual piece that does not share the title of my maybe-book-that-sort-of-feels-a-little-like-this, will not be the actual opening, and does not introduce the planned main character that Lemberg’s story reminds me of.)
I like to think of these stories that make me go, “Yes, that! That does the thing! I’m trying to do that thing too, yay!” as retroactive inspiration. This is way more common for me than finding inspiration in advance, and it’s a great feeling every time.
“Variations on an Apple” by Yoon Ha Lee
This was a recommendation from a writing buddy and I’m really glad they linked me this story. Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit has been in my TBR pile for a while now. This short story from him is an inventive retelling of the Judgment of Paris, set in space, with lots of fantastic, visceral language. I particularly enjoyed his imagining of Ilion, Paris’s beloved city, as the fleshy avatar of an AI.
“Breathing Constellations” by Rich Larson
I’ve liked a lot of Rich’s stuff. This one’s about a far-north colony trying to broker their survival with a pod of orcas. It flowed really well. The emotional threads were strong.
“No Flight Without the Shatter” by Brooke Bolander
Loved this one. Gorgeous prose. As Earth crawls into its grave, the last one of us is raised by the ghosts of extinct animals, appearing as aunties who keep their true skins in trunks. Empty world stories usually resonate with me. This one has vivid, visceral language about the baking sun that took me straight back to childhood. What the story calls soon is now, if you go looking. It’s not even hard to find.
“Liminal Spaces” by Maureen McHugh
This is about an engineer discovering impossible connections between airports she travels through. Portals that skip her across the country, basically. The prose was too straightforward for my taste, but I sent it on to my husband to see if it’s his thing.
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-min Prasad
LOVED this one. One of my favorite stories this month. An antique, clunky, sentient robot, existing as a neglected stagepiece at a museum, is recommended an anime that changes his life. The anime features a robot deuteragonist who looks like him. He gets into the fandom. He shares his love for the story and his favorite ship, Robot x Hero. He finds his people.
“The Purity of the Turf”, “The Metropolitan Touch”, “The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace”, “Bingo and the Little Woman” by P.G. Wodehouse
Still reading these stories on my lunch break at work. I sure wish I had free time on the order of what Bertie Wooster is blessed with. I like to think I’d exclusively occupy myself with things I enjoy, instead of letting harebrained friends suck me into comedic drama.
“It can’t be done, old thing. Sorry, but it’s out of the question. I couldn’t go through all that again.”
“Not for me?”
“Not for a dozen more like you.”
“I never thought,” said Bingo sorrowfully, “to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!”
“Well, you’ve heard them now,” I said. “Paste them in your hat.”
“Bertie, we were at school together.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“We’ve been pals for fifteen years.”
“I know. It’s going to take me the rest of my life to live it down.”
“Bingo and the Little Woman” by P.G. Wodehouse
“A Jubilee Present,” “The Fate of Faustina,” “The Last Laugh,” “To Catch a Thief,” and “An Old Flame” by E. W. Hornung
In “A Jubilee Present,” Bunny and Raffles, having been exposed as thieves, escalate to robbing the British Museum in broad daylight. The next story, “The Fate of Faustina,” feels very Bondesque to me (says the guy who’s basically only seen Bond movies, cuz my husband made me): you’ve got Raffles as a debonair guy escaped from his dangerous life to an exotic locale and the arms of a beautiful woman, to whom we know something terrible is gonna happen.
“The Two Musics” by Michael Cisco
Ehhh. This story needed more editing. Typos aside, the ideas were all over the place, some of the narration was repetitive, and there were more characters in this short story than in any novel I’ve written. Some beautiful descriptions though. Follows 3 POVs: A guy name Simon, who had a childhood obsession with a cult that committed mass suicide after one of its members was discovered to be a serial killer; a woman name Lauren who crushes on adult!Simon, until he vanishes after seemingly killing on behalf of a boy; Mark, the boy Simon saved, who’s all grown up and carrying a ton of trauma. “The Two Musics” title has something to do with the idea of being preoccupied by dual impulses of violence versus compassion. It gets kind of lost under everything else going on.
“The Story of the Lost Special” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Not a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but a mystery. A retrospective of a curious incident wherein a specially commissioned train disappeared off the tracks between two stations.
Detra’s Story – told by Brandon Stanton
I read Humans of New York. Posting about this one so I don’t lose track of it. Detra was a preacher’s wife raised in subjugation who escaped a horrible marriage to discover herself and a community in NYC. Now she sells cigars. Good for her.
Comics
Forever After by Hanneh Patten and Violet Matter
This is a Webtoon that just reached its conclusion after 140 episodes, starting in May 2021. Bratty Robin and anxious Tank wished to live fairytale dreams. Instead, they’re whisked to a multiverse where stories and their characters are real and the Fates need help sealing the villains within them. What I liked about this comic was that the heroes visit a lot of lesser-known fairytales. The lessons taught therein are woven into the main characters’ arcs.
Delicious in Dungeon volumes 1 – 6
An excellent series. Is anyone not reading it? In a Dungeons and Dragons-esque world (and I mean oldschool DnD), the Touden siblings lead one of many adventuring parties exploring the treacherous depths of a dungeon that was once a golden kingdom in antiquity, now sunk beneath the earth. But then the younger sister, Falin, is devoured by a red dragon. As her last act, she sacrifices herself and teleports everyone else back to the surface.
Falin’s brother and best friend are determined to recover her corpse and resurrect her. They form a new party to slay the dragon. Unfortunately, they’re in a massive rush— If they take time to earn the money needed to resupply an expedition, it’ll be too late. To survive, they must resort to eating the dungeon monsters on their way back down. No problem: Laois Touden has always wanted to try this.
Delicious in Dungeon is a love letter to food, served with a triple scoop of monster biology. There’s an anime adaptation on Netflix that’s so good that I know several non-anime people who’re enthralled by it. And as the icing on the cake, Laois Touden is one of the best depictions of an autistic protagonist I’ve seen in any media. Five stars, thumbs up, give it a shot.