It's a Jumble

This is very late, but at least I did get this in before the end of the month. Some beautiful stories I read at the end of last year, from last November and December.  Short Stories “The Language Birds Speak” by Rebecca Campbell in Clarkesworld The deep sea of meaning that underlies those flimsy little words. The richest parts of our selves beyond the reach of language, and words only float on it, moved by currents far deeper than anything they communicate, a rich, dark inlet of the great sea of meaning we cannot ever hope to speak. “But what if,” Tom asked, conspiratorial, “there was a language that bypassed conscious representation the way snakes and faces do? It’s more like pheromones. Like music or empathy. If you hug someone for thirty seconds, you’ll both release oxytocin. It’s not about the mind—it’s about body speaking to body. It’s a kind of truth that language can never capture.” A fascinating story about a primal language that says what ordinary human speech cannot. A l

  I have a new story out today! Actually, it came out earlier this month behind a paywall, but it’s now available to read for free. “An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words” is published at Lightspeed Magazine ! This story is about a magical language that can say all things. It’s about the power and limits of words. And it’s almost everything that I want to say about writing. I hope you give it a read. For more of my thoughts on this story, you can check out my Author Spotlight/Interview on the Lightspeed site. There’s also a podcast of the story available at the site. I haven’t finished listening to the whole thing yet, but narrator Stefan Rudnicki’s voice is a perfect match for my character, and I’m delighted by his narration.

  Time has been strange for some time now. There’s a joke I’ve seen online, the gist of which is:  “How can it be 2022? I still haven’t finished processing 2020!” Which, well, yes. Very much yes. Nevertheless, we’re already almost in the middle of the first month of the new year. 2021 was strange and hard, but there were spots of light, too, and among those spots of light were books and stories. Here are some books that I loved.     Novels and Collections The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu This was the first book I finished in 2021. If you don’t know Ken Liu’s work yet, you should fix that immediately; I think he is one of the most important writers working today, both in and out of speculative fiction. The Hidden Girls is his second collection of short stories, and a worthy follow-up to his first. Here are mind-bending far-future science fiction stories, equally mind-bending fantasy (with elements of sci-fi), and tender stories of family. The opening story, “Gh