5 Favourite Short Stories for July

I love short stories, but I struggle to find enough time to read them. Somehow in July, I managed to get through several magazines and it was such a fantastic experience. I read:

• The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August 2014, guest edited by CC Finlay
• Asimov's, July 2014
• Apex Magazine 62 (July 2014)
• Lightspeed Magazine, July 2014

My favourite magazine for the quarter was the guest edited F&SF. My biggest "find" was Apex Magazine. For some reason, I always expected this magazine to border on horror and be too dark for me. This is my first time reading the magazine and I enjoyed it a lot - though the pricing does seem a bit high for the amount of material in it.

Because I haven't been reading short fiction for that long, I tend to treat original material and re-prints in the same light. Unless I've read it before, it feels 'new' to me, which I suppose is the reason editors include reprints.

For the month, my absolute 5 favourites, in ascending order were:

 5. Forlesen, by Gene Wolfe [Lightspeed Magazine]

"Day in the Life of..." This story is quite uncanny and deeply unsettling, while at the same time having some hysterically funny moments. It evokes the oppression, uncertainty and hilarity of modern office-workers incredibly acutely. It also makes one question one's life and direction, as well as raising huge questions about modern life at an aggregate level. What is even more frightening is how long ago this was written!

4. Blessed are the Hungry, by Victor Fernando R. Ocampo [Apex Magazine]

Aboard a generation ship. This story illustrates the conflict between cultural or religious values and the confines of a constrained space. There were so many things I enjoyed about this story, but what I loved most was how specific it was. This wasn't any group of people aboard a generation ship; this was a very specific group.
 

3. The Girls Who Go Below, by Cat Hellison [Magazine of F&SF]

Sibling rivalry. I suppose the fact that this was set in South Africa, written by a South African, may have pre-disposed me to like it. I did enjoy seeing an unexplored side of the South African context - outside of the country, it's hard to appreciate the complexity and insidiousness of the many different backgrounds that exist here. I also loved how deliciously dark this story was.

2. Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology, by Theodora Goss [Lightspeed Magazine]

Sibling rivalry amid conflicts on cultural identity. The story worked on so many levels. At its highest level, it questions how much culture is invented - both internally and externally. It delves into how we interact with new / familiar cultures and also questions the nature of love and personal relationships. Everything about this story is fascinating.

1. Day of the Nuptial Flight, by Sarina Dorie [Magazine of F&SF]

A Bug's Life. I cannot speak highly enough of this story. At first, I found it a little bit tricky to get into, but it absolutely paid off. Reading stories from an "alien" point-of-view sometimes irritates me as it seems to focus more on illustrating how incomprehensible such a view might be, and less on illuminating what our lives are actually about. This story is just so insightful, delightful and moving. I would highly recommend it to anyone.


 

Lightspeed Magazine, January 2013

My overall impression of this issue was a lot of good ideas that didn't quite turn into stories for me. I like stories with interesting ideas but I like them to affect me emotionally as well. I want to care about the characters. I like the plot and the themes to echo one another. I just wanted more, so on completing reading this issue, I felt a bit flat.

The Fear Gun by Judith Berman
Novella (Ebook Exclusive)

" 'Order,' she said, 'is not the same as civilisation. Order is about the strong controlling the weak. Civilisation is about protecting the weaker from the stronger, about us all living together in empathy, cultivating the connections between us--' ".

Aliens have landed, human civilisation splintered but we won in the end and now those who are left are trying to put life back together. In a small American town close to the site of a downed alien ship, different approaches to life after the alien invasion clash when the military roll in.

For some reason, this story reminded me of the TV series Jericho - I suppose because it is set in post-apocalyptic setting, but also because how it pokes into the lives and perspectives of different characters who all have conflicting ends, but are all sympathetic. The story is well-structured and the mechanism of how the story is told - dipping into the lives of an array of characters - supports the character-building and the themes of the tale.

In this rather disappointing issue, the novella was a definite highlight.

Impulse by Steven Gould
Novel Excerpt (Ebook Exclusive)

I've only seen the movie Jumper but this extract made me wonder whether the book was in fact much better than the movie. I like this take on how someone with supernatural powers would operate in our actual world. I think I may track this book down.

The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics by Daniel Abraham
Short Story: Fantasy

This was another highlight of this issue. As a student of economics, I was tickled by the series of conundrums faced by the Cambist. Due to its fairy tale structure, the story is told in a rather 'light' style and yet you feel deeply for the characters and some of the questions raised by the story are profound. The fairy tale feel, the characters, the themes and the plot all complement each other perfectly.

With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came by AC Wise
Short Story: Fantasy

This is where my disappointment with this issue started. After being unable to find closure in a relationship, a woman travels to a mysterious library to try and understand the magic of words. This story left me cold.

Daltharee by Jeffrey Ford
Short Story: Fantasy

A story of a city in a bottle in a world of shrinking rays and other such borderline-technology. I liked the style and there were some interesting ideas, but ultimately I didn't connect with the characters and found the plot itself unsatisfying.

Purity Test by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Short Story: Fantasy

I normally adore Rusch and I normally adore new takes on fairy tale or mythical themes. However, this didn't feel that original or interesting, and while I initially engaged with the protagonist and liked the structure of the tale, I ultimately didn't feel like the tale had an emotional pay-off.

The Sounds of Old Earth by Matthew Kessel
Short Story: Science Fiction

A man living in Old Earth's last days meets a group of teenagers that set him reminiscing about his own family. I liked aspects of this and it had some interesting ideas about our respect for the past and our modern 'throw-away' culture. Of all the stories, I wasn't mad about in this issue, this probably came closest to actually pulling together its structure, themes, characters and plot for a decent pay-off, but something made it fall just short.

Addison Howell and the Clockroach by Cherie Priest
Short Story: Science Fiction

The same story told in three different ways about a recluse who invents something outside of an American town in the eighteenth century. This story struck me as an attempt to be too clever by half. Ultimately, it had no characters and no themes. The structure undermined the plot - which I think was the point - but there was absolutely nothing of substance to this story. What was the reader meant to be left with?

Lifeline by Jonathan Olfert
Short Story: Science Fiction

The nebulous hope of meeting one's 'lifeline' brings two people from opposite ends of the economic spectrum together in a futuristic world. This one also had some interesting ideas and arguments, but what the author was trying to say about how the rich treat the poor and vice-versa didn't seem to be adequately served by the characters or plot.

Child-Empress of Mars by Theodora Goss
Short Story: Science Fiction

I also normally enjoy Goss and I almost enjoyed this. I liked the familiarity of the "sword and planet" tale, a la  Burroughs, combined with the contrast of how an alien life form sees it. These aliens have utterly different priorities and different way of looking at life, and Goss still makes it accessible. However, I thought the conclusion of the tale a bit trite and ultimately, the story didn't come together for me.

Lightspeed December 2012

I did find this edition disappointing as there were quite a few pieces I disliked. However, I have generally warmed to this magazine, so long as I don't read all the author-blurbs. I did note that the subscription price has gone up, though the editor explained that this was imposed by Amazon, rather than being a decision by the magazine.

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang (Novella - Ebook exclusive)
When aliens arrive, a translator gets roped into learning the alien's language without revealing too much about human beings. As it happens, the translator not only learns their languages - there are two - but also gains insight into an utterly 'alien' outlook on life.

I found this novella satisfying on all levels. It had a great plot, consisting of two interlinking strands. It had a clever construction that mirrored the themes of the story and it had some very interesting ideas on the relationship between free will and predestination. Absolute perfection!

Cold Days by Jim Butcher (Novel Excerpt - Ebook Exclusive)
An interesting peek into a series I'm constantly seeing about. However, the excerpt confirmed my suspicion that I would not enjoy the books.

Short Stories: Science Fiction

The Perfect Match by Ken Liu
Sai lives in a world where all the algorithms to find your "favourite" have extended into every niche of your life. This story reflects on many of the themes of our modern world - what is the value of privacy? what is the difference between a government and a corporation knowing all about you? what happens if all our preferences are catered to, and we can all concentrate in our sub-niches without ever having to encounter anything disruptive?

This story once again confirms by high opinion of Ken Liu. He extends the questions of the current world into the future and then puts people into the resulting world. Every one of his stories slightly alters the way I see our world afterwards and lingers in my memory for long after.

Swanwatch by Yoon Ha Lee
In this space opera world, upsetting the wrong powerful individual will see you exiled to the end of the world to create art significant enough to justify your release. As Dragon explains to Swan, the artists exiled to the end of the universe are not sent because of their genius, but because their release seems so unlikely. Still, Swan perseveres with her musical composition. I liked reading this. I didn't love it.

Dreams in Dust by D. Thomas Minton
Keraf is running out of water when he encounters a family that he desperately tries to recruit to his cause so they will save his life. The story is short and I didn't get its point.

Lazaro y Antonio by Marta Randall
Lazaro is not that smart and he's struggling in the Curve, the seedy part of a space port. He's trying to get by. Fortunately, whenever things seem to get really bad, this guy Antonio turns up and helps out. Why?

I adored this story. It starts in this stop-start, confusing way which makes so much sense once you're able to peer through Lazaro's befuddlement to what he's lost. It is a beautiful, gratifying story that is well worth reading.

Short Stories: Fantasy

An Accounting by Brian Evenson
A man's testimony about how he ended up as a 'Midwestern Jesus' in a dystopian United States. I liked the unreliable narrator and the story works. I didn't find it great, and I don't see why it is Fantasy, rather than Science Fiction.

Family Teeth (Part 5): American Jackal by JT Petty
Family Teeth (Part 6): St. Polycarp's Home for Happy Wanderers by Sarah Langan
A pair of stories by a husband and a wife about a pack of werecoyotes. Seeing that Lightspeed has a dark fantasy / horror sister magazine, I do not see why these appeared here. They're good, but much too dark and gory for me.

Catskin by Kelly Link
I read this before and hated it. I saw no need to wade through it again.

F&SF Nov 2012: the Short Stories

Claim Blame by Alan Dean Foster
Another installment in a series about Mad Amos Malone who assists with supernatural problems in pioneer America. This story had no suspense and no "moral". Of all the installments in this installment-heavy issue, this is probably the one that annoyed me the most.

Application by Lewis Shiner
A delightful, cautionary tale at flash-fiction length.

Breathe by Steven Popkes
A story of two brothers who have inherited an alternative form of vampirism. As one of the brothers observes, you can't really call it anything else and yet it is nothing like a traditional vampire. What I liked about this story is that the speculative aspect fitted so superbly with a tale about siblings with profoundly different outlooks on life and how their relationship with each other and their father copes with this.

The Ladies in Waiting by Albert E. Cowdrey
Another series and another set of problem-solvers. To be fair all the other series have single protagonists while this one has a couple. Still, these formulaic series with no suspense feel like a throwback to an earlier form of fiction which does not delight my sensibilities.

If the Stars Reverse Their Courses, If the Rivers Run Back from the Sea by Alter S. Reiss
In the wake of a civil war, a retired colonel seeks a way to set the past right. This story contains an interesting take on how a "multiverse" might work and how changing the past may or may not affect things. Ultimately, though, I found the tale unsatisfying.

Waiting for a Me Like You by Chris Willrich
Another take on the "multiverse" and what it might mean in which Bob voyages out to take a new assignment. Like the other "multiverse" tale, I didn't see the point of this one. It's only virtue is that it was short. Maybe they were supposed to create a juxtaposition?

F&SF Nov 2012: the Long Pieces

For my Christmas break, I saved the November edition of F&SF as well as the December edition of Lightspeed. After holding myself back from reading them, I did find them somewhat disappointing. In the case of F&SF, this was driven primarily by how many of the stories were part of an ongoing series. I do not enjoy short fiction series. Give me a novel or a stand-alone.

Katabasis by Robert Reed (Novella)

An unusual guide and an unusual tourist tackle the long trek at the heart of "the Great Ship". I did enjoy this story, though I always struggle with hard science fiction which is often so immersed in "otherness". That's one of the reasons I enjoy short fiction as I don't know if I've ever been able to read an entire hard science fiction book (scratch that as I think Ben Bova's Jupiter probably qualifies).

High Stakes by Naomi Kritzer (Novelet)

This story is part of a series on a teenager growing up on a series of ships in a libertarian experiment to escape the state. Despite being part of a series, I would recommend it as I think this story has very interesting themes shaped around an intriguing plot where the young protagonist becomes an assistant to the producer of a reality TV series set in this libertarian playground. I would prefer to read Rebecca's stories compiled into a single, seamless novel but I will take the stories in the mean-time.

In this year's F&SF's, there were two stories set in this setting as well as a stand-alone story called Scrap Dragon by Naomi Kritzer, all of which I enjoyed.

The Problem of the Elusive Cracksman by Ron Goulart (Novelet)

Another installment in the adventures of Harry Challenge, a private investigator that reminds me of Sherlock Holmes, despite being American. While this series of stories is readable, they do irritate me. There are formulaic and I would prefer if F&SF didn't waste space on them.

Heaventide by KJ Kabza (Novelet)

Daybreak-under-Clouds desperately wants to be a Traveler and explore the world, but Traveling is for males and Daybreak-under-Clouds has already been confined to the world of womanhood. This story seeks to portray a world in which gender roles and physical sex have been utterly separated - and what is interesting is that the world seems to be more confining, instead of less. While this is an interesting angle, it felt like the story was too short-lived to really explore the underlying ideas.

Lightspeed Magazine: October 2012

While not finished reading, I am enjoying this edition much more now that I know which parts to skip over...

This time, I very much enjoyed both Ebook Exclusives included. The first was a Novel Except from Blackwood by Gwenda Bond which started the story of Miranda, a socially outcast girl who starts to see mirages, only to further complicate her life. The second was a novella called Dragonfly from Ursulu K. Le Guin.

For me, reading Le Guin is always comforting, reminding me of snuggling up in warm, fluffy blanket. There is something dependable about her writing and her style means that reading her work is always more about the journey than the destination. On the other hand, this means I experience little urgency when reading her. After painstakingly tracking down her Gifts, Powers etc trilogy, I lost the third book half way through and only felt a pang of regret. I would have liked to have known what happened but didn't feel too upset about it.

One of the ironies I picked up reading the article on her is that the Earthsea movie that she did not like at all is what drew me to reading her books in the first place.

Short Stories: Science Fiction

Flowing Unimpeded to the Enlightenment by Robert Reed.

"Her name is Rhonda, but she hasn't used that ugly business since she was ten.
Artemis is a name pulled from myth, and that's what friends call her, and strangers, and it's how phantoms refer to her when she's walking inside her own dreams."

I think this is the first Robert Reed story that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Each character in the story is clear and interesting and I thought it quite fun that right after discussing the Fermi paradox in one of the articles, there was a story to explore it. I also loved the exploration of the nature of ideas and what they really mean:

"ideas as being vivid organic beings, how they collect to form communities, and some of these communities are strong and enduring, while others perish in a day or twenty years."

Nearly Departed by Pat Cadigan

Allie Deadpan explores brains, but she prefers to stay away from dead ones. In this story, she takes the plunge and so continues an interesting story which touches on the nature of creativity, sanity and identity. When I got to the end, I couldn't believe how long ago this story had been written. Definitely still relevant.

Art of War  by Nancy Kress

Like with Robert Reed, I'm not sure I've enjoyed a story by Nancy Kress before. But this story, I loved! One of my favourite things is where the emotional journey of the character is deeply intertwined with the concepts being explored, creating an inner echo to the story. In this story, the relationship between mother and son and the disastrous assumptions they can make about each other is echoed in the relationship between humans and an alien species. I also thought the construction of this story was masterful.

Bear and Shifty by Benjamin Parzybok

This story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse was brought by aliens and humans drift in the fringes, scrounging what they can. It continues the theme of inter-species communication and while not being as profound as the Nancy Kress story, it possesses its own poignancy and human insight.

Starting the Journey with (at) Lightspeed - Sep 2012

Browsing recently, I noticed that Lightspeed - which I understood to be a science fiction magazine - and Fantasy - which covers what you'd expect - had merged under their common editor and now offer a combined publication at a very reasonable Kindle subscription price.

Initially, I feared that Lightspeed would be too similar to Fantasy and Science Fiction - where its editor trained and to which I already have a subscription. Fortunately, it seems to have a feel of its own and some interesting quirks - like re-prints of classic stories. One quirk, the ubiquitous coverage of its writers, including those writers who write short articles about other writers annoyed me, but I did enjoy the Ebook extras, so on balance, I'll take it.

My stand-out favourite would definitely be "The Green Leopard Plague" by Walter Jon Williams. I loved how it combined a solid, multi-layered plotline with a fascinating inter-disciplinary conjecture. As an inter-disciplinarian myself, I found this story worked for me on an emotional and intellectuel level. I loved how the two layers of the plot don't quite come together and the ending was one of the few in the magazine I found truly satisfying. The actual philosophy of Williams in his interview where he promotes the elimination of death I didn't agree with, but this observation did not taint the story.

The novel excerpt from Greg Egan left me cold. I'm probably small-minded but way-out science fiction is something I have difficulty with...

The Artist Showcase is a lovely idea but is a bit lost on a Kindle.They add other material to the Kindle edition and maybe this would have borne only being in the print version.

I have read "The Streets of Ashkelon" by Harry Harrison elsewhere (and as the notes later in the magazine detail it is one of the most re-printed stories) but it is always powerful. The note from the editor in his introduction about the fact that this helped seal the deal for him becoming an atheist, I found annoying and it did detract from my experience of re-reading the story. For me, ideas I disagree with are far more palatable in the form of a powerful story than in prose. Let the story speak for itself!

Overall, I far preferred the selection of Science Fiction stories over the Fantasy selection. All of them offered something fresh, different, thought-provoking and a satisfying ending. As for the Fantasy selection, they all left me hanging. I was particularly disappointed between with the Holly Black and Nina Kiriki Hoffman stories as I really got into them and the endings left me flat. Holly Black, in particular, notes in her interview that she's finally cracked endings for short stories and I don't get it. I absolutely invested into that story - what a great start - and then, nothing...

Anyways, overall, I liked the magazine, though my enjoyment of it definitely started at the highest point and went down from there. Ending with the bite-size author interviews - for every single story - followed by little profiles of the writers of the interviews almost made me claw my eyes out. However, I shall read the next edition, avoiding the bits that have irritated me and hopefully having a more positive experience that leads me to keep my subscription past the 30-day free trial. We shall see.