Short Fiction Archives - Page 6 of 7

Short SF Marathon Day 9: Kathleen Ann Goonan, Theodora Goss, Nicola Griffith

Published on February 13, 20153 Comments

Kathleen Ann Goonan, “A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star.” Tor.com, July 20, 2014.

To be clear about it and as the introduction points out, this isn’t a science fiction story. But it is commentary on science fiction. It completely skewers the attitudes in socalled Golden Age science fiction that saw man conquer space and woman left to keep house on Mars. So on the one hand you have the timeline with milestones in space development, on the other you have the biography of Carol,coming of age during the space race. Goonan practically rubs your nose in the everyday sexism Carol has to deal with, which all seems so quaint, old fashioned and dumb now, but I can’t help remember that for all its progressiveness and forward looking, science fiction was never all that good at treating women like actual human beings until long after the second wave of feminism hit, and then only reluctantly.

It’s brilliantly done, biting without being axe grindy and it may well end up on my Hugos shortlist.

Theodora Goss, “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology.” Lightspeed, July 2014.

This is an interesting idea which didn’t quite work out for me. What if you could imagine a country and make it real, Borges style? What if you then went on a field trip to your imagined country? And married the daughter of the khan, who has a twin sister, but you made it so the Cimmerians don’t believe in twins?

The problem with the setting is that the imagined country isn’t imaginative enough, too much like a hodgepodge of Central Asian and Balkan cliches. Also, of course, Cimmeria actually existed, or at least there was a people we call that trundling around the Near East during the Bronze Age.

But the story itself is interesting enough to overcome this handicap; I need to find more of Theodora Goss’ writing.

Nicola Griffith, “Cold Wind.” Tor.com, April 16, 2014.

A woman tracks a legend to a lesbian bar, but is not quite what she seems to be either. A brilliant, economically told story. Not surprising coming from Nicola Griffith, who has a knack for the perfect small, telling detail.

Short SF Marathon Day 8: Jeffrey Ford, Karen Joy Fowler, Max Gladstone

Published on February 12, 2015Leave a comment

Jeffrey Ford, “The Prelate’s Commission.” Subterranean, Winter 2014.

It’s interesting how these stories in this list run in packs, despite being listed in alphabetical order of their writer. Here we have three fantasy stories that each attempt to put a new spin on an old tale; in “The Prelate’s Commission” it’s the religious horror story. The talented assistant of a renaissance master artist gets a commission to point a true portrait of the devil, on pain of auto-da-fe. Things do not go according to the prelate’s plan.

This is an odd complaint to make, I understand, but to me this story failed because it wasn’t formulaic enough, because the doom of the assistant wasn’t brought down on him by his own actions. In a deal with the devil story either that’s what happens, or you outsmart him somehow; here he had too much agency.

Karen Joy Fowler, “Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story.” Subterranean, Winter 2014.

Karen Joy Fowler meanwhile attempts to blow new life into another hoary genre, the Christmas horror/changeling story, about a little girl who is sure something is wrong with her nanny slowly assuming the role of her mother, but her twin sister can’t see it. Starts off slow, had to get myself over the hump, but ends in an interesting, somewhat unexpected place. Karen Joy Fowler’s writing is always a pleasure to read and it’s no different here.

Max Gladstone, “A Kiss with Teeth.” Tor.com, October 29, 2014.

Finally Max Gladstone writes a vampire story about the vampire, the original, the one called Vlad, who has changed and is living in American suburbia, out of love for his wife, the vampire hunter who fell in love with him. Now Vlad is Tempted once again, by his young son’s primary school teacher.

As with each of these three stories, there’s a slow buildup of dread as you fear you know where it is going, but Gladstone veers off at the last moment and does so without betraying that dread. What you feared would happen, could’ve happened, on another day.

Short SF Marathon Day 7: Amal El-Mohtar, Ruthanna Emrys, K. M. Ferebee

Published on February 11, 20152 Comments

Amal El-Mohtar, “The Truth About Owls.” Strange Horizons, January 26, 2015 (originally published in Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios (eds.), Kaleidoscope, Twelfth Planet Press, 2014).

A trio of fantasy stories this time, the first being about a Lebanese girl transplanted to Scotland, who becomes fascinated with owls, The Mabinogion and the Welsh language. Anisa has a secret, a power she can unleash when she’s angry with somebody, a power that can hurt and harm them, a power that makes no distinction in whom it hurts.

It’s the sort of magical thinking we’ve all sometimes have worried about, that if you’re angry at somebody you love and in the heat of your anger, you curse them one way or another, that if something bad them happens to them, it’s your fault. For Anisa this seems to be reality, rather than guilty feelings, all bound up with being a stranger in a strange land because of her curse being able to win some grudging acceptance or at least wariness from her class mates. Whether or not the magic is real here isn’t the point; that Anisa believes it to be is.

A very humane story and the resolution has all the feels.

Ruthanna Emrys, “The Litany of Earth.” Tor.com, May 14, 2014.

This is a story I’ve read before and put on my mental shortlist for the Hugos. It’s still there.

There’s been an ongoing controversy/debate about Lovecraft, his place in horror/fantasy and the desirability for a major fantasy award to be named after a notoriously racist writer. It’s not just that he held disgusting opinions in real life, but that his racist attitudes form the core of his horror fiction, with all its degenerated and inherently evil races of subhumans plotting to bring about the end of the world. This story is an answer to this racism, by imaging how the people of Innsmouth would’ve been treated in the real world of Japanese-American internment camps, Jim Crow laws and the Trail of Tears.

K. M. Ferebee, “The Earth and Everything Under.” Shimmer #19, 2014.

A slice of life story of a witch dealing with her grief at the death of her husband, in a world where witchcraft can get you killed, who attempts to contact her from beyond the grave. A quiet story, told with little drama, set in some part of what looks to me the American countryside, sometime in the past century. As such it fits in perfectly with that whole tradition of matter of fact American fantasy, where it’s rooted both in the traditions that European settlers took with them from their home countries and the day to day life of living in a new country.

I hadn’t heard about K. M. Ferebee before, but based on this, she’s an author I need to find more of.

Short SF Marathon Day 6: Cortázar, Crosshill, Davis

Published on February 10, 20151 Comment

Julio Cortázar, “Headache.” Tor.com, September 3, 2014 (first English translation).

Now this is interesting. This is a short story originally written in 1951 and never translated before, by an Argentine writer who was one of the major players in the boom in literature in South America in the 1960s and 1970s, published at what may be the site the closest to the heart of genre science fiction. There’s always been whole worlds of science fiction and fantasy cut off from genre, written in different traditions or by writers who don’t think of themselves as genre writers; sometimes the dreaded words “magic realism” might also be uttered, as you may be tempted to in this case. A Spanish language writer telling a story of imaginary animals raised by people who suffer from various just as imaginary diseases and afflictions brought on — perhaps — by those animals? That’s the textbook example of magic realism, isn’t it?

It certainly is an intriguing story, one you know you can’t suck the meaning out off in just one read. It actually made me slightly nauseous reading it, evoking as it does through its language the feeling of migraine onset. I can’t compare the translation (by Michael Cisco) to the original, but on its own it’s got a brilliant hallucinary quality.

Tom Crosshill, “The Magician and Laplace’s Demon.” Clarkesworld, December 2014.

This on the other hand is a much more traditional mixture of fantasy and science fiction, in which the world’s first self aware AI becomes aware of the existence of magic and magicians and sets out to hunt them down to be able to understand and use the last thing in the universe outside his ken. A decent story, well told.

Amanda C. Davis, “Loving Armageddon.” Crossed Genres, July 2, 2014.

Compared to “Headache”, this is a much more self conscious attempt at a magic realist story, or sketch rather, of the man with a hand grenade for a heart and the woman who loves him. It almost seems as if this is meant as a metaphor. Almost.

Short SF Marathon Day 5: Carroll, Ciriello, Cooney

Published on February 9, 20151 Comment

Siobhan Carroll, “The Year of Silent Birds.” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 9, 2014.

This is an epic fantasy short story, if that isn’t an oxymoron, a story that hints at a much bigger world than it can show in the space available without being incomplete. A woman comes back from the dead to save the son of her sister from execution, in the process learning that even the undead still aren’t save from politics. Carroll has a good eye for imagery and the opening with the protagonist moving through deep, silent snow while the birds in the forest have frozen on their branches will stay with me a while.

Dario Ciriello, “Free Verse.” Free Verse and Other Stories, Panverse, 2014.

Ever since I first read Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity I’ve been a sucker for parallel worlds/cross time travel craziness and this delivers in spades. It reminded me a lot of the sort of stories Keith Laumer used to write. For me, this is high praise.

C. S. E. Cooney, “Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale.” Strange Horizons, July 21, 2014.

I’m not a real fan of modern fairy tales, nor of erotic fantasy perse, but this was worth overcoming my prejudices. Filthy, kinky, written in a way that you can believe the relationship between the witch, her enchanted man-beast and the saint who transforms him back to the man he used to be. Cooney is a writer I didn’t know anything about, but now need to read more of.