tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41347529253346932732024-03-18T08:24:23.858-07:00It's a Jumblebean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-25418383237346086702024-03-17T19:27:00.000-07:002024-03-17T20:18:17.169-07:00Haunted Neighborhoods: Book reviews of Gwendolyn Kiste's The Haunting of Velkwood and Ai Jiang's Linghun<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif">The
haunted house is a staple of horror tales. But in their new books Gwendolyn
Kiste and Ai Jiang bring us haunted </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">neighborhoods</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif">—Ai Jiang’s work
actually involves an entire town—that threaten to entrap and swallow their
protagonists whole, keeping them locked in with ghosts of the past. Both books
are confrontations with loss and trauma; they’re both about making peace with
the dead and letting them go (if you can). They take different forms in these
explorations and approach these themes from different angles and with differing
outcomes. But they are both gorgeously told works, and haunting.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">The Haunting of Velkwood</span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> by Gwendolyn Kiste<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Twenty
years ago, Velkwood Street—a little block of eight houses, in a
“blink-and-miss-it sort of subdivision”—disappeared from the face of the earth.
Or rather, it part-way disappeared: it’s still visible, glowing, half-there and
half-not, a kind of suburban Brigadoon behind an invisible, supernatural
barrier. Scientists, government agencies, and paranormal investigators have
done their best to try to break into what became of Velkwood, to solve its
mystery, but all have failed. There are only three survivors from the
neighborhood, all best friends, and all away at college when their homes and
families vanished. They are also the only ones who can enter what’s now termed
the ”Velkwood Vicinity,” and the only ones who might know the true story behind
its disappearance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Talitha
Velkwood is one of these survivors. Her family was the first to build a house
in the subdivision, and so the street was named after them. She’s spent the
last twenty years running from that tragedy—running from the journalists and
paranormal investigators and tabloid reporters. She’s run from the other
survivors, her once-best friends. She’s a ghost in her own life, drifting from
town to town and job to job, unable to form any real connections. Until one
more paranormal investigator shows up, asking for her help, asking her to go
back to Velkwood. But this one offers hope that her little sister, Sophie, is
still there. And that Talitha might be able to rescue her.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">What
follows is a sleek, page-turner of a thriller, as Talitha goes back to confront
her past and, eventually, reunites with her fellow survivors, Brett and Grace.
Talitha succeeds in entering Velkwood on her first try, but her visit only adds
to the mystery as she encounters a world where time moves differently, the sky
overhead changes color in strange fashion, and her former neighbors and loved
ones remain eternally locked in the past. This is an eerie, surreal world of
strange and repeating imagery—swarming ants and millipedes, a suddenly
darkening sky. And it’s a world that forces her to reckon with her past as she
tries to reach out to her sister and relives painful memories of her family and
mother.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">The
past is a common theme of ghost stories—ghosts are remnants of the past that
won’t move on, after all. Talitha’s reckoning with her past happens in two
worlds—the spectral remains of Velkwood and the real world where she reunites
with her best friend, Brett. Brett and Talitha were once inseparable but have
become estranged. Working through their relationship—understanding what they
were to each other, what they are and what they might yet become—is a major
thread of this book. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Overall,
this is a gorgeously told and atmospheric thriller. The plotting is propulsive,
and yet for all its sleek tension the prose remains lush. Tension and stakes
rapidly rise: Talitha goes back again and again to Velkwood to try to save her
sister, but Velkwood is changing Talitha even as her presence changes it. The
barrier between worlds becomes porous. She and her survivor friends aren’t just
going back to Velkwood--Velkwood is also coming back for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Kiste’s
previous work and novels have centered on themes of trauma and change,
reckoning with the past, female solidarity, and intense female relationships. <i>The
Haunting of Velkwood</i> takes up these themes, but with added depth and
direction. This feels like the book that Kiste has been working toward over the
last several years. Moving and immensely satisfying in its conclusion, <i>The
Haunting of Velkwood</i> is (in my opinion) Kiste’s best work yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Linghun
by Ai Jiang<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">In
this strange, delicate, and spare novella, Ai Jiang offers up the story of a
haunted town called HOME. Grieving families compete desperately to buy a house
in HOME, for if you live in one of these houses there is a chance that the
house might summon the spirit of your dead loved one. The novella unfolds
through the viewpoints of three characters: Wenqi, a teenage girl whose family
has bought and newly moved into a house in Home in the hopes of seeing the
spirit of her dead brother; Liam, a teenage boy whose family makes up some of
the “lingerers” in the town: homeless people who camp out on the lawns of
occupied houses, waiting for a house to go up for a sale; and a mysterious older woman whose name shifts
throughout the book, a woman who possesses one of the coveted houses but has
never seen the ghost she so desperately wishes to see.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">The
desperate, all-consuming nature of grief pervades this book. Jiang vividly captures
how such grief envelops characters in their own private worlds, and of how this
grief can destroy relationships among the living. For me, this came across most
heartbreakingly in the stories of Wenqi, Liam, and the other teenagers they
know in town. Wenqi loved her brother, but she was very young when he died and
it was many years ago. It’s Wenqi’s mother who has dragged her husband and living
daughter to HOME, uprooting their former lives. Wenqi believes that her mother
loved her son best and would have sacrificed Wenqi for her brother if she
could. Heartbreakingly, everything the mother does seems to confirm this belief:
Wenqi’s mother is focused wholly on her dead son and neglects her living
daughter completely. Liam’s family moved to town for the sake of a dead sister
whom Liam never even met and are similarly indifferent to their living son’s
feelings. And other parents are
similarly, shockingly, careless of the needs of their own living children for
the sake of dead loved ones. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">The
third viewpoint narrative of the novella, that of a woman first called “Mrs,” unrfolds slowly. This is an elderly woman gossiped of as the “crazy” lady in town, a recluse
who behaves eccentrically even for HOME. She’s grieving a loved one, of course,
like everyone in HOME. But as her story unfolds, the nature and object of that
grief subtly shifts. This third strand of narration expands upon the nature of
grief: one can mourn a person, of course, but one can also mourn a home, a village,
a country, an entire past and way of life. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">Linghun
is a beautiful, lingering meditation on grief, mostly quiet and atmospheric save
for one shocking moment of violence. Like Kiste in <i>The Haunting of Velkwood</i>,
Jiang depicts a town frozen in time, even though her town is populated by the
living as well as the dead. But the living of HOME are caught in the stasis of
grief, frozen as surely as the ageless spirits they seek and as surely as the ghosts
of Velkwood who repeat the same routines and dialogue endlessly. Both books
depict characters struggling to break free from the past, to varying degrees
and with varying success. And in both books, there’s a suggestion that one can
never break wholly free, that the past may continue to reach out for you or
accompany you—whether in the form of an entire haunted town or as something
else. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-57440646767435600492024-03-08T17:08:00.000-08:002024-03-08T17:08:56.994-08:00Short fiction recs! Dec 2023--Jan 2024<p> <span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Late, but here are some stories I read and loved in
December 2023 and January 2024.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Published in 2023 (many from earlier in the
year)<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/what-is-owed-and-what-can-never-be/" target="_blank">“What is Owed and What Can Never Be” </a>by Ariel Mark
Jack in Beneath Ceaseless Skies<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“I am owed this death.” All
that is around Viktoriya halts as the words exhale into whiteness against the
winter-bleached sky. She squeezes the chilly trigger between steady beats of
her sturdy heart. The rifle, held tight to her shoulder, kicks like a storm.
The five-legged deer crumples into the brush.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A young woman ekes out a
living for herself in a harsh wilderness, hunting to feed and clothe herself
and pay off a contract debt that she was tricked into as a child. But what
starts off as a gritty, compelling tale of survival and debt bondage takes on
an unexpected turn toward the end, becoming a beautiful, hopeful tale that
asks: what is owed to us in life? What do we owe? What is owned, what is ours,
and what can never be taken away?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.khoreomag.com/fiction/for-however-long/" target="_blank">For However Long”</a> by Thomas Ha in Khoreo Magazine<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I tell people that I feel
like I’m the mother of a ghost, they laugh.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not cruelly. But gently,
reassuringly, to remind me that my son is in space, not gone forever. They talk
about the ‘Turners they know, maybe a church friend’s child or a colleague or
relative, and how my son might be one of them—the ones to return rather than
renew their initial contracts, because
everyone gets tired and wants the comfort of stable soil eventually, or so they
say.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An aching story of the choices
that children make, and the physical distances that occur within families as a
result. A mother misses her son, who has immigrated to Mars. But she reflects
that she herself left her own mother—moving only across the width of a
continent, but a distance that also irrevocably separated her from regular contact
with her mother. As the narrator counts up the limited time she had with her
mother, and the limited time she’ll have with her own son, the story irresistibly
asks the reader to consider: how much time do we ourselves have with our loved
ones? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> A b</span>eautifully told story, and deeply
moving. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yu_12_23/" target="_blank">“In Memories We Drown” </a>by Kelsea Yu in
Clarkesworld</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal;">It’s too
risky.</span></em></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 15.6pt;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">Rosalie’s conducted tests,
checked for toxins . . . the known ones, anyway. Still, it
doesn’t take a marine botany degree (Rosalie has two) to know she shouldn’t eat
anything that shines brighter than a startled jellyfish.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 15.6pt;"><em><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-style: normal;">But that
scent.</span></em><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 15.6pt;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">She leans down to inhale,
marveling the way she did the first time. Somehow, this little plant smells of
butter and apples and dough, fresh from the oven, with hints of five spices
she’d recognize anywhere. Her longing runs bone-deep, dredged up and powerful
after so many years.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rosalie lives and works in a
deep-sea research station which has been cut off from the surface world. The
station is running out of food. . until one day the station’s remotely operated
submersible brings back a mysterious plant. A plant that might not only offer
survival to the station’s residents, but that also invokes memories—tasting and
smelling just like the favorite childhood food of whoever tastes it. This is an
achingly gorgeous story about loss, longing, and memory. A story that deftly
entwines science fiction and fantasy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/nextype/" target="_blank">“Nextype”</a> by Sam Kyung Yoo in Strange Horizons</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Her post-op recovery had been
difficult. She had fever dreams of worms crawling into her brain through the
still-healing metal port. Even after she was fully recovered and ready to be
plugged in for her first update, images of the plug’s pin connectors piercing
too deep and puncturing her occipital lobe made her hands shake.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mirae remembers her mother
getting impatient with her. She grabbed Mirae’s hands and guided them—forced
them—to shove the plug the rest of the way in. “See? Everything is fine. Stop
overreacting,” her mother said. And she was right. All systems normal. Software
installation completed without any issue.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But Mirae still cried that
first night.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A wrenching story of family
pressure in a ferociously competitive society. Of new parental controls enabled
by technology. And of a young woman trying to find her brother—and herself—in this
world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/the-darkness-carried-by-beasts" target="_blank">“The Darkness Carried by the Beasts”</a> by Maria
Haskins in Sunday Morning Transport<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Death was already inside
Gunvor long before any diagnosis, and it has been inside the world itself, in
every strand and filament, since this world was knit together.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">After two hours, Torsten knows
he’s lost even though it is not possible for him to be lost here. He knows
these woods; knows them, whether they are covered in snow or not, but something
has changed. It’s as if the landscape has shifted around him, or maybe the world
has swallowed him whole, spitting him out elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A deeply immersive and
compelling tale of loss, grief, love, and winter, told in Haskins’ gorgeously lyrical
prose. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://therumpus.net/2023/12/18/pulmonary/" target="_blank">“Pulmonary” </a>by Avra Margariti in The Rumpus<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I build a home inside my
mother’s cancer-riddled lungs. This is a product of my belief that if I stay
close to the flesh that killed her, what I am most afraid of will fail to find
me, because I will have already hidden within its blind spot.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An exquisite and haunting piece
of flash fiction. A delicately strange tale of grief and love.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/yang_11_23/">“Bird-Girl Builds a Machine”</a> by Hanna Yang in Clarkesworld<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your mother spends every
evening working on her machine.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It looks like no other machine
you’ve seen. A hunk of metal on the ground, with wires stringing each section
to the next. Like the inside of a giant robot’s belly, if someone cut it open
to expose the raw gape of its innards.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">She’s been constructing it,
piece by piece, for as long as you can remember.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The enigmatic tale of a girl
and her mother and the machine that her mother is obsessed with. A tale of a
complicated mother-daughter relationship, of the resentment that can co-exist with
love, and of repeating life cycles. Spare and mysterious, this is a tale that lingers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/once-upon-a-time-at-the-oakmont/" target="_blank">“Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont” </a>by P.A.
Cornell in Fantasy Magazine<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 24.0pt; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .25in; vertical-align: baseline;"><em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #111111; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">On the
island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it
is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that
wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is
called The Oakmont.</span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A gentle and slightly
bittersweet story of community and love in a most unusual apartment building.
The Oakmont building is a building out of time, and its residents come from all
periods of time. Sarah is from our present day, and she’s fallen in love with Roger,
a man who exists in his own time in the period just before World War II. Sarah’s
knowledge of the upcoming attack on Pearl Harbor—her knowledge of the whole
tragedy of World War II, and of other disasters and events that her friends
from the past will endure—haunt her and the story as a whole. Despite this
sense of looming tragedy, however—and Sarah’s fear for Roger’s life, and the
inevitable parting of the time-crossed lovers—there’s a lovely gentleness and
warmth to this story, and particularly in its depiction of community. No one
finds the Oakmont on a map; this is a special place that selects for the few
residents that need it. It’s a place—and a multitude of time periods—that’s captured
beautifully. Any time travel story—or a story like this one, which plays with
time—has a twist, and the twist here is also most satisfying. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/magazine/" target="_blank">Gamut Magazine</a> (the relaunch). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/past-issues/" target="_blank">Issue 1:</a><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/past-issues/" target="_blank"> </a>January 2024 </span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gamut Magazine appeared in its
first iteration in 2017. It published some wonderful horror and dark fiction but
folded at the end of its first year. However! It’s now back as a dark
speculative fiction magazine under the new House of Gamut imprint and
non-profit. The first issue of the relaunched Gamut came out at the beginning
of this year and is free to read online. I highlight some of my favorite pieces
below, but the entire issue is well worth reading, and features poetry as well
as fiction and essays.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href=" https://houseofgamut.com/gamut-magazine/we-never-went-away-we-just-hid-better/" target="_blank">“We Never Went Away, We Just Hid Better” </a>by Sam Rebelein<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You know about the uncanny
valley?” he asks.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">.It’s one of those questions
where your answer doesn’t matter, he’s going to explain it to you anyway. He’s
already mansplained a number of things to you tonight, including the end of
Inception, which is the reddest of flags, as far as things men can mansplain
go. But he did make a good case for how Leonardo was in a dream the entire
time, and it actually did make you want to rewatch the movie for the first time
since 2010, in spite of yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A short, sharp, wonderfully
creepy tale. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A story about what seems
like an ordinary date with a slightly annoying and “mansplaining” ordinary man.
. . which becomes steadily stranger and stranger as the night unfolds. It’s a
story about the “uncanny valley,” and it offers up one explanation for why this
phenomenon exists—for why we fear that which looks close to human but not <i>quite
</i>human. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/gamut-magazine/date-night/" target="_blank">“Date Night”</a> by Jan Stinchcomb<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nobody thinks of the mother,
given the babysitter’s ordeal. The mother, still young, is counting on dinner
and a movie with her husband. It is the best time of her life—the children
aren’t babies anymore, but they still need her. They’re good at school. They
have interesting things to say, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They don’t ask her about the
darkness, but they see it in her eyes, and she sees them seeing.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A tense, propulsive story
that’s a twisty riff on the babysitter-versus-serial killer/Final Girl tropes.
A story that is centered on one particular mother and one particular
babysitter, but which seemingly evokes an entire world of babysitters who grow
up to be mothers, of mother who were once babysitters; of the mysterious masked
men who prey upon them, and the terrible bargains struck. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/gamut-magazine/up-from-slavery/" target="_blank">“Up from Slavery”</a> by Victor LaValle<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #363636; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">I’m going to start with the pregnant woman because she survived.</span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .2in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><i><span style="color: #363636; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">79 other
Amtrak passengers weren’t so lucky. 243 people boarded the Lake Shore Limited
at Penn Station; we left at 3:40 PM. I had an appointment in Syracuse; me and a
couple of lawyers in a windowless room. That occupied my mind more than who was
sitting nearby. So I didn’t notice the pregnant woman until the train had
flipped.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An absolutely propulsive story
that starts off with a train wreck and then goes in completely unexpected
directions. Simon is a lonely and isolated man, an orphan who knows nothing of
his birth family. He’s also a Black American man who is copyediting a new
edition of Booker T. Washington’s memoir, an experience which is affecting him
deeply. When Simon receives word that the father he never knew has passed away,
it’s the start to a bewildering and shocking revelation about his true family
history, self, and identity. But it’s also an identity he doesn’t have to
accept. An intense story which draws on painful American history and the
contemporary world to create a most unusual and startling science
fiction/fantasy superhero-origin story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://houseofgamut.com/gamut-magazine/to-a-puppet-from-a-dummy/" target="_blank">“To a Puppet, From a Dummy”</a> by
Jon Padgett (essay)<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I saw the episode at the age
of four and had recurring nightmares about the Doll for the five years that
followed. I can see her now, four decades and more later, perfectly rendered by
my imagination. The Doll has a rather square face (like my own) with matted,
blond hair and smeared black circles under her eyes. When about to kill, the
lids pop open, revealing eyes that are blue and rather beautiful. Her closed
mouth breaks into a fixed grin revealing bright, white teeth. The Doll sits up,
and she seems to float towards me.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is an essay, not fiction,
yet this personal essay by Padgett is every bit as gripping and atmospheric as
the horror fiction in this issue of Gamut Magazine. A deeply personal
exploration and reflection on dolls and ventriloquist dummies, and how the
author’s relationship with them has evolved throughout his life. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-3966785475971913402024-03-01T09:05:00.000-08:002024-03-01T09:05:42.181-08:00New story day! "The Cold Inside" at Metaphorosis Magazine<div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">I
have a new story that’s out and free to read today! <a href="https://magazine.metaphorosis.com/story/2024/the-cold-inside-vanessa-fogg/" target="_blank">“The Cold Inside”</a> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">is published at the lovely Metaphorosis
Magazine as part of a special issue of returning authors (check out the other
writers in the <a href="https://books.metaphorosis.com/magazine/2024/jan-mar-2024/" target="_blank">Winter Issue of 2024</a>!) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">“The
Cold Inside” is about grief and cold and a ghost in white. It’s set in the
woods of northern Michigan, in an unnamed town but based on a region I know and love. The
artwork that <a href="https://www.candrahopeart.com/about-1" target="_blank">Candra Hope c</a>reated for my story is <i>perfect</i>, and I’m so
pleased to be part of this magazine. <o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br />bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-2836801343595581732024-01-25T12:31:00.000-08:002024-01-25T13:28:40.317-08:005 Short Story Collections from 2023<p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Five collections/anthologies
of short stories that I read and loved in 2023. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Like Smoke, Like Light:
Stories </span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">by Yukimi Ogawa</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The title of this collection
is apt, for Ogawa’s stories are indeed like light or smoke: delicate, shifting
things of beauty; slippery, hard to pin down or grasp, hard to capture into
boxes or labels. These are strange, hybrid stories that blend fantasy,
folklore, horror, and science fiction. There are wonderful monsters galore, as
in “Hundred Eye,” a story about a thief with a hundred eyes on her long arms, and
“Rib,” a story about a skeleton woman who helps an orphaned little boy. In “The
Flying Head at the Edge of Night,” a head does indeed fly about unconscious
each night and must be tracked down by its body each morning. There are misfits
and outsiders of all types in these stories, including an artificial
intelligence (AI) in “Nini,” who discovers a forgotten goddess in a space
station. Some of these misfits are merciless, wreaking a deserved and cathartic
revenge on humans who mistreat them. But for the most part these monsters are
kind, despite their unsettling appearances. These are tales of a delightful
creepiness, lightened with tenderness and warmth, where monsters and misfits reach
for connection with humans and with one another. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of my favorite stories in
this collection are the “colorful-island tales,” as writer Francesca Forrest calls
them in the forward to this book. These are tales set on a nameless island
where many of the inhabitants are born with strikingly colorful eyes, hair, and
skin patterns. Once the inhabitants of these islands didn’t think much about
their beautiful colors; they saw no status differences between those with the
brightest colors and those who are “colorless” i.e. people who would look
simply normal in our own human society. But the island has been discovered by
foreign tourists who are enamored of the people’s bright colors, and the island
has shifted to a tourist economy that caters to foreigners; the most strikingly
colored islanders are now considered the most beautiful and highest status, and
the “colorless” are now of lowest status. “The Colorless Thief” is the first such
tale in this collection, and perhaps the most powerful. In it, an orphaned
young woman finds that when she gets hurt, her bruises bloom and heal into the
most beautiful of patterns—"golden needles,” “caramelized frost crystals,”
and more. To earn money to survive, the girl allows herself to be beaten so
that her skin can bloom into beautiful patterns for the delight of foreigners.
It’s a striking, powerful tale of exoticization, exploitation, tourist economies,
and the way self-image is shaped by society. Follow-up stories in this same
world deepen our view of island society and its interactions with the mainland,
and also introduce science-fictional elements. It would be easy to write a
world where the tourists are simply “bad” and the islanders are simply a poor,
exploited people. But writer Yukimi Ogawa is smarter than that, and her stories
go deeper, humanizing both islanders and the “foreign” mainlanders. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The gentle humanity in these stories is perhaps the most distinctive,
unifying element to these tales. While a few of these tales do go terrifically
(rather thrillingly) dark, the majority twine darkness with light and
compassion. Monsters show humans kindness that the monsters themselves never
received at human hands, and in the soft-dystopia of the “colorful island”
tales, decent humans do the best they can, pushing laws and boundaries as much
as they can to treat others with kindness. Even when writing the darkest of her
stories, Ogawa has a certain lightness of touch. These are lovely tales, odd in
just the right way, surprising and fresh. And overall. it’s a collection filled
with gentleness and warmth, a spirit of generosity and, in the end, a faith in
humanity. Stories to hold to your heart, when warmth and faith are needed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Skin Thief</span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> by
Suzan Palumbo</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I first discovered Palumbo’s
work with the short story, “<a href="https://www.anathemamag.com/the-pull-of-the-herd " target="_blank">The Pull of the Herd,”</a> first published in Anathema</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Magazine. After reading it, I immediately tried to
find more from this writer, and I knew that Suzan Palumbo was someone to watch:
that this was a writer with an extraordinary talent, and one who would go far.
I’m delighted to say that I was right, that she has published banger after
banger since, and that her best stories are now gathered in this beautiful
collection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Skin Thief opens with “The
Pull of the Herd,” a story about a shape-shifting deer-woman, torn between the
herd of her birth and her love for a human woman. The narrator’s deer-skin has
never felt quite right on her; it’s too tight, it doesn’t fit, she doesn’t want
to be a deer. But when she leaves her herd to be with a human woman, her
deer-skin calls to her each day. There’s a sense of gorgeous yearning in this
piece; the narrator is truly stranded between worlds. In the end, even when
she’s living a life she freely chose, she’s keenly aware of loss. It’s a sense
of loss and yearning that haunts many of these stories, and “The Pull of the
Herd” sings with themes that recur throughout this collection: themes of
otherness, of feeling like an outsider; the pull between family obligations and
expectations and living the life you want for yourself; shape-shifting,
transformation, love, and loss. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the strongest stories
draw on the author’s Indo-Trinidadian heritage and Trinidadian folklore to explore
these themes. In “Laughter Among the Trees,” one of my personal favorites, the
theme of “otherness,” of not fitting in, is told through a diaspora lens. The
narrator, Ana, doesn’t quite fit in, but her little sister, Sabrina does.
Sabrina was born in Canada, unlike Ana and their immigrant Indo-Caribbean
parents. Sabrina seems at ease in the world in a way that Ana isn’t and in a
way that Ana resents—“as if the city had been fashioned for her, unlike my
parents and I who’d been transplanted too late.” Sabrina is charming, adorable,
beloved, and able to make friends everywhere she goes. And then one night, on a
family camping trip, Sabrina disappears. . . This is a dark and gripping story,
powerful and ultimately devastating. It’s about grief and guilt and jealousy
and loss, about migration and assimilation and pretending that you are what
you’re not. As Ana grows up without a sister, she tries to live the life she
imagines that her sister would have lived. . . until one day she can’t.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s delicate magic in some
of these stories, like the lovely “Propagating Peonies” and “Tesselation.”
There’s fairy-tale magic, as in the yearning mermaid-with-a-twist story, “Apolepisi:
A De-Scaling." And there’s outright horror, as in “Laughter Among the
Trees” and other unsettling tales with sinister spirits and monsters of
Trinidadian folklore: the deliciously creepy “Tara’s Mother’s Skin” and
heartbreaking “Douen.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Kill Jar,” the
novelette which is original to this collection, manages both delicacy and
horror in a tale that draws on the setting and tropes of Gothic horror: a
secluded mansion, an isolated heroine, dark family secrets. But this is also Gothic
horror with a twist, as the author adds some of her own signature details: a heroine
of South Asian heritage, a queer love story, and themes of shape-shifting and
transformation. There’s a sense of bittersweetness in the ending of this one,
as in many of Palumbo’s stories: a protagonist’s insistence on living as true
to herself as she can, even as this entails sacrifice and loss.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">All in all, “Skin Thief” is a
gorgeous collection. The stories are by turns delicate and raw, dark and
magical, filled with horror and heartache and deep emotion. The ending story,
“Douen,” is particularly heartrending—a shriek of pain, as conveyed by the ghost
of a little girl who just wants to be with her mother. While I had read many of
these stories previously online, I’m glad to have them all gathered in one
place. These are stories that are worth reading again and again. These are
stories that dig and slide under the skin. A beautiful collection by a major
talent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Rosalind’s Siblings: Fiction
and Poetry Celebrating Scientists of Marginalized Genders,</span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">
edited by Bogi Takács </span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This anthology of science
fiction stories takes its title and inspiration from the scientist Rosalind
Franklin, whose X-ray diffraction studies were instrumental in solving the
structure of DNA. Famously, James Watson and Francis Crick made use of her
X-ray data when building their model of DNA structure. Also famously, they made
use of her data without her permission and without proper acknowledgement.<sup>1,2,3</sup>
In the years since, Franklin has become a symbol of the struggle that women
scientists have faced in their careers, of the ways they’ve been sidelined in
the past, and of how they have often had to struggle for respect and to be
taken seriously by their peers.<sup>4<o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Rosalind’s Siblings</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> is a
tribute anthology to Rosalind Franklin, first conceived of by a relative of
Franklin. This book pays tribute to Franklin by featuring, as editor Bogi Takács
states, “speculative stories and poems about scientists marginalized due to
their gender and sex.” Thus, <i>Rosalind’s Siblings</i> features stories and
poems about women scientists, and also stories and poems about trans men and
nonbinary scientists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It's an incredibly varied selection
of stories. There’s “hard” science fiction, and there are stories that blend fantasy
with science. There are stories set in space, a story set in the sea, stories
set on other planets, <i>two</i> stories set in the atmosphere of Venus, a
story set in ancient Sumeria, and stories of cryptozoologists studying fairies
and other strange beasts. There’s humor, whimsy, intensity, war, romance, and
tragedy. The protagonists vary not only in gender/sex, but also in
race/ethnicity, nationality, neurodiversity, and other life experiences. What
unites these pieces is that they all feature <i>scientists</i> in speculative
fiction. And it was while reading these stories that I realized that
many—most?—of the science-fiction stories I read casually online don’t feature
scientists as protagonists at all. In most science-fiction stories I come
across, the “science” part is background, or backdrop. In this volume, science
and scientists are front-and-center.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Collecting Ynés” by Lisa M. Bradley
is the opening story to this volume, and one of the best. This story is part
poetry and part prose, lyrical and tinged with the mythical. It’s a
fantastical, magical-realist telling of the life of the real-life
Mexican-American botanist Ynés Mexia. Mexia was 55 when she went on her first
botanical field trip to Mexico, launching a productive and celebrated career as
a botanist. The joy of discovery—not just scientific discovery, but the thrill
of finding one’s calling, even in later life—sings through this piece.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The joy of science is, indeed,
a recurrent theme in this book. And as someone who was once a practicing scientist,
I found myself particularly drawn to the stories focused on the actual practice
of science—the nitty-gritty of data collection and problem-solving, the tedium
and frustrations--amid the joy. In that respect, “Rewilding Nova” by Polenth
Blake and “Leech Clinic” by Laura Jane Swanson are both good examples: gentle
stories that feature the nitty-gritty of problem-solving within larger tales. “The
Elusive Plague” by Santiago Belluco is particularly impressive in this regard,
a medical mystery set among a tale of relationship drama. The story accurately
captures the stress of trying to survive in a competitive science career (even
making a not-so-subtle jab at the use of publication impact factors), and I was
not surprised to learn that the author is indeed a practicing scientist in a
biomedical field. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Science collides with the
mystical in the wonderful “Cavern of Dreams” by Julie Nováková, which takes us
into a world where magic has become real, and asks: what does this mean for
science and those who have devoted themselves to it? How does a rational,
dedicated scientist, who has spent years in rigorous training, fit into this
new world? It’s a beautifully thought-provoking piece, which also introduced me
to the intriguing concept of the “shadow biome.” Magic blends with fantasy to
more lightly humorous effect in such stories as “Animal Behavior” by Emma Alice
Johnson, where an animal behavioral scientist is called on to deal with a most
unusual animal. And science and scientific ambition take on strange new forms
in the weird and wild “Great Things of Which to Speak Of” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
and “The Bull of the Moon Holds His Horns to Time’s Grindstone; or,
Cybernetineti in Ur,” by Vajra Chandrasekera (the latter of which has one of
the most unexpected, and best, ending lines I’ve ever seen).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Science is, of course, a human
endeavor. And Premee Mohamed reminds us of the importance of the human element
in “If Strange Things Happen Where She Is,” where a woman is trying to run a
lab during a time of war and is reminded that the future of her work—and of science—lies
ultimately not with a physical laboratory or machines, but with <i>the people</i>:
the students, professors, and other scientists. The human element is strongly
present in all the stories of <i>Rosalind’s Siblings</i>, among settings that are
often fantastical, exotic, and strange. Two additional stories that impressed
me with their human emotion were “The Tightrope Walker” by Celia Neri, the
story of an autistic astronomer caught between the noise and complexity of
human society and the silence and peace of space; and “The Vanishing Of
Ultratatts” by D.A. Xiaolin Spires, which sets a story of grief amid a
surreally futuristic world of animated tattoo sensors and volcano surfing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">All in all, <i>Rosalind’s
Siblings</i> is a wonderful collection that showcases science fiction stories
that are diverse in multiple ways, not just in the gender/sex of the
characters, but also in the intersection of other identities/backgrounds and in
setting, tone, approach, plot and themes. With such a variety, a reader is
sure to find something of appeal. It’s a fitting tribute indeed to Rosalind
Franklin’s legacy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">1. Cobb M. and
Comfort N. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5 " target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">What Rosalind Franklin truly
contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure.</span><span style="color: blue;"> </span><i>Nature</i> <b>616</b>,
657-660 (2023)<o:p></o:p></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01313-5 " target="_blank">2. </a>Anthes
E. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/25/science/rosalind-franklin-dna.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Untangling Rosalind Franklin’s role in
DNA discovery, 70 years on</span>.</a> <i>New York Times. </i>April
25, 2023. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">3. Watson, J.D. <i>The
Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. </i>New
York, NY:<i> </i>Signet; First Edition; 1969. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">4. In his memoir <i>The
Double Helix</i>, Watson freely admits that he viewed Franklin dismissively at
first, something he would regret as he came to later respect her. As an example
of this, he writes in one passage of attending a scientific talk by Franklin,
where instead of paying attention to her science: </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">“Momentarily
I wondered how she would look if she took off her glasses and did something
novel with her hair.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The Potential of Radio and
Rain</span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> by Myna Chang</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The prairie is made of dirt
and sky, of shushling grass and starling night—and the creatures caught
between.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is a chapbook that I
reviewed earlier in 2023, but I wanted to repeat this review again for my summary
of 2023 reads. It’s a gorgeous collection of miniatures, flash tales of the
shortgrass prairie, lit with longing. These are stories of small towns,
teenagers desperate to get away and adults just trying to survive. Stories of a
tornado that upends everything, of rebellions small and large, people loving
and leaving one another; a group of teens driving to a rock concert, a man who
still retains the muscle memory of how to handle a horse even as dementia robs
him of all else. These are stories of desperation and grit, dust storms and
drought and longing. And these are tales of magic—of starlit nights and
lightning bugs, of moments of sweet freedom, of the fat years when times are
good, of the magic when it rains. Myna Chang’s small fictions build up to a
small, interconnected world. An enthralling collection, where prose becomes
poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>White Cat, Black Dog</i> by Kelly Link</span><o:p style="font-size: 12pt;"></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">My review of a major author’s
new work will be on the shorter side—not because I have nothing to say, but
because I don’t know how to say it. Kelly Link’s work leaves me flailing, sputtering
incoherently, waving my arms as I wail to myself, <i>But how does she do that??!<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">White Cat, Black Dog, </span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">her
newest collection, consists of seven tales inspired by classic European fairy
tales. Each tale is a marvel. “The Lady and the Fox,” an elegant and wintry tale
inspired by Tam Lin, is the most straightforward fairy tale retelling, and would
not be out of place in a typical genre fantasy magazine or anthology. “The Girl
Who Did Not Know Fear” falls furthest from genre fantasy; it does not,
technically, have any outright speculative elements at all. Yet there is
something that <i>feels</i> supernatural, definitely off-kilter and strange, in
this tale of a professor stranded at the Detroit airport for four days due to
bad weather. Nothing much happens, yet everything feels ominous. Each strange occurrence,
each coincidence, can be explained away; yet the strangeness builds and builds.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Strangeness amid the mundane—that’s
a Kelly Link story, and these stories twist strangeness and mundanity in different
ways, to different effect. “The White Road” takes us to a place of outright
horror and “The Game of Smash and Recovery” (first published in the speculative
fiction genre magazine <i>Strange Horizons</i>) takes on the form of
science-fiction. Other stories twist fantasy and reality together in elegant
ways. There’s a playfulness and wryness in most of these tales, as in “The
White Cat’s Divorce” and the haunting “Skinder’s Veil.” My favorite of all these
stories, though, is “Prince Hat Underground.” In fact, I think it’s now my
favorite Link of story of all, which means it ranks high on my overall list of
favorite stories. “Prince Hat Underground” is a novelette that starts with
sunlit brunches in New York and ends in a quest and test in Hell itself. It’s playful,
funny, entrancing, and ultimately heart-breaking in a way I don’t quite
understand. It left me flailing, trying to dissect it, to understand what
effect it has on me, to understand Kelly Link’s genius. In the end, I’m just
left admiring, gaping, and wailing to myself, <i>But </i>h<i>ow does she do
that??! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-17816584240544784272024-01-11T14:28:00.000-08:002024-01-12T09:05:14.512-08:00Book review: He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan<p> <i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%;">He Who Drowned the World</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%;"> by Shelley Parker-Chan is my first
great read of the year. I suspect it will be among my top reads of all this
year and is in fact one of my favorite reads of all time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Although “favorite” may seem an odd
choice of words here. </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">He Who Drowned the World</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"> is dark. Almost
unrelentingly dark. It’s the sequel to Parker-Chan’s thrilling </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">She Who
Became the Sun</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">, which was also marked by darkness and cruelty as it told
the story of Zhu Yuanzhang’s rise to power in a queer, gender-flipped alt-historical
and lightly fantastical retelling of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. In the
sequel, we follow Zhu and others as they mercilessly plot and fight for the
throne. Madam Zhang, the unofficial power behind the powerful Zhang family, is seemingly
Zhu’s most formidable threat. In a world where women of her status are expected
to be decorative dolls, Madam Zhang takes full advantage of what power she’s
allowed, making herself into the most beautiful and entrancing of dolls:
wielding her looks and manners and body as a weapon. Because she cannot openly
rule in her own right, she seeks to rule through men, using and manipulating
them. Wang Baoxiang, the scorned son and scholar from the first book, also
operates from the shadows—so deeply hidden that Zhu and others don’t even see
him there. Filled with rage, resentment, and unacknowledged grief, Baoxiang
wants the throne as a kind of a revenge upon a world that has never accepted
him, that scorns him for not living up to the ideals of Mongolian manhood. And
General Ouyang wants the throne of the Great Khan—but only to topple it, only
to kill the murderer of his family. Ouyang doesn’t care if he lives or dies
after the act; in fact, he </span><i style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">wants</i><span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"> to die. Filled with pain and grief
after killing his beloved, he lives only for the moment of revenge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">All four major characters are deeply
damaged people; all four are consumed with desire. <i>She Who Became the Sun</i>
revolved mainly around Zhu’s desire for power; in this sequel, the desires of
other characters—all equally intense, and all equally blinkered—are given
space. Desire makes these characters cruel: they use and abuse and discard
others to get what they want. Consumed with his own pain, Ouyang has no thought
for anyone or anything else. Suffering from an implied lifetime of pain, Madam
Zhang ignores it, dissociates from physical assaults. . . <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and inflicts pain upon others in a kind of
deflection. Wang Baoxiang has moments of doubt and conscience but pushes his
way deeper and deeper into degradation and cruelty, even as a part of him
screams at him to stop. Zhu Yuanzhang is actually the most stable of the
characters, and certainly the most cheerful and optimistic. Alone among the
four, her pursuit of her goals seems to bring her moments of genuine joy. But
in her all-encompassing ambition she also callously uses people, even people
she loves, and does terrible things. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">It’s a testament to Parker-Chan’s writing
that we can be horrified at these monstrous characters (and let me tell you:
they all do truly monstrous things), but <i>also</i> feel deeply for and with
them. You won’t just feel along with these characters; your heart will be
shredded. Inhabiting the head-spaces of Ouyang and Baoxiang is particularly
painful; both men are self-destructive spirals of self-loathing and despair.
They’re both grieving the death of Esen-Temur (even if only one will
acknowledge it). They’re complicated mirrors for one another in a number of ways, just
as all four characters mirror one another in complicated ways.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">The darkness of this book can feel
unrelenting at times, and it’s so emotionally intense that I had to take
breaks. But it’s also propulsive reading, and the plotting is brilliant,
breakneck, and masterful. There are twists and twists within twists, betrayals
and then more betrayals. Alliances shift and shift again. For long periods
of time characters move in separate, parallel plotlines. . . but toward the
end, Parker-Chan begins bringing them all together, and the plot threads
tighten as initially separate characters collide and interact in surprising
(and satisfying) ways. And though some characters are too far gone in their
darkness and pain to be saved. . .others begin to change. There’s a glimmer of
light. Zhu Yuanzhang finally, <i>finally</i> begins to question the price of
her pursuit of power. And for Wang Baoxiang, possible redemption comes from an
unexpected source.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Parker-Chan
has said in interviews that their aim to write books that feel like those
<a href="https://famouswritingroutines.com/interviews/interview-with-shelley-parker-chan/ )" target="_blank">“hyper-addictive Asian historical TV dramas you can find on Netflix.”</a> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">As someone addicted myself to those
historical fantasy c-dramas, I can say Parker-Chan has succeeded in spades. The
intense emotions, the backstabbing and romance and tragedy, the sprawling
plotlines and epic sweep—it’s all here. The way a c-drama can invoke an epic
romance and tragedy in the backstory of a passing side character in just a few strokes—Parker-Chan
does that, too. Parker-Chan has transplanted the feel of an epic c-drama to
book form…but with an unusually strong focus on gender issues within a patriarchal
society, and with a cast of queer characters that could not be honestly shown now
in any tv production of mainland China. And while the author makes use of
classic c-drama tropes, they also add unique and satisfying twists to those
tropes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.15pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">It all comes together in a breakneck
conclusion that had me guessing till the final page. It’s a supremely
satisfying ending. Parker-Chan has done something special with this duology of
books: a historical fantasy series that’s heartbreaking, complex, intense, and
gorgeously written. A series that takes inspiration from historical Asian tv
dramas, but which is uniquely its own thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-67031374296185852582023-12-17T13:32:00.000-08:002023-12-17T13:32:54.630-08:00Short fiction recs! Oct-Nov 2023<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Some stories that I read and
loved, from October through November. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fantasy<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/four-words-written-on-my-skin/" target="_blank">“Four Words Written on My Skin” </a>by Jenn Reese in <i>Uncanny Magazine<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When
the Fae stole my wife, I followed them into the dark woods to win her back.</span></i></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">A
short but achingly sharp and lovely piece about finding what’s been lost. The
Fae stole the narrator’s wife, but the narrator has been losing Jess for a long
time, before the Fae ever appeared. What follows is a confrontation with the
narrator’s own responsibility for that loss, for the distance that’s grown
between them. And, at the end, a glimmer of hope—the decision to <i>choose to
love. </i>Beautifully told. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/six-versions-of-my-brother-found-under-the-bridge/" target="_blank">“Six Versions of my Brother Found Under the Bridge,”</a> by Eugenia Triantafyllou in <i>Uncanny
Magazine<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technically it was built on
top of a river that had been dredged and filled in some fifty years ago which
made the ground under the bridge degraded and pretty dangerous. But rumor had
it—and by rumor Olga meant Maria’s oldest cousin who had been making up stories
about this place since third grade—that the bridge was built upon one of the
gateways to Hell. If you walked on the bridge at the right time, when
everything was still and quiet, and if you teetered a bit too close to the
edge, the Devil’s own hand would stretch from the bottoms of Hell and drag you
under the bridge, and that would be the last anybody saw of you.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But nobody said what would
happen if you cut out the middleman and just went straight under the bridge.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Olga has
inadvertently—or so she thinks--made a deal with the Devil. Because every time she
returns to the spot under the Devil’s bridge, she finds her brother—the same
brother who she lost five years ago. And there he is, in his yellow pajamas and
holding his favorite Lego toy, forever six years-old. But each time, he’s also
subtly different. Writer Eugenia Triantafyllou is absolutely on fire this year,
and this particular story may be her best. It’s a deeply moving, surprising,
richly observed (and in places snarkily funny) story about family, grief, love,
and deals struck with the devil. In the end. various pieces come together (in
more than on sense) for a richly satisfying conclusion. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-four-gifts-of-empress-lessa/" target="_blank">“The Four Gifts of Empress Lessa” </a>by Myna Chang at <i>Beneath Ceaseless Skies</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">/</span></b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> remember the night I became
a ghost. My husband, the Emperor, served the tainted tea himself; my punishment
for giving him yet another girl-child. I was not the first Empress to drink
from this cup.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gorgeously told, this is a
fierce and intense tale of a murdered Empress, revenge, and a mother’s love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.unchartedmag.com/stories/salt-girl/" target="_blank">“Salt Girl” </a>by Angela Liu at <i>Uncharted
Magazine</i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The sand garden glowed eeriest
during the hour right after sundown, like the earth itself was churning out its
last breath.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For as long as Rika could
remember, her father dragged a wooden rake across the reddish sand every
morning as the sun rose and again in that uncanny twilight before he prepared
dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Why do you do it?” she asked
once as she watched him peel potatoes for a thick chicken stew, his rake
resting against the front door like a loyal guard. Outside, the moon slipped
behind a gauze of clouds, casting shadows over the patterns in the sand. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“Because if I don’t, you will
turn to salt,” her father said, scraping the potato skins into the garbage bin.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A strange, enigmatic story,
with the rhythms of a fairy tale and images that linger.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.juliarios.com/introducing-the-june-2023-issue-of-worlds-of-possibility/" target="_blank">“The Ng Yut Queen” </a>by Eliza
Chan in <i>Worlds of Possibility<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ada
fell off the bed with a yell, grabbing one of her flip-flops as defence against
the intruder. The goddess had perfectly styled black hair in intricate loops
and a red dot on her forehead. But it was the ethereal glow from her skin and
the fact her white robes floated like they were being held by tiny invisible
birds, that really gave the game away.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The absolutely delightful tale
of a young woman whose wishes finally start to be granted by the goddess
Guanyin. . . decades after she first prayed for them. Once upon a time Ada
wished to have blonde curls and to be crowned the May Queen of her town. But now
she’s grown-up—no longer a child—and her wishes are all out-of-date. As she
deals with the chaos of belatedly-granted wishes (manifesting in cherry petals
in her toilet bowl and more) as well as hosting and entertaining a curious
goddess, Ada has to decide: what does she want in her adult life, now? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://thedeadlands.com/issue-30/in-the-forest/\" target="_blank">“In the Forest of Talking Animals”</a> by Makena Onjerika in <i>The Deadlands<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the sky opens,
phosphorescence bounces off the muddy water of a disturbed pothole nearby, and
a bush grows. The girl’s eyes blur; she is evaporating. She has been
evaporating since Saturday morning, when she saw her Daddy for the first time
in almost three years, on the front page of the Nation Newspaper, standing
under the headline “Doctors Strike Again!”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A phenomenally strange,
surreal story. Two children have been abandoned by their father. In her grief
and carelessness, the girl plays a riddle-game with a dangerous Trickster and
loses a part of herself. Now she must find her way home and save her brother. I
love the way this story glides between reality and fantasy, between talking
animals and a magical forest and a little girl’s very real grief. A darkly wonderful
story, beautifully done.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From
the Caribbean Special Issue of <i>Strange Horizons Magazine<o:p></o:p></i></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On October 30 of this year,
Strange Horizons released a special Caribbean-themed issue, featuring Caribbean
speculative fiction, poetry, and articles, all written by authors who either
reside in the Caribbean or are part of the Caribbean diaspora. The entire issue
is worth reading—of the poetry, I particularly recommend Brandon O’Brien’s
powerful <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/poetry/the-creature-from-the-black-lagoon-is-your-father/" target="_blank">“The Creature from the Black Lagoon is Your Father.”</a> Of the stories, I
spotlight the two below, but again recommend reading the entire beautiful,
powerful issue. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/on-fallow-fields-where-flames-once-bloomed/" target="_blank">“On Fallow Fields Where Flames Once Bloomed,”</a> by N.A. Blair <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you fall for the second
time, you expect to die.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As you close your eyes and
hang suspended between living and unliving, you imagine the crack and pop of
your skull scattering crimson regret across the checkered kitchen tiles. You’ll
never see your children fly back from foreign, you think. Never gyaff with the
Mothers’ Guild ladies on Sunday afternoons over cups of Ovaltine and coconut
buns. Never steal awed glances at Sister Lavern throwing her head back in she
big dutty laugh as the sunset gilds her silver afro.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An absolutely gorgeous flash story
of love and longing and repression, of skins that talk and desire, of the
irrepressible Sister Lavern and the woman who loves her. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
<b><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/brincando-charcos-jumping-puddles/" target="_blank">“Brincando Charcos (Jumping Puddles)”</a> by Ben Francisco <o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I tell Mateo to meet me at a
wine bar. It’s a quiet, low-key spot—ideal for first dates, because it’s easy
to make a speedy exit in case the red flags start flying—or worse, if the men
in blue come knocking.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s been over an hour, and
we’re on our second glass of wine when I realize there are no red flags. He’s
not just monologuing, he’s asking me questions too. This is actually a good
first date—and when was the last time that ever happened for me? But I can’t
help but worry that the puddles from this afternoon’s shower may have dried up.
Any time there’s a pause in the conversation, my head swivels to the exit to
check for the men in blue.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another story of queer love
and longing. Javier has met what seems the perfect man. Mateo can even jump
through rain puddles like Javier, using them as portals to appear in distant
cities. Mateo knows about the blue men, too. But despite their compatibilities
and joy, Javier finds himself always watching over his shoulder for the men in
blue, always afraid, never able to wholly relax. A story about how some of the
worst monsters are the ones that live only in your head. A story about having
the courage to accept happiness and love, despite risk. A lovely story,
brimming with both joy and tenderness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Science
Fiction and Horror<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/patsy-cline-sings-sweet-dreams-to-the-universe/" target="_blank">“Patsy Cline Sings Sweet Dreams to the Universe”</a> by Beston Barnett in <i>Strange Horizons</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">i am an METI (Message to Extraterrestrial
Intelligence) carrying a memory beaming through the vacuum of space.</span></i></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Because i am an METI, i presume my
purpose is to communicate with extraterrestrials, should i find them. However,
either because i was made in haste or because my makers were themselves
undecided, i am not sure what it is i am to communicate. i could simply play my
memory for the extraterrestrials, but they will almost certainly not understand
it. For this reason, i also wish to prepare them a greeting, a proper message
from humanity. But there are discrepancies at the heart of the memory i carry,
and until i can resolve them, i cannot formulate my message.</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An artificial intelligence
beams through space, trying to understand the human memory it bears. That
attempt encompasses a look at Patsy Cline’s music, rock climbing, family history,
and seemingly endless cycles of human violence, genocide, and diaspora. And
love. A beautiful, ambitious piece, beautifully woven together. The last line
chocked me up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_08_23/" target="_blank">“Window Boy”</a> by Thomas Ha at
Clarkesworld<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The window boy crawled through
the garden and up the steps. He gave Jakey a wary look before touching the
hatch.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“You can grab anything in the
outer chamber. Won’t hurt you if you don’t press the far side and try to bust
through to where the incoming packages and stuff get pulled in,” Jakey
reassured him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So the window boy unlatched
the outer seal, and Jakey barely saw the first half of the sandwich leave the
chamber with how fast the window boy snapped it up, shivering while he ate.
They’d never talked much about what went on outside, but the boy’s bony wrists
and hollow cheeks told Jakey enough.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Science fiction blends with
horror in this disquieting story where nothing is what it seems. For weeks,
Jakey has been breaking the rules: he’s been talking to the “window boy,” a boy
from the world outside Jakey’s house, a boy who appears at Jakey’s window.
Jakey is safe in his protected house, but the window boy isn’t. The outside
world is filled with dangers, dangers that are filtered out of Jakey’s vision.
And the window boy just might be one of those dangers. . . The slow build-up of
tension in this story, the slow reveal of Jakey’s reality, is remarkable. A thought-provoking
tale about a world that resembles our own in discomfiting ways. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://pseudopod.org/2023/11/24/pseudopod-894-thirteen-ways-of-not-looking-at-a-blackbird/" target="_blank">“Thirteen Ways of Not Looking at a Blackbird”</a> by Gordon B. White in <i>Pseudopod </i>(originally published in
the 2023 anthology <i>No Trouble At All</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am a baby boy. In the
bathtub, looking out, past my mother as she cries and holds the already wet
washcloth to her eyes. Over her mouth. I am looking into the full-length mirror
on the bathroom door.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I see no one.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I do not see my father.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A severed hand floats in the
air. Drops of blood fall to the floor, splattering out on both sides of the
border between the linoleum and carpet.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No one says, “I’ve sinned
again,” as my mother cries.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another story about filtering
out reality, of choosing not to see, in this horrific, <i>extremely </i>disquieting
tale. Horror lives behind a hidden door in a little boy’s house; horror is at
the base of his family life—a horror that he is not allowed to see, nor to talk
about. And in the end, the act of <i>not seeing</i> is so ingrained into him
that he <i>literally</i> can’t see. He can’t see himself when he looks in a
mirror. He can’t know what he, or his family, or anything truly is. A truly
horrific tale, revolving around a black hole of what can’t be said or seen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://reckoning.press/the-air-will-catch-us/" target="_blank">“The Air Will Catch Us” </a>by
Rajiv Mote in <i>Reckoning<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My granddaughter Nisha bounces
on the tips of her toes, with flutter kicks in between, a hummingbird barely
touching the sidewalk. I adjust the rebreather plugged into my nostrils and
push myself forward. Keeping up with her has gotten harder, not just because of
my age. Walking is different now. The air resists my habitual gait. Little hops
lift me into the thickened atmosphere that slows my return to Earth. It’s
undignified, but it’s past time I got used to this. I’m not that old. I bob
along after her.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From horror we turn to a science
fiction tale that finds hope and resilience amid change. The world has changed
completely from the one that the protagonist once knew. Like many, the protagonist
has difficulty accepting many of these changes, and of entrusting a precious
grandchild to the world’s new miracles. Of believing that a precious granddaughter
can be safe doing what was once impossible. While portraying new fictional wonders,
this story is its own tiny wonder—tender, hopeful, and, in the end, quietly
joyous. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-56432204015502714442023-11-18T15:29:00.000-08:002023-11-18T15:37:12.954-08:00Award Eligibility Post for 2023<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">The year is drawing to its
close, and it’s that time when writers make posts about their award
eligibilities for the year. I had three pieces published in 2023. I would be
honored if you took a look at any of them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Nonfiction essay<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1-FgiN0D0pVdkxUd8IX_fjYEtqaPOnQCoMm4J4l3S2xT1xWd7KPDtQfOGvaiHzBxDc4Xj-K23ML840ASPP7yUsIjGh1DFKP4HsR_UyNptracYmNiZ5bMiwnYNKvYfWu7xsFbKyVPhjuWwYbs7yyaFNvmArisSSmse5do2VT3QjPBxY2CNRoTU84yskc/s605/Unquiet-Spirits-final-cover.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="605" data-original-width="389" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO1-FgiN0D0pVdkxUd8IX_fjYEtqaPOnQCoMm4J4l3S2xT1xWd7KPDtQfOGvaiHzBxDc4Xj-K23ML840ASPP7yUsIjGh1DFKP4HsR_UyNptracYmNiZ5bMiwnYNKvYfWu7xsFbKyVPhjuWwYbs7yyaFNvmArisSSmse5do2VT3QjPBxY2CNRoTU84yskc/s320/Unquiet-Spirits-final-cover.webp" width="206" /></a></b></div><b><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unquiet-Spirits-Essays-Asian-Horror/dp/1645481301" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">“Hungry Ghosts in America,</a><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">”
published in the anthology </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian Women in Horror</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">,
edited by Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith. </span></b><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">This is my first published foray into
the personal essay form, and in truth it was one of the hardest, most
nerve-wracking things I’ve ever written. Still, I am honored to be published
alongside this group of brilliant, brilliant women. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Unquiet Spirits</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">
revolves around myths, monsters, and spirits of Asian culture, and the personal
meaning that these spirits have for their contributors. These pieces are fearless,
heartbreaking, brilliant, and moving. The final product is gorgeous, and I’m so
proud to be part of this unquiet sisterhood</span></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Review from<a href="https://horrorworld.org/book-review-unquiet-spirits/" target="_blank"> </a><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://horrorworld.org/book-review-unquiet-spirits/" target="_blank">Horror World:</a><a href="https://horrorworld.org/book-review-unquiet-spirits/" target="_blank"> </a></span>“<i>Unquiet
Spirits </i>is an intimate, emotional read. . . <i>Unquiet
Spirits </i>does the important work of providing voice and agency to
the mothers and grandmothers who have stories that must be told but were
never permitted to tell them. Readers are doing themselves a disservice by
not picking up a copy and paying heed to those voices.”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Review from<a href="https://www.midwestbookreview.com/calbw/dec_22.htm" target="_blank"> </a><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://www.midwestbookreview.com/calbw/dec_22.htm" target="_blank">Midwest Book Review</a><a href="http://www.midwestbookreview.com/calbw/dec_22.htm" target="_blank">: </a></span>“Each
essay is a powerhouse of cultural revelation that examines not just the
perception and presence of horror in Asian culture, but how these elements
are transformed by women’s experiences, through women’s eyes, and by
feminist thought that would make monsters out of ordinary progressive
thinkers.”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Available
in hardcover, paperback, and e-book from Amazon and other retailers.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">Novelette</span></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_txN2ajT2phEbxPOKzkmWViuQ9ZiDpjTY4mkXEe-F4r5MLnf74tv1ef4msj1Gv7c6fKtjsJ3ijCg1FfJWyBNPUTR1I9CBGQDYGjv4Y7b2ll-jp2zLF_Z2XSLKWfEK5z7pu5vpleemXUcikAh2i6Wr7K_Xo9sKUMvgjBu9N9jjeeM7S5b1fR9GNRZHN0/s994/FF15-Cover-Screenshot-1.webp" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="994" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_txN2ajT2phEbxPOKzkmWViuQ9ZiDpjTY4mkXEe-F4r5MLnf74tv1ef4msj1Gv7c6fKtjsJ3ijCg1FfJWyBNPUTR1I9CBGQDYGjv4Y7b2ll-jp2zLF_Z2XSLKWfEK5z7pu5vpleemXUcikAh2i6Wr7K_Xo9sKUMvgjBu9N9jjeeM7S5b1fR9GNRZHN0/s320/FF15-Cover-Screenshot-1.webp" width="247" /></a></b></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><b><a href="https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/" target="_blank">“How to Travel Safely in Faerieland” </a>(fantasy, 14903 words). <i>Fusion Fragment</i>, Issue
15, January 2023. </b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Published
in Fusion Fragment’s special all-novelette issue, this is my longest story to
date. It’s also one of my favorite pieces so far, and dear to my heart. It’s
about modern tourists in a modern-day Faerieland, in way over their heads. It’s
also about the distance within families, Asian diaspora feels, and what it
means (what </span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">does</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> it mean?) to fall in love with a culture and
world that’s not your own.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;">“How to
Travel Safely In Faerieland” appears alongside beautiful stories by Angela Liu
and Octavia Cade. You can download it for free or pay what you like by going to
the link above.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><b>Short
story</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><b><span style="background: white; color: black;"><a href="https://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/microseasons.html" target="_blank">“Microseasons of the Dead”</a></span><span style="background: white;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/microseasons.html" target="_blank"> </a>(fantasy/genre-slipping, 1489 words) in </span><em style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif">The Future Fire</span></em><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">. October 31, 2023.</span></span></b></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Finally,
toward the end of the year this just-over-flash-length story appeared. It’s a
lightly experimental, dreamy piece inspired by the microseasons of the
traditional Japanese calendar.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 12pt;">Thank you to everyone who
reads or has read any of my work this year!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><br /></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-77240788101442349402023-10-31T07:54:00.006-07:002023-10-31T07:54:29.818-07:00New story! "Microseasons of the Dead" now out at The Future Fire<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> I have a new story out today! <a href="https://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/microseasons.html" target="_blank">"Microseasons of the Dead"</a> is live at The Future Fire Magazine, on this last day of October. It's a slightly experimental, dreamy piece inspired by the microseasons of the traditional Japanese calendar, and I'm so glad it's found a good home. </span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-52841554210546758492023-10-29T12:23:00.006-07:002023-10-29T13:16:20.814-07:00Short fiction recs! July--Sept 2023<p><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Some short fiction that I read and loved, from July through September. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p><p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://reckoning.press/the-sand-knows-its-way-home/" target="_blank">“The Sand Knows Its Way Home”</a>
by L. Chan at Reckoning Magazine<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He
would have told them that the village of his youth was a small and perfect
thing, but what is a small and perfect thing compared to the growing appetite
of a nascent mega-city? That appetite was all it took for them to murder a
village. This is not the story that the groups come here to listen to, not when
they have the sparkling sea before them and the shining city behind.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Cheng
Boon once lived in a fishing village on Semakau Island. But Singapore’s
government took his village’s land to create a landfill, relocating all the
village’s inhabitants to the mainland. Now Cheng Boon gives tours of his former
home to students and other curious visitors. One day one of the tourists
catches his eye, and Cheng Boon realizes that he has something in common with
another man who has lost his home. . . A delicately lovely piece about
displacement and ghosts, about the costs of “progress” and human connections
(connections to nature and land, connections to a community) severed. And about
the return of wildlife and nature to an island, and a new connection born.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chee_05_23/" target="_blank">“The Giants Among Us” </a>by Megan Chee in Clarkesworld<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">On
an island in the northern hemisphere, there is a small community called the
Kadyon. In the summer, the Kadyon sprawl like a brightly colored bazaar around
the sleeping body of a giant feline creature, sheltered from the sun by its
massive shadow. The summer weather is mild; warm rains and humid winds. The
people sleep on woven rugs in the open air, trusting and unafraid. The Kadyon
have heard of lies,and thievery, and murder, but those are foreign
peculiarities. In the shadow of their sleeping giant, they have nothing to
fear.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A
story of marvels and wonder. The narrator is a member of Project Harmony, a group
of research expeditions aimed at studying the cultures and peoples of
intelligent species throughout the universe. As part of these research studies,
the narrator is exploring a planet whose peoples have centered their societies
around a number of huge, slow-moving giants. One group of people shelter on and
by the body of a giant feline; another group lives within the body of a
long-dead giant, eating the fungus that grows in the giant’s corpse. The
narrator exchanges information with a colleague who encounters wonders of their
own on other worlds. But the story isn’t all travelogue and delight, for
Project Harmony was conceived with an urgent mission. Chee’s story skillfully
interweaves the wondrous details of her protagonist’s explorations with the
larger backstory of how Project Harmony came to be—of a brutal war in the
background. This story reminds me of some of Ken Liu’s work in its lyrical use
of sweeping science fiction to evoke wonder and awe, to discuss big ideas, and
to also tell a human story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #111011; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/collaboration/" target="_blank">“Collaboration?”</a>
by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Worlds pop into existence,
composed by clicking keyboards or in spraying foam on waves of thought; tucked
away in spells, algorithms, entangled particles, recipes; evoked by waving
wands; sketched by twirling ley-line brushes; assembled by spinning quantum
mundistructors. They’ve been doing it for eons.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But recently, there has been a
pause. “I’ve lost it,” he says to her, despondent. “I haven’t been able to make
a new world in sixteen terakernels.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Same. I haven’t conjured one
in ages.” The barest wisp of an idea skitters around the edges of her brain.
She’s always admired his worlds, so elegantly structured. “Want to collaborate?
Maybe we could spark each other.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Writers Ken Liu and Caroline
Yoachim have done a collaboration on the theme of collaboration! In a series of
7 vignettes, they explore collaborations in art, science, and life. Each
vignette is self-contained—complete stories or poems or fragments—loosely
linked by recurring and echoing phrases, and the recurring themes of muses and
inspiration. Among my favorites are a flash story set in a world where everyone
has a separate mirror-self; a story about a fifteenth-century French alchemist-witch
distracted by a mischievous <b>anti</b>-muse; and the last story, about a
goddess-like muse and the poet she inspires.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.tor.com/2023/09/13/the-passing-of-the-dragon-ken-liu/" target="_blank">“The Passing of the Dragon”</a> by
Ken Liu at Tor<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She paints in a feverish
state. No sleep, no food, no shifts at the Fresh Food Basket. She collapses to
the floor, eyes still on the unfinished canvas, and slips into a dreamless
slumber even as she tells herself she’ll be closing her eyes only for a second.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kay is a struggling artist,
her work largely unnoticed and misunderstood even by her artist friends and
colleagues. One winter she makes a pilgrimage to the home of her favorite poet
and experiences a transcendent, life-changing vision. Feverishly, she tries to
capture that vision on canvas. She thinks she has created her best work yet,
yet again her painting is initially met with bafflement. But then a series of coincidences
and luck make her painting go viral, and she learns that fame and “success” is not
all that she’d hoped… Liu has such smart, smart things here to say about Internet
culture and social media storms, about art and the response to art, about the
way people try to slot art and artists into their own pre-conceived boxes and
causes and ideas. And about the need to keep making art, anyway. A brilliant
piece, lit through with empathy and generosity. One of Liu’s best.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/always-be-returning" target="_blank">“Always Be Returning” </a>by Eugenia
Triantafyllou in Sunday Morning Transport<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s August when Demeter’s
daughter returns. Demeter is in a fishing boat, pulling at the heavy nets with
her time-dotted hands alongside the young men and women. The people on the boat
don’t see her for who she is. Terrible and divine, motherly and familiar. But
she doesn’t mind.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">An absolutely gorgeous
retelling of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, with a focus on their
complicated mother-daughter bond. With the turn of each new season Persephone
appears in a different form, while her mother’s age and power also changes with
the seasons. There is pain here, and denial, and the eternal tug-of-war between
mothers and daughters as power shifts in a relationship—as a little girl grows
up and begins to claim power and independence away from her mother. But there’s
also reconciliation, and acceptance, and change. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/whisper-songs/" target="_blank">“Whisper Songs”</a> by Lyndsie
Manusos in Apex Magazine<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her daughter had kept her up
all night. Nothing worked. All of the books she’d bookmarked, all the advice
from blogs she’d read, and the pediatrician’s recommendations jotted on sticky
notes in the nursery … they all fell into a black hole. Her daughter had cried
and cried, sucking on her breast until the sting of her chapped skin became
numb.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Early motherhood—those first
disorienting days with a new baby, particularly a colicky baby, and <i>particularly</i>
when a new mother is isolated, all on her own—can be harrowing. Manusos
captures those early, harrowing days with pitch-perfection. But she also sets
her story in a world of wider desperation, where red tides fill the sea and songbirds
fall to earth dying. A mysterious organization harvests the songs of dead
birds, collecting their endangered music with syringes. In this strange,
apocalyptic future-world, the narratives of three different characters
intersect, and Mavis’s desperation compels her to a fateful decision. A
strange, dark, masterfully constructed story, with an ending of eerie beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.khoreomag.com/fiction/kwongs-bath/" target="_blank">“Kwong’s Bath” </a>by Angela Liu
in Khoreo<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Our parents were thrilled when
Kwong was selected for an Upgrade. That precious little neural mesh that will
give her access to the Floating City and all its endless possibilities. She’ll
be one of the ten lucky Outer Ring residents selected this year who can move to
the City once her surgeries are complete. She’ll be our family’s first. The
beginning of a new, better chapter, Dad says, even though she won’t remember
being a part of our family once she’s there.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Kwong has been selected for an
Upgrade and should be thrilled. The hopes and expectations of her family, and
her entire community, are on her shoulders. But the first in a series of Upgrade
surgeries has a strange side effect: Kwong begins to see dead people from her
life while she’s in her bath. A heavy, wrenching, and moving story about
familial expectations, pressure, desperation, guilt, and sisterly love.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.flashfictiononline.com/article/quantum-love/" target="_blank">“Quantum Love” </a>by Sylvia Heike
in Flash Fiction Online<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The quantum computer is and
isn’t in love. It stands in the darkness of the lab, a nine-foot golden
cylinder crowned with a waterfall of gleaming wires, waiting for Natalie, the
lead scientist, to come back.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">And in a change from dark and
heavy stories. . . Heike’s flash tale of a quantum computer in love is an
absolute charmer, with a delightful twist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Stories from <a href="https://smallwondersmag.com/issue/3/" target="_blank">Small Wonders Magazine, Issue 3</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Small Wonders is a new
magazine of speculative flash fiction and poetry, publishing both original and
reprinted work. I read through the complete contents of issue 3 and found some
truly lovely work. While I highlight a few of my favorite stories below, I recommend
reading the complete issue: all the stories and poems are lovely, and united by
recurring themes of change, resilience, and hope</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://smallwondersmag.com/pieces/how-my-sister-talked-me-into-necromancy-during-quarantine/" target="_blank">“How My Sister Talked Me Into Necromancy During the Quarantine”</a> by Rachel</span></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> K. Jones</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lila, sweet and unassuming in
her necromancer robes, gives me a tiny little wave. “Don’t be mad, Becca.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“We’ve talked about this.” It
was a condition of her move-in deal. Half rent on the 1st, take out the trash
on Wednesdays, and no summoning in the house.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A charming story of roommate
tensions, vampires, zombies, and more during Covid lockdown. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://smallwondersmag.com/pieces/a-gardener-teaches-his-son/" target="_blank">“A Gardener Teaches His Son to Enrich the Soil and Plan for the Future,”</a> by Jennifer Hudak<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">We
gardeners have been dealing with pests for centuries. Between the slugs and the
aphids and the deer and the rabbits and what have you, we fight for our crop
every year. The zombies are no different. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Gardening and fighting off
zombies come together beautifully in an unusual tale of resilience and survival.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://smallwondersmag.com/pieces/so-you-want-to-eat-an-omnalik-starfish/" target="_blank">“So You Want to Eat An Omnalik Starfish”</a> by Brian Hugenbruch<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It may take time to find a
starfish on Omnalik Beach. You’ve seen the holos of that halfway land between
Mare Estrellas and the Unyielding Void, but they do not do justice to the
glittering diamond dust of the shore, or capture the dullness of the creatures’
outer cover.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">First published in the late-and-lamented
Syntax and Salt magazine, this reprint is a gorgeous, lyrical tale of grief and
love.<o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-49986189815752599412023-07-20T18:53:00.003-07:002023-07-21T06:09:25.594-07:00Short fiction recs! May-June 2023<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">My short fiction recs from late
spring/early summer. Tales of horror and magic, beauty and grief, discovery and
wonder and strength.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/sasabonsam/" target="_blank">“Sasabonsam”</a> by Tara Campbell
in <i>Strange Horizons</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I sit high in the mahogany
tree, my long limbs dangling toward the earth. My eyes, if you could see them,
would gleam at you in the moonlight. I am alert, but I let my arms swing idly
with the breeze. They look just like the vines drooping from the branches,
don’t they?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is an older story, which
I only just discovered thanks to a recommendation online. It’s a tale about a
sasbonsam—a monster of West African folklore—and its prey. It’s a tale of
curling tension and deliciously dark twists. The sasabonsam eats humans and
feeds on their regrets. But in the end, who is the predator and who the prey?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://www.weirdhorrormagazine.com/lullaby" target="_blank">“Lullaby for the Unseen”</a> by Nelly Geraldine
Garcia-Rosas in<i> Weird Horror</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Ariel. It is because of him that I have this
scar.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He was my classmate. A very
thin kid, shorter than me, with greasy black hair and sunken eyes that showed
dark bags under them, maybe bruises, I do not know.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">An exquisitely creepy little
flash tale about a haunted house, the boy who lives there, and a girl who loves
looking at the things she should not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/undog/" target="_blank">“Undog" </a>by Eugenia
Triantafyllou in <i>Strange Horizons</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a dog in this house. A
not-quite-a-dog. An undog. I heard its whimpering the first week I slept here,
the thump, thump, thump of its bulky legs on the old tiles. I found long brown
hair mixed with dust bunnies where the walls met.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Oh, this story. Triantafyllou
does so much under 2000 words.<b> </b>This is a story that seems to start off
as horror—and it <i>is</i> a kind of horror—but not the way you think. This is
a story about quiet cruelty, about subtle wounds, about the slowly suffocating
nature of certain family relationships. It’s about the pain that the “undog”
and the narrator share, in different ways, and the bond they find. It is so
beautifully, exquisitely done, and it made my heart hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/one-heart-lost-and-found/" target="_blank">“One Heart, Lost and Found”</a>
by Kat Howard in <i>Lightspeed </i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I came to the city to find an
egg. A robin’s egg, to be precise, an oval of pale, perfect blue that echoed
the spring sky. Inside, not a robin, but an emerald. Inside the emerald, a
wizard’s heart.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The narrator of this lush,
magical tale has a gift for finding the lost treasures of others. But what of
the narrator’s own heart? What has this person lost, and what—if they pursued
their own freedom—could they find? A tale of a magical subway system, an
unexpected guide, and a quest that takes an unexpected turn. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-100b-interstate-mohinis-by-m-l-krishnan/" target="_blank">“Interstate Mohinis”</a> by M.L.
Krishnan in <i>Diabolical Plots</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Time spun in recursive loops
since I died in a scream of metal and flame and asphalt on the Parthibanur
State Highway. There was no cremation. What could they consign to the flame? A
scorched knob of my torso? My jawbone, still glued with tissue? A lone filling
snugly hidden within a lone tooth?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A nameless woman has died and come
back as a mohini, an irresistible seductress who devours men. But it doesn’t
matter how many she eats—she’s always hungry. Then one day she sees a beautiful
woman in a green sari, and knows a different type of hunger. . . <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a darkly gorgeous piece, written in Krishnan’s
sharp and lyrical prose. An aching story about forgotten and abused women,
about hunger and loneliness, about desperation and mythology and grief. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/han_06_23/" target="_blank">“To Helen”</a> by Bella Han in <i>Clarkesworld</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I am waiting for Helen on her
fiftieth birthday. On the table, there’s a crystal drinking glass and a vase
with rare orchids; I can’t tell if the flowers are genuine or not. Faint piano
notes and a cold scent drift in the air. Beautiful men and women sit on white
leather sofas, all appear to be in their twenties. I feel a little uneasy.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This quiet opening perfectly
sets the stage for Han’s brilliant, chilling story. A tea-time meeting between
old friends: sunlight and elegance and beauty. But there’s just a hint of
unease in the scene. And this unease steadily increases as the story unwinds,
as the reader comes to realize that the flowers are not the only thing in the
room that may be artificial. In this dystopian near-future science-fiction
story, the invention of the Surgery grants eternal youth to those wealthy
enough to afford it. Helen Yu was among the first recipients, and on her fiftieth
birthday she still looks twenty-five. Her friend, Xiao An, was able to afford
the surgery ten years later, just before the age limit, and so now looks
forever thirty-five. They are both lucky. But what is luck and happiness, in
this world where Xiao An and her husband must work themselves to the bone to
make sure they can afford the Surgery for their own daughter; where everyone is
desperate to stay forever young; where the elderly are pushed out of the main cities,
out of sight, into slums and cities built just for them so that no one else has
to be bothered by the sight of wrinkles and age? As Helen and Xiao An speak
over tea and scones, the cracks in the façade of perfection become more and
more apparent. The sweep of capitalist and societal pressures is evoked here,
but also the more intimate, personal disappointments of life. A quietly
haunting, unsettling story that slowly builds in emotion until it reaches a
final striking, nearly surreal image. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://giganotosaurus.org/2023/06/01/her-suffering-pretty-and-private/" target="_blank">“Her Suffering, Pretty and Private” </a>by Aimee Ogden at <i>GiganotoSaurus</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She’d had a pair of
seamstresses to work for her, once upon a time, to do all the fussier piecing
and hand-sewing. Sacred seas, she’d had customers once, too. A hundred years’
sleep had changed those things and so many more besides.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A remarkable retelling of the
tale of Sleeping Beauty, one focused not on the sleeping princess or her
prince, but on the city that slept a hundred years. A people who never agreed
to the sleeping curse and who now, awakened a hundred years later, must try to
live in a strange new world of motorcars and electricity, a world where the newly
awakened are out of step and out of time. Adalène was the seamstress who once
made the royal princess’ christening gown. Now she struggles to survive, her specialized
skills considered too rarified and expensive in a world where cheap
factory-made cloth is <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>available. Ogden’s
premise is beautifully realized in this quiet, and quietly angry and moving
piece, about the ones who aren’t the titular heroes of the fairy tale, who
didn’t get to choose their fate, who were caught up in another’s curse. . . but
who do their best to pick up the pieces, to move on, to piece together what
contentment they can from new lives. A lovely, rich, and unexpectedly tender
piece.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The May 2023 <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/29-may-2023/" target="_blank">Special Wuxia/Xianxia issue of <i>Strange Horizons</i></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">The Chinese fantasy genres of <a href="https://www.sfwa.org/2021/12/28/what-speculative-fiction-writers-can-learn-from-the-origins-and-evolution-of-the-wuxia-genre/ " target="_blank">wuxia</a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">and the related <a href="https://www.chinafetching.com/xianxia" target="_blank">xianxia</a> have become
increasingly popular in the West, with the international success of television
dramas such as </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Untamed</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> and </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Love Between Fairy and Devil</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">, and English
translations of wuxia/xianxia novels both classic (Jin Yong’s </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The Legend of
the Condor Heroes</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">) and new. In May, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Strange Horizons</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> had a guest-edited
issue devoted to wuxia/xianxia, and the entire issue is worth a read. Although
I spotlight only the fiction here, the poetry is also lovely and moving, and I urge everyone to read those and the nonfiction pieces as well. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-ocean-remembers-the-wave/" target="_blank">“The Ocean Remembers the Wave”</a>
by L. Chan<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Huizhong
found the femur of his beloved in a tavern located in a Sambo spaceport. The
tavern was the sole source of light in the sector; all around the crab-like
carapaces of worker drones whistled past, hauling cargo and following paths
marked out in infrared paint.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Wuxia in outer space! Chan deftly blends space opera,
cyberpunk, and the spirit and tropes of wuxia fantasy into a lyrical
adventure-quest, loosely based on the epic sea voyages of the great Chinese Admiral
Zheng He. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lone warrior, Huizhong, searches
the empire for the bones of his beloved, battling with both blade and song. I inwardly
cheered to see classic wuxia scenes in this novel setting—fighting with a fan!
Trashing a (spaceport) tavern! A gorgeously, brilliantly inventive piece, with
some real poignancy as well. </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/one-for-sorrow-two-for-mirth/" target="_blank">“One for Sorrow, Two for Mirth”</a>
by Tina S. Zhu<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Poppy had been asked by
Leaping Crane to prove herself capable, to demonstrate that she was ready to
strike out on her own after journeying together for six years. Leaping Crane
had made her promise to guard a woman for a week and introduced her to Diana,
no last name given. Diana greeted them in foggy San Francisco, curtsying as
they dismounted from their horses.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Wuxia set in the American Wild
West! Poppy Chan is a wandering cowboy warrior, trained by the legendary
Leaping Crane. When she accepts the assignment to guard a rich white woman from
the East, she has no idea that the woman’s past intersects deeply with her own.
What follows is rollicking adventure with traditional wuxia themes of revenge,
duty, family and magic. There’s tragedy in Poppy’s past, but her spirit is
irrepressible, and there’s a certain lightness of touch to this tale. A
delightfully fresh reimagining of wuxia in a magical Wild West.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-god-of-minor-troubles/" target="_blank">“The God of Minor Troubles” </a>by
Megan Chee<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He had been on the moon when
he received the summons, dozing beside one of the shallow pools of liquid
silver that dotted the moon</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">’</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">s surface. The heavenly rabbit who had been
sent to summon him thumped its hind legs to get his attention. </span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">“</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Lord D</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">ǔ</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">n</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">í</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ng! Your presence is required
in the Golden Sky Palace! The Immortal Emperor himself commands it!”</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">“</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Very well,</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">”</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> D</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">ǔ</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">n</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">í</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ng said, cracking an eye open.
</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">“</span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I will
be on my way shortly. In five minutes.</span></i><i><span lang="ZH-CN" style="font-family: DengXian; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-ascii-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family: Arial;">”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Unfortunately for Duning, he falls
asleep and is late by quite a bit more than five minutes. And so while the
Immortal Emperor gives Duning’s brothers and sisters such titles as God of the
Hunt and Goddess of Scholars, Duning gets named to the most minor position of
all: the God of Minor Troubles. This last story in <i>Strange Horizon’s </i>special issue
has the most traditional setting—a magical world of immortal beings, heroes,
and bandits that is recognizable to any fan of wuxia and xianxia. Yet, like the
other authors, Chee gives her own fresh spin to the genre. Duning thinks he’s
been given a lowly position, and is annoyed with having to attend to the minor
vexations of mortals. But when he attends to the insomnia of a cranky old
warrior one night, he and the mortal both learn that minor issues, and help in
seemingly small matters, can be important indeed. A charming, warm-hearted tale
of unexpected heroes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-79297797122265297442023-06-03T14:27:00.002-07:002023-06-03T14:28:15.304-07:00Short fiction recs! March-April 2023<p><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Very late, but here's a roundup of some
stellar stories that I read this past spring. Perfect leisure reading for these
long summer days, with a cool drink beside you.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.havenspec.com/to-kneel-at-the-altar-of-your-bones" target="_blank">“To Kneel at the Altar of Your Bones”</a> by Valo Wing in Haven Speculative<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #414156; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She slices open
a vein, and out pours star-matter. Liquid and glittering, the iridescent mess
drips from her arm into my cupped palms. And, for a moment, there is only this:
breathing in duet (<em>forte</em>, <em>agitato</em>), her brow a slash
of determination worthy of sainthood (she’s my religion, yes), and, too, the
dumbass acolyte who made a promise they’re no longer sure they can keep (me).</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: #414156; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A failed opera singer, a
girlfriend who has spent years with her consciousness trapped in a fungal
network, and a shared promise to save the world. But what does a promise mean,
after so much time apart? This is a gorgeously wild flash story, an epic written
in just over a thousand words, a story that’s both playful and passionate:
about love, devotion, promises, and doubt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/silver-necklace-golden-ring/" target="_blank">“Silver Necklace, Golden Ring”</a>
by Marie Brennan in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It always began with a young
woman alone, working in the fields or carrying water from the well, on the
first day of the absent moon—for it used to be that three days out of the month,
that silver circle vanished from the sky. “He cannot enter any house other than
his own,” the tellers agreed, “but it’s no use running, if Nievre comes for
you—he’s fast as thought and twice as cruel. He’ll catch you before you reach
safety and take you to his castle of ice, high in the highest mountains. No,
there’s only one way to save yourself.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">An enigmatic fairy tale—one of
cruelty, determination, cleverness, and survival. To survive, a young woman
must play a riddling game and outwit a cold-hearted devil. There’s a lovely
rhythm to this, and a sense of deep mystery and myth. At the heart of most
classic fairy tales is a sense of mystery, and this story captures that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-prince-of-salt-and-the-oceans-bargain/" target="_blank">“The Prince of Salt and the Ocean’s Bargain” </a>by Natalia Theodoridou in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">For a long time, salt did not
know itself to exist. But then, beneath a wave, under a dark and bitter brew of
the sea, it stirred. Why, it hardly knew; yet, for the first time, salt found
itself wanting. It had no body, this watery want, no arms and legs, no spine
nor skull, no eyes or mouth, but it knew it wanted, and what it wanted was to
live.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is an older story from
2022, one that has been nominated for a Nebula award, but one that I only got
around to recently. In this fantasy novelette, Theodoridou spins a rapturous
fairy tale of love and yearning. Salt wishes to live, to take on human form.
And so Salt makes a bargain with the ocean, and does so. Salt becomes a man
named Thelo, who falls in love with a woman, and together they seek out every
pleasure, every experience, that they can. In order to afford more luxury, more
pleasure, Thelo sets out to earn money, and eventually power. Thelo becomes a
Prince and falls in love with a man. Thelo has everything. And yet the limited
time that he has on land, the bargain that he made with the ocean, haunts him.
A beautifully woven tale of love and bargains, of yearning and loss and stories.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/always-and-forever-only-you/" target="_blank">“Always and Forever, Only You”</a>
by Iona Datt Sharma in Strange Horizons<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It
was a video. Edie squinted at a young man on a big stage, standing in a rainbow-coloured
spotlight. The caption said he was from Korea. He looked up the camera and
started to sing, and something inside Edie’s heart turned over and grew wings.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This story is so achingly
tender and perfect and kind. Edie is an elderly widow living in the Sunshine
Care Home, a facility staffed mostly by holographic workers. Her days are
uneventful, until one day she hears a new song on the radio. A song that takes
her back to her youth, to her days as a teenager swaying at concerts with her
friends, sighing over the Beatles and Elvis. And it’s a song that takes her
someplace new, even as it also helps her reconcile with grief. A lovely,
generous tale about K-pop, music, grief, and kindness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.tor.com/2023/03/15/the-dark-house-ac-wise/" target="_blank">“The Dark House”</a> by A.C. Wise
at Tor<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes he can go months
without her appearing. There’s never any way to tell, not until he’s in the
darkroom, feeling the held-breath sensation of her presence, watching over his
shoulder, waiting to know she is seen.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">Years ago, a little boy played in a house where terrible
things happened. That boy grew into a photographer whose photographs kept
showing a little girl—a girl who wasn’t in the photos when he initially took
them, who appeared only afterward, when he developed the photos in the same house
where they met. And years after <i>that</i>, two friends happen upon the
photographer’s posthumous art exhibit, and are taken by his work and story.
They decide to take a road trip to what’s now known as the Dark House. . . A.
C. Wise gives us an eerie tale that spirals into an increasing sense of
unreality as past and present merge, as the narrator of the present can’t tell
what’s real and what’s not, as the horror of the past seems to repeat itself,
endlessly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or as one of the characters
in the story puts it, “There are places where time is circular. There’s no
beginning or end, events just happen like the turn of a wheel. Something bad
happens, then it happens again.”</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #545353; font-family: Merriweather; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://pseudopod.org/2023/02/19/pseudopod-853-oni-in-the-box/" target="_blank">“Oni in the Box”</a> by M.M.
Schill at Pseudopod <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span color="windowtext" face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Even still, knowing
what I know now, I would not doubt my Sobo’s wickedness after seeing the long,
hideous shadow she casts even now in death; maybe from the shadowy belly of
Yomi itself. Perhaps even down in The Realm of Bloody Murder where wayward
spirits are eaten, excreted, and eaten again by the Oni King himself.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><i><span color="windowtext" face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext" face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Two impoverished
siblings have been long estranged from their Sobo, their father’s mother. Gossip
runs wild in the family about her—that she was a witch, that she was a beggar,
that she was associated with a great lord. When she passes away, the siblings
are surprised to receive an invitation to come to her house to hear the reading
of her will. They’re also surprised to find that she had much more wealth than
they’d ever guessed. But there is a price to inheriting that wealth. . . <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love the ominous feel of this story, the
escalating tension of the final scenes, and the seeming inescapability of the
final, terrible outcome. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/laura-lau-will-drain-you-dry/" target="_blank">“Laura Lau Will Drain You Dry”</a>
by Wen Yi-Lee in Nightmare<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">You grip the edge of the
broken sink and try to girlboss yourself into stopping the tears. You don’t
fucking cry in school. You are the It Girl. Captain of the netball team,
valedictorian-to-be, one half of the hottest couple in school. Or at least you
were. Until you yelled at Del too long and he dumped you. You forgot about
sending him that picture, or at least you never thought he’d do anything like
this.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Laura Lau never expected her
ex to share an intimate photo of her with the entire school. But then a
mosquito bursts in her mouth, and she tastes the first hint of revenge. . . This
is a horrific and delightfully nasty little story, a cathartic horror tale of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>teenage girls and boys, misogyny, mosquitos,
revenge porn, and blood revenge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/our-exquisite-delights/" target="_blank">“Our Exquisite Delights”</a> by
Megan Chee in Lightspeed<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Almost everyone has, at some
point in their lives, encountered a door that was not there before.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span color="windowtext" face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span color="windowtext" face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">A strange, lovely,
and lingering little story about the magical rooms behind magical doors. The
exquisite delights these rooms offer, and the price for staying.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/when-the-giants-came-through-the-valley/" target="_blank">“When the Giants Came Through the Valley</a>” by Derrick Boden in Lightspeed<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">When the giants came through
the valley, they made footprints as long as the Santa Monica Promenade, as wide
as Dodgers’ Stadium. They crushed dance studios, keto cafes,a waterpark. They
left trails of steep-sided ravines with walls of stratified clay and crumbling
asphalt, and this is where we now live. Sunset comes earlier down here, but it
could be worse.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Giants come through the San
Fernando Valley, leaving deep footprints behind. While some survivors accept
airlifts from the footprints, others choose to stay and make a new home for
themselves there. The people who never had much going for themselves “topside”
anyway, the ones overlooked by giants and other people alike. A vivid, surreal,
strange and beautifully written little piece, just over flash-length. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan_04_23/" target="_blank">“Re/Union”</a> by L. Chan in
Clarkesworld <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It was not clear to Sharon
when the traditional Lunar New Year dinner expanded to include the dead;
character constructs had been wildly popular for years.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In a near-future Singapore,
Sharon hosts a yearly Lunar New Year dinner party for her dead ancestors who
attend in virtual form, as “character constructs” created from algorithms and their
social media footprints. Each year Sharon does her best to please all her
“ancestors” with renditions of their favorite dishes. She’s a coder whose
expertise is in programming virtual approximations of food—she can capture “the
minutiae of sensation, the details of mouthfeel.” But every year she fails to
satisfactorily replicate her mother’s signature dish. Every year, she feels
that she disappoints the mother who is no longer alive. This is a story about
family, the tensions and hurt and complexity—and love—that can underlie the
parent-child relationship. Like many of Chan’s family-themed stories, the
emotion here is quiet and understated, but it hits hard. I admit that this
story had me choked up a bit at the end, and still chokes me up upon a re-read.
A quiet and poignant science fiction tale with a touch of the supernatural at
the end. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.castofwonders.org/tag/angela-liu/" target="_blank">“The Time Traveler’s Cookbook”</a>
by Angela Liu in Cast of Wonders <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t eat dinosaur. Just
don’t. Mom marked it as a must-have, saying it looks and tastes “like an exotic
giant chicken,” but just getting to the meat has been a nightmare. The skin’s
teeth breakingly-tough and the sucker hooked me in the thigh with one of its
nasty claws during the hunt. I’ve staunched the bleeding with Happy Time
Traveler’s super medical glue, but holy hell it still hurts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Another story about family and
food, from a very different angle and with a very different tone. And yet this
one also ends on a note of quiet poignancy. A woman has inherited both a time
machine and her late mother’s cookbook, and she travels back and forth through
time, visiting all her mother’s noted dining spots—from the age of dinosaurs to
soba noodles in Edo Japan, from Peking Duck in Ming Dynasty China to a rowdy
feast in ancient Rome. As the narrator’s adventures unspool, we get hints of
her relationship with her parents and loving descriptions of food—particularly
Chinese food. It is through food that the narrator is trying to connect with
her parents; food lights up her memories of them, and it is through her
mother’s cookbook that the narrator is trying to understand her. A story filled
with mouthwatering, sensory details, one that’s fun and delightful, and then
ultimately poignant and moving. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-65655725614705709312023-04-23T17:06:00.002-07:002023-04-23T17:13:05.724-07:00Four books I read this spring: Exit, Ghost; Potential of Radio and Rain; The Bruising of Qilwa, and Liar, Dreamer, Thief<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Four beautiful books that I
read this spring, with reviews.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Exit, Ghost</span></i></b><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> by
Jennifer R. Donohue<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is the modern fantasy
retelling of Hamlet which I never knew I needed, set on the Jersey Shore with a
snarky gender-flipped Hamlet and her dog named Yorick, a vivid cast of
characters, and witches and dark magic galore. A deeply atmospheric, immersive
story of grief, loss, love, mystery, doubt, and revenge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Juliet “Jules” Duncan is
heiress to a railroad fortune, a recent college graduate, and a witch. When we first
meet her, she’s still recovering from the gun attack which killed her father in
his own apple orchard, and which left her with a brain injury. She’s reeling
from grief, and she’s just conducted a ritual to summon her father’s spirit,
who tells her that his murderer is long-time family friend (and his widow’s new
fiancé), “Uncle” Hector.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the pleasures of this
book is seeing how the author translates specific plot points and characters
from <i>Hamlet </i>to her modern retelling—the correspondences that are kept,
updated, or cleverly twisted. Jules is at least as lost, bitter, prickly, cynical,
and grieving as the Danish prince—if not more so. But unlike the prince, she
has more than one devoted friend, and a highlight of this book are Jules’
friendships with her roommate and fellow witch, Ashley, and the book’s Ophelia
stand-in (daughter to the Duncan family’s head of security), Una. Jules <i>also</i>
has a complicated relationship with Una’s brother and Laertes stand-in, John,
and to say more about her relationship with both siblings would be to give too
much away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Exit, Ghost</i> is a sly, witty homage to <i>Hamlet</i>
that is also very much its own thing. It’s a story about a young woman in grief,
trying to decide (like Hamlet) whether or not supernatural voices can be
trusted, whether and how to avenge her father. And it’s also a love letter to
the Jersey Shore, a story about a summer on the beach; about riding down a
famously haunted Jersey road, navigating roommates and friends’ bad love lives
and a period of young adulthood (college and post-college) that is challenging even
to those who haven’t lost fathers to murder in an orchard. Dark magic and
witchery are here, but the heart of this book is about a young woman facing her
doubts and continuing to live through grief. A beautifully-written story,
magical and compelling and moving. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Note: Thank you to the author
for an advance review copy of this book. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Potential of Radio and
Rain by Myna Chang</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“The prairie is made of dirt
and sky, of shushling grass and starling night—and the creatures caught between</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A gorgeous collection of
miniatures, flash tales of the shortgrass prairie, lit with longing. These are stories
of small towns, teenagers desperate to get away and adults just trying to
survive. Stories of a tornado that upends everything, of rebellions small and
large, people loving and leaving one another; a group of teens driving to a
rock concert, a man who still retains the muscle memory of how to handle a horse
even as dementia robs him of all else. These are stories of desperation and
grit, dust storms and drought and longing. And these are tales of magic—of
starlit nights and lightning bugs, of moments of sweet freedom, of the fat
years when times are good, of the magic when it rains. Myna Chang’s small
fictions build up to a small, interconnected world. An enthralling collection,
where prose becomes poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem
Jamnia<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A fascinating secondary-world fantasy
novella that is about many things: immigration, history, trauma on both
individual and mass population levels, healing and blood magic, and the story
of one family just trying to survive. It’s also a medical mystery, an aspect I
found particularly interesting as someone with a biology background. And it all
takes place in a richly textured, Persian-inspired queer-normative world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As the book opens, Firuz-e
Jafari is looking for a job. Firuz, a nonbinary character who uses “they/them”
pronouns, is a refugee to the city-state of Qilwa, fleeing the persecution and
genocide that targets people of their Sassanian ethnic heritage in their
homeland. . and which particularly targets practitioners of Sassanian blood
magic. Luckily, Firuz quickly finds a job as an assistant to the healer Kofi.
Firuz keeps their blood magic abilities a secret, and uses more accepted
magical arts to heal the sick. A plague is ravaging the city, and Firuz and
Kofi’s skills are both in great demand. Slowly, the plague fades as Firuz begins
building a new life and home: caring for the sick, drawing close to Kofi and
others, caring for their mother and brother and the orphaned Sassanian refugee
that they adopt off the streets. Things are still tough (there’s always ethnic
tensions, there’s always political pressures on their health clinic), but
things are looking up until Firuz sees the first signs of a new, mysterious
plague with “blood-bruising” symptoms never seen before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The world-building in this
novella is layered and intricate. The geopolitics and history underlying this
world—the history behind the Sassanian refugees’ persecution, and their own
past history of empire—are complicated and only slowly explained. The magical
system is also intriguing and complex; I particularly liked the way both
magical healing and “physicks” (non-magical healing which appears to be based
on knowledge of real-world anatomy and biology) co-exist, and the biological
details of the “blood-bruising” plague. It is in many of the small domestic details,
however, that this world comes to life. A description of an eggplant dish, the
act of making tea or heating a bath—in this and other domestic details, the
author evokes the feel of a textured, truly lived-in world. Firuz and their
struggles feel real; even apart from magic and mystery, the story of one family
of refugees trying to survive and build a new home is compelling on its own.
And the author has a particular gift for evoking the complexities of family
relationships—both the tensions and the love.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The pacing is a little slow at
the start, but it picks up and then races as multiple threads begin to converge.
Firuz’s past and secrets, the secrets their mentor Kofi keeps, the accelerating
new “blood-bruising” plague, and blood magic talents of the orphaned Sassanian
whom Firuz adopted off the streets—all come together in a dramatic climax. All
in all, this is an impressive debut: a rich and layered story with compelling
characters, beautifully told, that raises complex questions and issues without
easy answers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Note: Thank you to Tachyon
Books for an advance reader copy of this book. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Liar, Dreamer, Thief by Maria
Dong<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Maria Dong’s debut novel<i>,
Liar, Dreamer, Thief</i>, is like nothing I’ve read before. It’s an intricately
plotted crime thriller where neither the narrator nor the reader knows what’s
real and what isn’t. A story drenched in magic that may all be delusion. A genre-bending
adventure that subverts all your expectations; a tense, hallucinatory, deeply
moving ride. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">When we first meet the story’s
protagonist, Katrina Kim, she is, to put it charitably, a mess. Once a
promising student on a music school scholarship, she’s now a college dropout
abandoned by her parents and working a soul-sucking temp job in hospital
billing. Her only friend and support is her roommate Leoni, who often isn’t
even around. Anxious and unstable, it’s all Katrina can do to get herself to
work on time. And at work, Katrina has developed an unhealthy obsession with
one of her coworkers, Kurt. She doesn’t speak to him, but she spies on him, rifles
through his desk when he’s not around. She doesn’t think he’s noticed her. But
then one night Katrina is on a bridge and sees Kurt jump to his death. Before
he jumps, he tells her that it’s her fault.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">What follows is one of the
strangest murder mysteries I’ve ever read. As Katrina works to solve the
mystery of Kurt’s death, the mystery of her own life—her estrangement from her
parents, and the identity of all those close to her—unravels as well. Katrina sees
symbols, portents, magic in the world. She was convinced that Kurt might see
the world similarly. Years ago, she read a portal fantasy children’s book, <i>Mi-Hee
and the Mirror-Man</i>, and in times of stress she retreats to that world; the magical
“kitchen-door world” of the book leaks into her real world, and magical mushroom
forests sprout in her kitchen. Analogues of people she knows in real life also
show up in the “kitchen-door world.” Fantasy and arcane rituals (counting
steps, fixating on prime numbers, drawing “sigils” on doors as protection) are
all part of Katrina’s coping mechanisms for dealing with life. Is any of this
real? Or as Katrina’s roommate tells her, is she utterly insane?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Liar, Dreamer, Thief</span></i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> is a
slippery book in which we <i>don’t </i>know what’s real—not for large portions
of the story. This is a book that sets up expectations and then demolishes
every one. It is a magic trick of a book, with the author pulling out
revelation after revelation at the end, making you see the beginning in an
entirely new light. It is also a book of deep compassion. Katrina is mentally
ill, but there are ways in which her coping mechanisms work for her, even as
there are also ways in which they hurt her and make her life difficult. And
though Katrina is indeed a mess, although she cannot even (as her roommate
says), take out the garbage alone without somehow messing it up, she is also a
spectacular <i>badass</i> when it counts. She’s tenacious, cunning, and
fiercely loyal to those she loves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s so much I could say
about this book, yet I don’t want to give too much away. This is a book that’s
trippy crime thriller, coming-of-age novel, workplace novel, a story of
Asian-American diaspora (the relationships between Katrina and her Korean
immigrant parents are beautifully done), and also somehow (kinda?) a portal
fantasy novel in reverse. It’s gorgeously magical, propulsive, devastating,
heartbreaking, and then cathartic. It’s a book for all of us who have perhaps
fallen too hard for a fantasy world, and taken it too much to heart. It’s also
a book for all of us who have trouble fitting in, and are just trying our best.
Which, in the end, is perhaps all of us. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-57481818054244725582023-04-01T18:55:00.007-07:002023-04-01T18:55:55.054-07:00Short fiction recs! January--February 2023<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s been a busy (and still
cold!) spring, and this round-up is later than usual. Nevertheless, here are
some stories that I read over January and February—stories strange and dark,
warm and hopeful, rich and lovely. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stories of Memories, Dreams,
and Nightmares<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/flower-daughter-soil-seed/" target="_blank">"Flower, Daughter, Soil, Seed" </a> by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Uncanny Magazine</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your great-great-grandmother
was a yellow daffodil. Where she was born people called her narcissus. Her many
heads blossomed from a loamy opening in the forest on a particularly chill
spring day. They rose hungrily, searching for a few precious rays of sunlight.
Her stems pushed against each other and against the cold wind.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A flower is born, and dies.
But from her death a daughter springs forth, with memories of her mother. This
is a gorgeous story of survival, migration, resilience, and change. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it’s also a story of coming home, of both
finding and accepting sweetness and love. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-95b-tell-me-the-meaning-of-bees-by-amal-singh/" target="_blank">“Tell Me the Meaning of Bees”</a>
by Amal Singh in Diabolical Plots<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On a sunless morning, in the
city of Astor, the word ‘caulk’ vanished.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The word didn’t announce its
vanishing with trumpets or a booming clarion call. It faded away slowly in the
middle of the night, like the last lyrics of a difficult song. The ones who
didn’t use the word ‘caulk’ could not even tell what had gone wrong—the
non-engineers, the artists and intellectuals—because for all intents and
purposes, they would have spent their entire lifetimes not caulking anything.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A strange, rich story about a
city where words—and the concepts behind the words—unpredictably disappear. And
about two Keepers—an old man and an old woman—whose job it is to invent new
words to replace the ones lost. But when the word-disappearances become more
unpredictable and dangerous, the Keepers decide that they must make a perilous
journey to the Tapestry of all words to investigate the problem. A surreal,
lovely fable of vivid images and concepts. A story of unexpected warmth, in its
delicate depiction of the relationship between the two Keepers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://thedeadlands.com/issue-22/ammas-kitchen/" target="_blank">"Amma's Kitchen"</a> by Rati Mehrotra in The Deadlands</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I can always tell what dish my
customers will order. Knowing what the dead crave is my gift. Or my curse. It’s
hard to know which.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In a diner for the dead, Amma
makes whatever food the dead wish for. Fish pakora. Goat curry. Pink
candyfloss. Foods of precious memory, foods of home. She’s created a warm, cozy
place for her regulars. Her food comforts and satisfies, and helps the dead ultimately
move along. But Amma is tired, and it would be nice for someone else to do the
cooking for a change. This is such a warm, lovely story of food and memory, one
that takes a turn to sudden poignancy at the end as the story of Amma’s own
life is revealed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/we-all-fall-down/" target="_blank">“We All Fall Down”</a> by Ai Jiang
in The Dark<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you told your husband you
loved the rain, a secret you whispered at the end of your wedding vows, rather
than leaning in to kiss you, he looked as though he wanted to strike you. It
was he who taught you to fear storms and it was he who brought you to the town
of Fountain—a place of unending rain.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ai Jiang’s stories are so
wonderfully strange, dark, and atmospheric—and this is no exception. This is a
story about a city where it never stops raining. A story about time and the freezing
of time, about the promise of immortality and the lure of death. And about what
humans want when we say we want to live. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/until-it-has-your-reflection/" target="_blank">“Until It Has Your Reflection”</a>
by Katherine Quevedo in Nightmare<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I hold the crayon to the
mirror, ready to swipe it across my reflection’s neck just as my husband,
Tomas, instructed. Make a quick horizontal line, then break the crayon against
the glass. Snap it like you would your reflection’s neck.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mirrors always have something
of the uncanny to them. This story leans into that uncanniness hard, in a tale that
feels like an original new urban legend. A lean, tense, swift-moving nightmare
of mirrors, images and control. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://translunartravelerslounge.com/2023/02/15/the-dream-market-by-monte-lin/" target="_blank">“The Dream Market”</a> by Monte Lin
in Translunar Travelers Lounge<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You begin this dream in the
middle, as always, knowing that the merchant is named Nihtcargast and sells
nightmares. He runs a claw through the porcupine-like quills on the top of his
head. “Nightmares are burnt soft-boiled eggs, you see.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have a weakness for magical
street market stories, and oh, Monte Lin’s tale delivers. A narrator wanders
through a dream-market, trading nightmares, memories, and dreams. All three are
different faces of the same thing, a magical cat vendor says. This is a story
that is at once nightmarish—the narrator’s nightmares really are surreal
horrors—and also strange and lovely, with an ending at dawn that promises
growth and new beginnings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fusion Fragment—<a href="https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/" target="_blank">Special Novelette Issue</a><o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">January’s issue of Fusion Fragment
featured three novelettes, including my own urban fantasy, “How to Travel
Safely in Faerieland.” I’ll not review my own story (thought I’d still invite
you to read it!) but I will happily review the other two strange and wonderful
tales. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/" target="_blank">“The Day We Returned to Sunnytown”</a> by Angela Liu<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I should have deleted the
message. Should have checked it off with all the shop newsletters I was too
lazy to unsubscribe from. But there were a number of details that made this
message more unsettling than you typical spam mail.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A woman receives an email from
her own old Hotmail account. An email with details that no stranger should
know. And thus begins a mind-bending mystery about the 1990s Internet,
childhood sweethearts, virtual reality and tech, office work, and a life that
doesn’t seem quite real. An unsettling story with unexpected twists and turns, and
real poignancy at the end. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/" name="_Hlk131273557" target="_blank"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“The
Meiosis of Cells and Exile” </span></b></a><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">by Octavia Cade<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The journey to Dzhambul was
not so very terrible. The train was cold and uncom-fortable, the guards more so
with their smooth young faces and their strong young hands gripped always on
the sticks and guns they never went without. But Lina’s advantage was her
age—she might have been adjudged a traitor, but at 74 she was as old as their
mothers, as old as their grandmothers, and the smooth, strong young guards saw
age as well as treason, saw cradle songs and milk, scraped knees and poppet
dolls and were kinder than they could have been though that kindness was a
fitful one, and embarrassed.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1950s Stalinist Russia, the
Jewish biochemist Lina Stern was arrested, along with her friends, on
trumped-up charges of treason. Her friends were executed in what became known as
The Night of the Murdered Poets. Lina herself was allowed to live, protected by
her fame and importance as a scientist, and sent into exile. Octavia Cade
reimagines Stern’s story in a surreal and powerful work. “The Meiosis of Cells
and Exile” is a story of resistance and survival, filled with details of
science and history. It also uses elements of surrealism to imagine how Stern
survived her circumstances; in this story, the scientist undergoes a kind of “meiosis”—a
literal splitting of the self into different aspects that allow her to survive.
Academician, feral child, scientist—these are the different identities that split
off to aid the elderly woman and help her survive. A stunningly powerful story,
beautifully written. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Older
stories from 2022<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Two stories that I’d earlier
missed from 2022, and which I only found now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-old-man-cometh-and-he-is-overgrown/" target="_blank">“</a><b><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-old-man-cometh-and-he-is-overgrown/" target="_blank">An Oldman Cometh and He is
Overgrown”</a> by Lyndsie Manusos in Lightspeed</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Udo was an old man, a man I
hadn’t seen in years and neglected to write. Sure, I wrote Tillie during the
holidays; I sent gifts and trinkets I found on my travels. But I never sent a
direct message to Udo. He was…a hard man. Selfish. Dramatic. Tillie was his
only softness, rounding out his severe lines and smoothing his bark. He taught
me everything there was to know about summoning. It was Tillie that taught me
how to feel.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Years after leaving, a man
returns to the summoner who taught him magic. It’s not a happy occasion, for
Tillie, the wife of the grim Udo and a mother-figure for the narrator, is dead.
In grief, Udo has summoned a multitude of souls that distress the quiet town.
Now it seems that only Udo’s former apprentice can disperse these souls. This
is a story about grief, yet it’s also about reconciliation and love. It’s warm,
moving, and whimsical. A story with the feel of a Studio Ghibli movie—with that
type of charm and magic and whimsy, but also threaded through with deep
emotion. Beautifully done. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/lily-the-immortal/" target="_blank">“Lily, the Immortal”</a> by Kylie
Lee Baker in Uncanny</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In Lily’s last
vlog, she says she’s not scared of dying. I know it’s a lie because her gaze
drifts off camera and she blinks three times, like there’s something in her
eyes. Lily was always a bad liar, but I am a very good editor, so her
six-point-five million loyal subscribers never have to know.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lily was an
influencer, famous for her online makeup tutorials and vlogs. And behind the
camera, filming Lily but never seen herself, was Lily’s girlfriend. Now Lily is
dead and her girlfriend is alone with her grief—someone Lily never acknowledged
publicly. Someone that Lily’s fans know nothing of. Complicating the narrator’s
grief is the digital resurrection and immortality of Lily. A company buys Lily’s
YouTube channel and starts posting with an AI-version of Lily that mimics her
appearance, voice, style, everything. A hologram version of Lily sells
cosmetics at the mall. This is a powerful story about the unintended
consequences of social media fame, about artificial intelligence programs,
corporate greed, and loss and grief. And about what’s real underneath it all.</span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-2096478062843107852023-02-28T14:53:00.000-08:002023-02-28T14:53:07.975-08:00Quote: Wong May on Tang Dynasty poetry<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">"In times of continual, rampant
warfare, a retreat to Nature was a necessary strategy. If the poets seek refuge
in Nature, it must also be evident that Nature seeks refuge in a Tang poem; the
temptation of a 20-word quatrain--for infinite Nature to come to rest in a 4x5
grid, just so; a sight to behold."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">--Poet and translator Wong May, from her book <i>In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our
Century</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-48835197601425897832023-02-17T11:14:00.008-08:002023-02-17T11:15:32.418-08:00Quote: from the Zhuangzi<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i>Consider the gaps and cracks
and hollows in things: it is in the empty chambers that light appears, and all
auspicious things come to roost only where there is stillness. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">--from the classic Daoist text, the <i>Zhuangzi</i>, Chapter 4, translated by Brook Ziporyn </span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-519769486091250472023-01-27T18:03:00.002-08:002023-01-27T18:03:19.488-08:00Short fiction recs! November--December 2022<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stories published near the end
of the year sometimes miss out on deserved recognition, which is a shame. Here’s a sample of just some wonderful things I read toward the end of last year. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/rabbit-test/" target="_blank">“Rabbit Test”</a> by Samantha
Mills in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s a glitch they’ve used
before. An errant bit of update code that will block their apps for a day or
two. Sal uses them to disable her blood alcohol test whenever her parents are
out of town. They download patches every time, but she’s a whiz at writing new
ones, and that’s all that Grace needs, just a day or two to corrupt the rabbit
test.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A sweeping, epic story of the
history of abortion rights in America and beyond. A story that moves back and
forth in time, between a chilling surveillance state of the future (<i>The
Handmaid’s Tale</i> with updated tech) to the development of the first
urine-based pregnancy tests; a woman abandoned at the altar in 1817 America;
the legendary “Jane” underground abortion group in pre-Roe-v-Wade Chicago, and
a German abbess in 1150. A story that is often heartbreaking. A story with one
of the best ending lines I’ve seen recently. A story that reminds us that the
fight for reproductive freedom, for abortion rights, for control over our own
childbearing capacities and bodies, is ever timely, ever relevant—now as much
as ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“It is 2022 and it isn’t over.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is 2022 and it is never
over.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/sister-silkie-siren-shark/" target="_blank">“Sister, Selkie, Siren, Shark”</a>
by Ariel Marken Jack in Strange Horizons<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We know your tricks,” they
admonished. “You’ll not sing this crew into a stupor. You won’t escape that
way.” It astonished us to understand that, in some way, the sailors feared us.
No one had ever told us our voices had power.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The island is all Choriaster and her sisters have ever known.
A barren rock in the sea. Once a year a ship comes, and the men of that ship bring
the selkies clothes and crates of food—food they need to survive. In
return, the men take daughters of the island away, and leave behind pregnant
selkie-women without selkie-skins. This is a gorgeously sad story about a
system of oppression, and the traditions and ignorance that keep Choriaster and
her sisters trapped within it. There is deep sorrow here, regret for what has
been lost. But in the end, there is also the hope for change. An affecting story
with the rhythms of a fairy tale—evocative, aching, lyrical, and angry. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://giganotosaurus.org/2022/11/01/little-gardens-everywhere/" target="_blank">“Little Gardens Everywhere”</a> by
Avra Margariti in GigaNotoSaurus<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How does one find two
creatures such as Jerry and I?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">First you have a child stolen,
then a different child left behind. One baby replaced by another.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Eno and Jerry were never
supposed to meet. Eno was the stolen human child, Jerry the fairy replacement.
They were supposed to grow up in the worlds decided for them. But those worlds
could not accept them as they were, and both Eno and Jerry suffered for it. Now
they have a chance to help a similarly hurt child—a feral child raiding a
pumpkin patch, a child who may be wild stolen fairy or stolen human. This is a
beautiful story about trauma and healing, a gentle and generous tale. This is a
story about abusive parents and people, but also a story about people striving
to care for and heal one another, about kindness in the world. As Eno says
toward the end: “We didn’t know kindness until then. But it exists. In little
pockets of the world. Little gardens everywhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://reckoning.press/author/nicasioandresreed/" target="_blank">“</a><b><a href="https://reckoning.press/author/nicasioandresreed/" target="_blank">Babang Luksa”</a> by Nicasio
Reed in Reckoning<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #111011; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Salt
had crept in while he was away, and now the freshwater wetlands of Gino’s
childhood are a marsh, brackish and fickle. There is the soccer field where
he’d stained his knees; it had been a low, dry rise of earth bracketed by mud
and cordgrass, and today is impassable, a thicket of cattails in algae-skinned
water, a humming choir of insects.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #111011; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #111011; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gino
hasn’t been home in years. During that time, nieces have grown, relatives have
aged, and his old Philadelphia neighborhood has drowned under the ravages of
climate change. And his father has passed away. Gino has come back for his
father’s babang luksa, a Filipino tradition to mark the one-year anniversary of
the death of a loved one. This is a slow, quiet tale of a family gathering, a beautifully
written story of loss, grief, separation, and distance. And also of reunion,
constancy in the face of change, and love . <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://translunartravelerslounge.com/2022/08/15/dont-make-me-come-down-there-by-rajiv-mote/" target="_blank">“Don’t Make Me Come Down There”</a> by Rajiv Mote at Translunar Travelers Lounge<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For the god Brahma the
Creator, the act of Creation was never a one-and-done affair. He understood
that when releasing an unpredictable element like humanity in a newly designed
world, it would take some cycles to work out the kinks. That was why Brahma
believed in an iterative process: four Yugas to chart the inception, progress,
decline, and collapse of the world under humanity, an honest post-mortem,
followed by a new version of Creation, with an updated design informed by hard
data.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The problem was Vishnu<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A funny and wonderfully
playful spin on old mythologies. A story in which Vishnu, driven by compassion,
keeps descending to the human world to apply hotfixes to the system instead of
standing back and dispassionately recording the data. A story about compassion
and imperfection, about the messiness of creation (and humanity), but also
about the joy and meaning in the imperfect <i>process</i> of trying to achieve
perfection. A charming delight.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://flash-frog.com/2022/12/26/theyre-so-beautiful-when-theyre-sleeping-by-l-mari-harris/" target="_blank">“They’re so Beautiful When They’re Sleeping”</a> by L. Mari Harris
at Flash Frog <o:p></o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He
bumps the cruise control up to seventy-five. “You got it in you to drive all
night? I do.” Both of his hands are back on the steering wheel. “I feel so
alive. I want to keep going.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;">A tiny flash piece with a chilling twist. A story about how
adults sometimes just want to drive fast and escape—even adults with deep
responsibilities. To say much more about this piece would be to spoil it, but I’ll
add that there’s something of an ominous modern fairy tale vibe to this piece,
which I love. <o:p></o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/wok-hei-st/" target="_blank">“Wok Hei St”</a> by Guan Un in Strange Horizons<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s
like every wok has its own signature. It remembers the meal that it has made.
Passes on some of that flavour to everything else that it makes, like a story.
Over time, more and more flavour. More and more stories. And now she has used
it for forty-three years. It is one of a kind.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Compass
is a small-time magician, doing card tricks for tourists. He only has a few
spells up his sleeves. When Aunty Ping asks him to help her find her stolen
wok, he knows that he may run afoul of some dangerous characters, and his first
instinct is to refuse. But then he remembers all the wonderful meals that she’s
made him with her wok. What follow is a wonderful, fast-paced and clever caper
story, as Compass must use all his wits and magic to get back Aunty’s wok from those
who would do anything to win the Golden Wok Competition reality food show. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/two-hands-wrapped-in-gold/" target="_blank">“Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold”</a> by S.B. Divya in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Once a day, my
mother would pour water over my bare hands, then bandage each one down to the
wrists, first with cloth of gold, then plain muslin. She had a technique for
winding them in a way that left each finger separate but fully covered, and at
no point would her skin come into contact with mine. When I was old enough, she
taught me how to wrap them myself. By then, I also understood the danger that
she had put herself in.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A baby boy is born
in medieval India, and his parents ask the goddess Lakshmi to bless him with
prosperity. But they soon realize that the goddess’ blessing is also a curse, for
his ability to turn things to gold with his touch puts him in terrible danger
from people who would exploit him. When tragedy befalls, the boy finds himself
stranded far from home in Bavaria, where his life intersects in surprising ways
with two sisters. This is a fresh, moving, lovely, and ultimately satisfying
take on an old Brothers Grimm fairytale. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 12.0pt; margin: 0in;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></h1>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 12.0pt; margin: 0in;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></h1>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 12.0pt; margin: 0in;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></h1>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/huang_12_22/" target="_blank">“</a></span></em><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/huang_12_22/" target="_blank">Murder by Pixel: Crime and
Responsibility in the Digital Darkness”</a> by</span></em><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;"> </span></em><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;">S.L. Huang in Clarkesworld<o:p></o:p></span></em></h1>
<h1 style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in;"><em><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%;">The day Harrison died, the
stalker had sent over a dozen messages, including ones telling him he deserved
his fate, that people would cartwheel on his grave, and, most saliently, a
description of how he should kill himself because all that was in store for him
was watching his creditors perform sexual acts with his belongings.</span></em></h1>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 15.6pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 15.6pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">“Sylvie” has sent millions
of harassing messages over the years. Messages to wealthy, successful men with
dark secrets. Messages that succeeded in goading many to suicide. Is “Sylvie” a
single dedicated vigilante? A network of anonymous hacker vigilantes? Or is Sylvie
human at all? A truly thought-provoking piece on automated chatbots, healers,
and trolls. And our own culpability in the birth of technology’s demons.</span><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.tor.com/2022/11/23/the-difference-between-love-and-time-catherynne-m-valente/" target="_blank">“The Difference Between Love and Time”</a> by Catherynne M.
Valente in Tor<o:p></o:p></span></b></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We
first met when I was six. Our fathers arranged a playdate. The space/time
continuum looked like a boy my own age, with thick glasses in plastic Army
camouflage-printed frames, a cute little baby afro, and a faded T-shirt with
the old mascot for the poison control hotline on it. Mr. Yuk, grimacing on the
chest of time and space, sticking out his admonishing green Yuk-tongue. POISON
HELP! 1-800-222-1222.</span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It
smelled like lavender and bread baking in a stone oven.<o:p></o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; line-height: 200%;">The narrator meets the space/time continuum as a child and
loves/will love/has always loved him. The space-time continuum is a six-year
old, a high school scene kid, a “manifold topology,” and “a quivering, boiling
mass of all physio-psychological states that will/are likely to/have develop/ed
across every extinct/extant/unborn species.” The space/time continuum and the
narrator frequently have fights. They break up. The space-time continuum
leaves. But it also comes back. A dizzying story of love that flits back and
forth in time, that encompasses a lifetime. A story of loss as well as love. A
high-concept tale, told in Valente’s richly extravagant prose. As someone else
online said of this story (an account I can no longer find), I was initially
dubious about this story, and then I found myself crying. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></em></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-88709767786902259702023-01-27T14:38:00.009-08:002023-01-27T14:39:48.110-08:00New Story! "How to Travel Safely in Faerieland" in Fusion Fragment<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a new story out today! <a href="https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-15/" target="_blank">“How to Travel Safely in Faerieland”</a> appears in a special all-novelette issue of Fusion Fragment. It’s one of my
favorite pieces so far, and dear to my heart. It’s about modern tourists in a modern-day
Faerieland, in way over their heads. It’s also about the distance within
families, Asian diaspora feels, and what it means (what <i>does</i> it mean?)
to fall in love with a culture and world that’s not your own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“How to Travel Safely In
Faerieland” appears alongside beautiful stories by Angela Liu and Octavia Cade.
You can download it for free or pay what you like by going to the link above. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-88159065915116057432023-01-20T08:04:00.003-08:002023-01-20T08:17:04.935-08:005 Collections/Anthologies of Short Stories I Loved in 2022<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I think it’s true: we really
do live in a “golden age” of short stories. Here are five
collections/anthologies of short stories that I read and loved in 2022 (yes, I know this is late!)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Never Have I Ever by Isabel
Yap<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve long followed Yap’s writing
in online outlets, and was thrilled to see her first collection finally come
out. <i>Never Have I Ever</i> collects some of my favorite stories and offers
new ones as well. There’s delicate magic, longing, and sorrow in “A Cup of Salt
Tears,” wherein a woman grieving the upcoming death of her ill husband
encounters a kappa—a type of Japanese water spirit—at a spa. There’s delicious
horror in “Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?” which looks at the
various legends told of a ghost girl on the grounds of a junior high school in
the Philippines. There’s a squad of weary superheroes just trying to have an
uninterrupted night on the town in “Hurricane Heels (We Go Down Dancing)” and a
lush, epic fairy tale of a moon-eating dragon and two girls in love in “How to
Swallow the Moon.” The two new original novelettes are among the strongest
pieces: “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” is a warm, cozy tale of love and magic in
a San Francisco Bay area tech company, while “A Canticle for Lost Girls” tells
of a friendship group of teenage girls which has fallen apart, but must come
together to defeat a hidden evil at their school. These are stories of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>friendship, love, horror, and hope, told with
a sure hand and in evocative prose, and lit with pure magic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes We’re Cruel by
J.A.W. McCarthy<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A
Shirley Jackson Award-nominated debut collection of short stories from a
fiercely talented new writer. A collection burning with dark desires—with envy,
want, and obsession. A collection of body horror, of doppelgangers, of
characters desperately craving others’ lives and even (literally) others’
bodies. In the title story, people unpredictably disappear from a small town,
only to return days or even years later cruelly changed. In “With You as My
Anchor,” two teen girls play a dangerous game which leaves one lost and adrift
when her best friend drowns. The surviving friend’s grief, and the solution to
her grief, are both harrowing. In “Those Who Made Us,” a mother and daughter
hunt down humans for the body parts the daughter needs to survive. Other stories
are told from the perspective of the hunted, of humans whose body parts are
taken, who are slowly consumed. In one such story, “You Do What You’re Told, “
there is a final quiet and satisfying sense of empowerment when a woman turns
the tables on a man who has been stalking her, who has been sending strange
women at night to take from her bits of her body—hair, skin, flesh—who has been
trying to create his own image of her, or of who he thinks she is. But in other
stories, like “Exactly As We Are Meant to Be,” the consumption is complete, as
the victim is taken and her identity completely consumed. This is a set of
stories about both hunters and hunted, predators and prey. It’s about terrible
desires, about shame and guilt and greed and longing. About identity, and intense
friendships and relationships that take a dark turn. “Sometimes We Are Cruel”
is a darkly spellbinding collection, deeply disturbing, a portal into a
strange, surreal landscape where the strange and shocking is nevertheless
rooted in very real human emotions. (Content warnings for graphic gore,
violence, body horror, and self-harm). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Anchored World by Jasmine
Sawers<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A marvelous collection of tiny
stories, dancing from hard realism to magical fantasy and all points in
between. A queen gives birth to a golden conch shell. A little girl fears that
her mother is actually a yak (a type of Thai giant/demon). A narrator ponders
the results of their dog’s DNA test and their own human genetic background.
There are riffs on fairy tales from both the West and East, stories inspired by
the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, as well as stories drawing from
Thai folklore (e.g. the aforementioned golden conch story.). There are tales
that are delicate (such as the story, “Delicate,” in which the prince reflects
on the princess who could feel a pea through 20 mattresses), and stories that
are sensuously, earthily erotic, as in Sawyer’s retelling of Rapunzel in “A
Woman’s Glory.” A kaleidoscope of wonders: aching, poignant, strange, and
sharp, sharp, sharp.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Into the Forest: Tales of the
Baba Yaga, edited by Lindy Ryan<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Baba Yaga, that famous figure
of Slavic folklore, is a multi-faceted woman. She is crone, witch, trickster, villain,
and (sometimes) a savior. She’s known to eat children, but if she takes a
liking to you, she just might help you out. This anthology brings together 23
stories by women horror writers that showcase Baba Yaga in all her shifting, mercurial
glory. In this book, Baba Yaga is a beautiful, glamourous seductress. She’s an
ugly crone. She saves lost children in the woods, and she eats them, too. She
lures bored suburban housewives into the forest wild. She’ll grant seekers’ wishes,
but only at a terrible price. She’d kind and giving, and she’s ruthlessly,
horrifically cruel. In one of my favorite stories, Carina Bissett’s “Water Like
Broken Glass,” Baba Yaga is a fierce Russian resistance fighter in World War II
who has a love affair with another figure of Slavic legend—a rusalka, or water
spirit. In “The Space Between the Trees” by Jo Kaplan, Baba Yaga is a fiercely
protective mother who will do anything to keep her daughter safe. She rescues a
princess in the delightful “Of Moonlight and Moss” by Sara Tantlinger, and she
extracts a terrible price from an erstwhile apprentice in the horrific “A Trail
of Feathers, A Trail of Blood,” by Stephanie M. Wytovich. There is horror, too
(and not all of it Baba Yaga’s doing), in “Stork Bites” by Ev Knight, in which
two women and best friends together navigate a post-Roe America where abortion
is no longer available anywhere. And one of my favorite pieces in this book is
the deliciously strange “The Story of a House” by Yi Izzy Yu, which is told
from the viewpoint of the chicken fated to become Baba Yaga’s House. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Here we have Baba Yaga as
cruel and kind, generous and merciless, mother and mentor and murderer. We have
stories that are wry, funny, fierce, warming, sinister, surreal, and utterly
soaked in blood and horror. These are all stories of women—women stumbling upon
Baba Yaga, seeking her out, learning from her, and fleeing from her. In all
these tales, Baba Yaga makes her own choices; she plays by no man’s rules. She
is the wildness in the forest, alluring, terrifying, and untamable; she is, as
editor Lindy Ryan says in her preface, “wild and fierce and feminine.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung,
translated from Korean by Anton Hur<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Shortlisted for the Booker
Prize after it was first published in the UK, this English translation of Bora
Chung’s work contains stories that are shocking, gross, bizarre, heartbreaking,
and darkly, deeply enthralling. In the first story, “The Head,” a woman
encounters a head in a toilet that is made from her own human wastes—a head
that starts stalking her and calling her “Mother.” In the second, “The
Embodiment,” a single young woman becomes mysteriously pregnant from taking <i>too
many</i> birth control pills, and is told sternly by her doctor that she must
find a father for the fatherless baby or something terrible will happen. These surreal
opening tales feel like strange parables about the status of women in
contemporary Korean society. Other stories feel more like (relatively) straightforward
ghost stories with a twist at the end. “The Frozen Finger” is a deliciously
disorienting, creepy tale about the aftermath of a car accident, which has the
feel of an urban legend. One of my favorite stories, “The Snare,” mixes elements
of fairy tales and traditional ghost stories into a shockingly cruel tale of a man’s
exploitation of first a fox, and then his entire family. “Scars” is a story in
epic fantasy fairy tale mode, about a boy chained in a cave with a monster, who
eventually breaks free but then must contend with the cruelty of the wider
world. “Ruler of the Winds and Sands” is another fairy tale fantasy about a curse,
a sorcerer who flies above the desert in an airship, and a princess’s quest. This
is a book of stories that mixes and samples genres, that shifts fluidly between
magical realism, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. An exploration of human
cruelty is a common thread throughout this book. Yet somehow this spotlighting
of cruelty felt not so much depressing to me as it felt brave, fearless, and
necessary. There is deserved retribution, catharsis, and moments of tenderness
in this collection, too. And characters coming to hard-won wisdom and
awareness. The freshest, most mind-bending work of fiction that I read in 2022. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-34812888244688643552023-01-09T12:57:00.003-08:002023-01-09T12:57:15.132-08:00Book review: Every Version of You by Grace Chan<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s the year 2080. Australia—and
the world at large—is crumbling from the effects of climate change. People must
wear air filters and protective gear against radiation each time they step
outside. But the lucky ones—like Tao-Yi and her boyfriend Navin—hardly go
outside anyway. They barely spend any time at all in the physical world. They
spend most of their time in virtual reality. And in 2080, the biggest VR
company is about to release their latest product: Gaia, a “Massively Unified Simulated
Reality Matrix” which will instantly make all previous products obsolete and
which will provide a single platform for all purposes of virtual reality—a place
to work, shop, socialize, play, and essentially live. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ve been to this place
before, of course. From Neal Stephenson’s classic <i>Snow Crash</i> to the
Matrix movies and more, we’ve been to many versions of this future—a place
where the attractions of a simulated digital reality beckon us away from the
real world. We are, in many ways, at this place right now, in our real lives. And
yet Grace Chan’s debut novel<i>, Every Version of You</i>, takes us to this place
with a quiet thoughtfulness, with an emotional complexity and verisimilitude,
that I have not seen in any other fictional depiction. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Every Version of You </span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">shifts
backward and forward in time, from Tao-Yi’s first meeting with her boyfriend,
Navin, to a time before the launch of Gaia, when cities were still vibrant with
people socializing and traveling in the physical world. The novel follows
Tao-Yi and Navin, and their friends and family, as the world changes again and
again—as the physical world crumbles, and as Gaia is updated with its biggest release
yet: the option to upload one’s mind permanently into the virtual world of
Gaia, to leave the physical human body permanently behind, and to become
essentially immortal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While the major technological ideas
in this novel are not new, Chan explores the human effects in heartbreaking
detail. The Gaia technology divides humanity from the start; from its very
launch, there are those who cannot afford it, who are left out and left behind.
The new uploading technology results in an even greater divide. This is
illustrated most heartbreakingly in the conflict between Tao-Yi and Navin.
Navin jumps at the opportunity to live permanently in Gaia—not least because in
the physical world he suffers from a chronic illness which leaves him with
frustrating physical limitations and in chronic pain. In the virtual world he
feels no pain, and has no limitations. Yet even as Navin and more and more of Tao-Yi’s
friends upload themselves permanently into Gaia, Tao-Yi cannot bring herself to
join them. At first she tells people that it’s because she wants to stay behind
to care for her mother, who also refuses to leave the physical world. But there’s
something more to her decision: a deep-rooted attachment to the physical world
that she cannot explain, but which she cannot give up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Grief and loss suffuse <i>Every
Version of You</i>. There is grief for the earth itself, for the damage that
humans have done to it, for the diversity of life lost. There is grief for the
loss of relationships, for love that tries to bridge the gap but can’t. There
is grief for the inevitability of death. Everyone who chooses to not upload
themselves into Gaia has chosen to eventually die. And this choice means that
their deaths are even more heartbreaking for their loved ones in Gaia—because from
the perspective of their friends and family in the virtual world, it’s a
completely unnecessary death, one that need never occur.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Chan explores these ideas and
more with a deft touch, with nuance and generosity toward all her characters. This
is a painfully <i>gorgeous </i>book, written in luminous prose. The world she
depicts is richly textured, and she raises questions without easy answers. At
the heart of this book are the human relationships—the relationship between Tao-Yi
and her mother, Tao-Yi and her friends, and most of all Tao-Yi and Navin. For
all the sci-fi trappings, a quiet and poignant love story beats at this novel’s
center. Yet at the end, the journey Tao-Yi takes is one she does on her own. In
a world of dizzying change and loss, the final character arc is of a woman finding
and staying true to herself, despite the pleading and pressure of loved ones,
despite all the chaos and upheaval and uncertainty of her world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-9234695503374544002023-01-01T12:10:00.005-08:002023-01-01T12:15:39.460-08:00A New Year. And 2022 in Review<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">January 1. A new year. Time to
look forward. . . and on this day, a day of quietness and family for me, also a
day to look back at the year before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In terms of professional writing
and publishing, 2022 was perhaps my most outwardly successful so far. I
published in high-profile, dream markets. I had my first stories narrated in
podcasts! I sold a collection of stories. I tried new things that scared me—including
my first foray into the personal essay form. Along the way, I made new friends
and contacts and had fun.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Some things that happened in
2022, to remind me when I’m feeling down:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Published</span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-address-to-the-newest-disciples-of-the-lost-words/" target="_blank">“An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words”</a> in Lightspeed
Magazine, January 2022 (3357 words). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="http://futurefire.net/2022.60/fiction/before.html" target="_blank">“Before We Drown”</a> in The Future Fire, January 2022 (flash fiction, ~1000
words).</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://giganotosaurus.org/2022/02/01/once-on-a-midsummers-night/" target="_blank">“Once on a Midsummer’s Night”</a> In GigaNotoSaurus, February 2022 (~7500 words).</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://podcastle.org/2022/06/07/podcastle-738-the-bones-beneath/" target="_blank">“The Bones Beneath”</a> in Podcastle Magazine, June 2022 (5659 words).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.havenspec.com/blood-roses-song" target="_blank">“Blood,Roses, Song”</a> (poetry) in Haven Speculative, July 2022.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Written<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Novelette:</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> I
wrote a strange urban Faerie novelette over 14,000 words, the longest thing I’ve
written yet. It’s about a group of modern tourists in modern-day Faerieland, in
way over their heads. It’s also about isolation, the aftermath of pandemic
lockdowns, the distance within families, diaspora feels, and what it means to
fall in love with a culture that’s not your own. It’s very personal in indirect
(and perhaps not so indirect) ways. I think of that famous line from an Emily Dickinson
poem: “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why I write fiction. I’m very happy to
say that I sold this story, and it should be coming out in the early new year
in the magazine, Fusion Fragment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Personal essay:</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> And
from disguised truth in fiction to owned truths in a personal essay. . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In late 2021 I was invited to contribute an
essay to an exciting anthology project, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unquiet-Spirits-Essays-Asian-Horror/dp/1645481301" target="_blank"><i>Unquiet Spirits: Essays by Asian
Women in Horror.</i> </a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">The book is edited by the editorial
dream team of Lee Murray and Angela Yuriko Smith, who have already won two Bram
Stoker Awards for their other anthology projects, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Black Cranes: Tales of
Unquiet Women</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">, and </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken.</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">I jumped at the chance to work with them, even
though it meant pushing myself into a new genre, and revealing more of myself
than I ever have in print. The anthology revolves around myths, monsters, and
spirits of Asian culture, and the personal meaning that these spirits have for
the contributors—all of whom are Asian women. The final product is beautiful.
And perhaps the best thing so far—the project introduced me to an “unquiet sisterhood”
of spectacular writers, colleagues, and friends.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Two shorter pieces</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">: I
wrote the essay for <i>Unquiet Spirits</i> first, actually, in early 2022.
Followed it up with the novelette. And then had a long dry spell. Finally, as
summer shaded into fall, I was able to write again, and I finished a flash
piece and a short ~2000 word story. Both are now on the market. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Award
Longlist, Spanish translations, and More<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">BSFA longlist</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">--My
2021-published story, <a href="https://translunartravelerslounge.com/2021/02/15/fanfiction-for-a-grimdark-universe-by-vanessa-fogg/ " target="_blank">“Fanfiction for a Grimdark Universe,”</a> was longlisted for a British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Award! And
though it did not make it to the second-round of voting (i.e. the “shortlist”) it
was an honor to even make it as far as it did.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Spanish translations</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">—“Fanfiction
for a Grimdark Universe” and “The Bones Beneath” were both translated and
reprinted in Spanish this year! My first Spanish translations ever. You can
find the Spanish version of “Fanfiction for a Grimdark Universe” at the website
El Nombre del Mundo es Cuento <a href="https://elnombredelmundoescuento.blogspot.com/2022/01/fanfics-de-un-universo-grimdark.html?fbclid=IwAR13smn8_3xvYJDUrLreHXOC0oo-lQ12Kv3mni7okNKuw1KZhZbMrEQ4Kz0 " target="_blank">here</a> . And the Spanish version of “The Bones
Beneath” was reprinted on <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Patreon
site of <i>Crononauta: literatura de género con perspectiva de género, <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Interview:</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> I was
honored to participate in the Horror Writers Association (HWA) interview series
with horror writers of Asian heritage. You can read my interview <a href="https://horror.org/asian-heritage-in-horror-interview-with-vanessa-fogg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=asian-heritage-in-horror-interview-with-vanessa-fogg" target="_blank">here.</a> (Also check out the other interviews in the series!)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">More:</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> I
also participated in an online reading of stories with the Toronto-based ephemera
series, and did a Q&A session of my work (and later, a reading) with an online short
story discussion group. And have now joined that story discussion group as a
member! Getting together once a week to discuss stories with the thoughtful
readers of this group has been another highlight of my year. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Sold a
Collection of Short Stories<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This was my biggest piece of
publishing news from 2022, and truly a dream come true. My debut collection of
short stories, <i>The House of Illusionists and Other Stories</i>, has been
acquired by Interstellar Flight Press as part of a lineup of other incredible
authors and collections. So much thanks to guest editor Oghenechovwe Donald
Ekpeki, managing editor Holly Lyn Walrath, and everyone at Interstellar Press. The
publishing date is not yet set, but it should come out sometime from 2023-2024.
The official press release is <a href="https://magazine.interstellarflightpress.com/acquisitions-from-the-2021-short-story-collections-call-71715c628849" target="_blank">here</a> .<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><u style="text-underline: thick;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Final Thoughts<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot happened in my life
outside fiction writing, too. I kept busy with my freelance science editing. My
family and I went on a epic summer vacation to Oregon, just before our eldest
left for college. Said eldest left for college (but she’s come back! She was
able to come back a number of times—for a long Fall Break, Thanksgiving Break,
and now Christmas! So that’s made it easier on her mom =) ). Younger Daughter
got her provisional driver’s permit and scares me to death with it. We all got
caught up in the Christmas 2022 Winter Storm Travel Chaos in ways I will not
bother to go into here, but we survived; we rescued Eldest Daughter from the Chicago
O’Hare airport and we are safe and snug and warm at home on New Year’s Day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking back at my years of
writing, it’s been a long slog. This is a rather cliched thing to say, but it’s
true: it was in 2013 that I finally decided to take my writing seriously, and
it’s only now, nearly 10 years later, that my stories have really broken into
the high-profile, professional-paying markets. Only now that I may soon have a
full-size book out. In this same time period—in far less time—I’ve seen peers
publish multiple books with Big Five publishers, hit best-sellers lists, win
all sorts of awards, and talk about movie and television-rights deals. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s okay. I’m a slow
writer. I think I will always be so. My writing may always have only a niche
audience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m glad that I still have
readers. I will try to keep writing. I hope all of us are able to keep doing
whatever it is we love into the new year. I hope that we all have love. <o:p></o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-16879803435647556032022-12-12T07:01:00.003-08:002022-12-12T07:01:24.187-08:00Quote: Sofia Samatar from her memoir/history, The White Mosque<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">"Today there's a swath of
darkness over the sky. Above it, a layer of cold silver. As the child goes down
the dormitory steps, a startled crow springs from a wire, rising with a snap of
wings that makes the whole day vibrate like a bell."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">--Sofia Samatar, from her
newest book, <i>The White Mosque</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><br /></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-36946958888984079382022-11-29T16:40:00.009-08:002022-11-29T16:44:09.239-08:00Award Eligibility Post for 2022<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The year is drawing to its close, and it’s that time when writers
make posts about their award eligibilities for the year. I had four stories
published in 2022, and my first poetry publication as well. I would be honored
if you took a look at any of them. </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Eligible Stories</span></b></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/an-address-to-the-newest-disciples-of-the-lost-words/" target="_blank">“An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words”</a> in
Lightspeed Magazine, January 2022 (3357 words).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">A story about a magical language that can say all things. About
the power and limits of words. And it’s also almost all I want to say about
writing. Stefan Rudnicki gives a marvelous narration (his voice is an exact
match for my character’s!) on the accompanying podcast, so give that a listen
if you can.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/2022.60/fiction/before.html" target="_blank">“Before We Drown”</a> in The Future Fire, January 2022 (flash
fiction, ~1000 words).</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;">A little flash piece about memory and the light between
storms. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://giganotosaurus.org/2022/02/01/once-on-a-midsummers-night/" target="_blank">“Once on a Midsummer’s Night”</a> In GigaNotoSaurus, February
2022 (~7500 words).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">An epic fairy tale fantasy about a dead garden that
comes to life once in a lifetime. A story about love, power, revenge, and
redemption.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://podcastle.org/2022/06/07/podcastle-738-the-bones-beneath/" target="_blank">“The Bones Beneath”</a> in Podcastle Magazine, June 2022 (5659
words). </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A story about two little girls, about friendship and
magic and friendship betrayed. About a society that descends into frenzied
paranoia amid authoritarianism, and the terrible things that happen. And about the
bones that refuse to lie quiet. This is perhaps the darkest thing I’ve written
yet, and yes, it’s inspired by real-world events and history—far too many real-life
inspirations. You can read and/or listen to the beautiful narration by Tatiana
Grey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">Eligible Poem</span></b></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://www.havenspec.com/blood-roses-song" target="_blank">“Blood, Roses, Song”</a> in Haven Speculative, July 2022</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">A dark fantasy narrative poem that mashes up various
fairy tales—Rapunzel, Jack-and-the-Beanstalk, and more. I very rarely write
poetry, but I spent a long time wrestling with this idea as a story, and it was
only as a poem that it worked. It’s my first poem publication ever, so I’m
rather proud of it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-color-alt: windowtext; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thank you to everyone who reads or has read any of my
work this year! </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 22.5pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-15945181219198693132022-11-20T14:03:00.006-08:002022-11-20T14:05:14.627-08:00Short fiction recs! September-October 2022<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As I write this, snow is piled
thick outside my window, a gift from the first real snowstorm of the season.
Winter is here early. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s time for
blankets and hot tea. For curling up on the couch with a good read. Perhaps a story
of humor and hope, something bright and warm against the chill? Or perhaps
you’d like to lean into the dark with something unsettling and strange. Here
are thirteen to consider. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/girl-cat-wolf-moon/" target="_blank">“Girl, Cat, Wolf, Moon”</a> by Rati
Mehrotra in Uncanny<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Lila
found the cat market when she was seven. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say
the cat market found her.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Lila is the youngest of three
daughters, growing up in a rural village in India in a family that does not
value girls. She is alternately ignored and berated by her family, seen as the
least of her sisters. But when still a child, she makes a wonderful discovery:
a night market staffed by cats selling magical wares, a market visited only by
cats. And there she meets a cat prince. . . This is an exquisite story of magic,
one that balances darkness and desperation with whimsy and light.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-88a-timecop-mojitos-by-sarah-pauling/" target="_blank">“</a><b><a href="https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-88a-timecop-mojitos-by-sarah-pauling/" target="_blank">Timecop Mojitos”</a> by Sara
Pauling in Diabolical Plots<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">So what happened was, I’m back
from clicker training Ms. Jordan’s dogs over on Dexter, sitting on the porch
with a mojito, thinking how fucked up it is that the Old West Side Association
stealth-planted tulips in our garden (because the yard looked so shitty without
them, I guess—sorry for having a rental in your high-value neighborhood, Evie)
when the Viking or whatever comes down Eighth.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">An older story from this year,
but oh, am I glad that found it (thanks to the Electric Sheep short story
discussion group that I'm in!) </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">An absolutely
marvelous story of a Viking(?) timecop, a pet-sitter who is much more than she
appears, her history professor roommate, the “Bird of Something-Fuck” and the mystical
“Cave of blah blah.” </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">This story is just
such riotous </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">fun,</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> with such a wonderful, distinctive voice. I laughed
aloud more than once. Personal bonus: the story is set in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with
details that brought me right back to my time there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.tor.com/2022/08/24/d-i-y-john-wiswell/" target="_blank">“D.I.Y.”</a> by John Wiswell in
Tor<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #545353; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">People
ask how Noah could possibly turn down the Ozymandias Academy. All they know
about him is the headlines, and they think he’s ungrateful. What you don’t get
is that attending Ozymandias was Noah’s dream. Noah wanted it worse than
anyone.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #545353; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #545353; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Noah
wants to attend the prestigious Ozymandias Academy for magic more than
anything. He idolizes Vamon Kinctuarin, the head of the school, he who defeated
angels without even a wand. But when Noah finally gets his invitation to
attend, it happens that he can’t afford the tuition and the school is unwilling
to help. But with the help of a friend and an entire Internet community of
wizards, Noah find his own way into magic and a way to save his world. Over the
past few years, I have learned to rely on author John Wiswell for stories of
wit, humor, pathos, and hope—and this story ticks all the boxes, and is one of
his best yet. In short: two disabled, indie wizards take on the wizarding
establishment and fight to save their world. The ending is wonderful—go read!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #545353; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/space-travel/marissa-lingen/michigan-seems-like-a-dream-to-me-now" target="_blank">“Michigan Seems Like a Dream to Me Now”</a> by Marissa Lingen at Daily Science Fiction<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In Michigan the gravitational
pull is nearly ten meters per second squared, and they have water no one
filtered--just water, lying around outside with animals in it no one has
checked over for genetic defects, which many of them have.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">On a generation ship headed
away from Earth, a mother tells her daughter goodnight stories about the home
the mother left: about Michigan, that land of big water. A world that the
daughter has no memory of, and never will. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A flash piece filled with yearning, that
beautifully evokes the state I grew up in, and to which I returned.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/lay-my-stomach-on-your-scales/" target="_blank"> </a></o:p></span><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/lay-my-stomach-on-your-scales/" target="_blank">“Lay My Stomach on Your
Scales”</a> by Wen-Yi Lee in Strange Horizons</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I become forty eight kilograms
lighter when I detach my head from my body. You shed a lot when you leave all
the stupid fat and bones behind.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">A story that’s strange and
dark but also with cuttingly funny dialogue. A story about a girl who hates her
body, who obsesses over her weight—to the point that she thinks about the
weight of each of her organs. A story about a type of Southeast Asian monster known
as the penananggalan in Malaysia and Singapore, and the mananangal in the
Philippines (and by other names in other Southeast Asian countries). This is a
story about a penanggalan in high school who discovers that the most popular
girl in her class is also a monster. It’s about body issues, about a girl who
wants to literally detach from her body and leave it behind. . . until someone takes
a part of her body against her will. And it’s also about instant Maggi noodles
and a date night at a morgue. A remarkable mix of tones—funny, aching, dark--that
all, somehow, works.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/the-weight-of-it-all/" target="_blank">“The Weight of it All”</a> by
Jennifer Hudak at Fantasy<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She wants to be able to slip
wherever she wants, unnoticed as a puff of air. She wants to feel limitless.
She wants to be nothing.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Stupid girl, she wants to be
me.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Another story about body
dysmorphia and weight obsession, about a young woman with an eating disorder,
who wishes nothing more than to leave her own body. . . But this is also a
story about a ghost who misses having a human body, who delights in sneaking into
human bodies to experience again the delights of corporeality—the ability to
dance, to eat, to feel sunlight, to have weight, and to take up room. A ghost
sneaks into the body of a woman who hates her body, and becomes trapped.there. This
is an aching story about conflicting desires. It’s a story that poignantly
evokes one woman’s pain and desire to escape her body and the world itself. . .
but it’s also a paen to the joys of having a body, of being in the world. Beautifully
woven and, in the end, hopeful.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/of-the-body/" target="_blank">“</a><b><a href="https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/of-the-body/" target="_blank">Of the Body”</a> by Eugenia Triantafyllou in Beneath Ceaseless Skies<o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I have thought of a thousand
different names for our future children. Ever since our eyes first met. But
right now, right at this moment when I should be the most happy, I am
terrified.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Terrified of the moment when
Osarah and I will hunt down the animal that bears our child and kill it. Will
my aim be good enough to wound it without hurting our child? Will my hands
shake as I cut its belly open and pry the baby out of its innards, slick with
blood?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">In this strange world of
interconnected nature, human couples’ children are literally carried and borne
by animals. And to claim their human children, humans hunt and kill these
animals. It’s a wild premise with more than a touch of body horror. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">And yet in Triantafyllou’s telling this world
feels fully realized. And this is a story that twists and turns as the main
characters find a new way to be in their world. A dazzlingly original story of
horrors, and yet one that is also unexpectedly tender, hopeful, and poignant.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/sharp-things-killing-things/" target="_blank">“Sharp Things, Killing Things”</a>
by A.C Wise in Nightmare <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">We listened, even though we
didn’t want to, and somewhere deep down we were all afraid this was a story we
already knew. It ticked in the back of our minds, a terrible thing we’d tried
to forget. The new guy excavated it and held it up to the light while our
breath filled the car, steaming in the dark like ghosts.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">An incredibly unsettling
story, with the strange dreamlike feeling of a nightmare. Outside a rural small
town, an ominous billboard appears on the road toward the lake. Then more
billboards appear. And the first suicides occur. Or are these the first? Wasn’t
there a suicide, a death, that occurred earlier? Who is the new boy in the
midst of this friend group--attending their parties, riding out to the lake
with them, reminding them of something they don’t want to remember? What
happened at the old razor blade factory in town? What has happened, what is
happening, what keeps happening? A dark dream-spiral of repressed memory and
horror, of a town unwilling to face what has happened, and its own complicity
in it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/the-skinless-man-counts-to-five/" target="_blank">“The Skinless Man Counts to Five”</a> by Paul Jessup in Apex</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The first corpse rode the
waves to the beach and greeted the librarian on the shore. It was tied to a
chair with catch ropes, skinless with eyes popped open and mouth gaping wide.
Inside the mouth was a speaker, connected to an old ghostdrive in the corpse’s
chest. The speaker said the same thing over and over again, in a rusty metallic
voice. Clear and sharp as a bell.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Five. Five. Five. Five.
Five.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Another dark story. A
wonderfully strange piece of mystery and death on a generation ship. A bizarrely
inventive, fantastical horror/mystery/science fiction piece, in which dread and
wonder are entwined.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_10_22/" target="_blank">“Sweetbaby”</a> by</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> <b>Thomas
Ha in Clarkesworld</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">You don’t look Sweetbaby in
the eye when he pushes out from under the tree throw. We know that now.
Instead, the ears, or what’s left of them, are a better place to settle your
gaze. They’re close enough to the face that you can tell which way he’s looking
and whether or not he’s smiling at you, and, in the end, those are the two
things that matter most with him.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">Thomas Ha has a gift for
writing complex family dynamics, and it’s showcased in this disturbing story.
This is far-future science fiction that is also horror and unfurling mystery.
It’s a look at the horror at the heart of one family. But there is also
sympathy and complexity in the portrayal of those who perpetrate the horror—even
as the story never excuses it. A viscerally disturbing, haunting story.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/swords-names/" target="_blank">“When Swords Had Names” </a>by Stephen
Graham Jones in The Dark<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Some men can stand up on that
battlement night after night, pissing into a warm clay jar, and not feel that
their best years are being drained from them. Some men can stand up there and
not feel the darkness is going to swallow them whole.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">And some men, they fling their
halberd out into the river, and then they climb down, walk away from their duty
with their hands clenched into fists.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Me, I </span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">ran<i>.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">This is an older story, from
2014. Yet I stumbled upon it just last month, thanks to a link in writer <a href="https://kcmeadbrewer.com/ " target="_blank">K.C.Mead-Brewer’s</a> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">exquisite newsletter, <a href="https://kcmeadbrewer.com/updates/ " target="_blank">Peacock Mantis Shrimp</a> . This is a tense, gripping story of obsession
and horror, of old legends come to life, of terrible deeds—a dark adventure
fairy tale in which an entire world is changed at the end. In this tale, a soldier deserts his post and
goes from a bad situation to worse. And then worse, yet again. On the run,
starving, lost in the woods, he’s taken in by strangers and fed meat. But the
meat he eats has a terrible origin, and anyone who tastes it will never be
satisfied by any other food. Under this dark enchantment, the soldier does
terrible things to get another taste. . . The soldier is revolted by his own
actions, and yet feels helpless to resist, and this dark dynamic fuels the
story’s horror. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://therumpus.net/2022/10/31/rumpus-original-fiction-rapunzel-house/" target="_blank">“Rapunzel House”</a> by K.C.
Mead-Brewer in The Rumpus<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Rapunzel the House has a snug
little kitchen with quartz countertops that glint like wet teeth. She has a
library that hints at hidden rooms, windows everywhere standing tall and narrow
as soldiers. You could burn incriminating letters in her stately black
fireplace. A stranger could do things in her bedroom; she has a spare. We’ll be
adding a sofa soon, a desk, books to jewel the shelves. A rug to warm the
floor. Rapunzel must think we’re a pair of birds come to nest in her hair, a
twittering bother while she keeps her vigil.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">K.C. Mead-Brewer is one of my
favorite writers ever—her strange stories often feel indescribable to me, their
power something that can’t be dissected or explained. “Rapunzel House” is one
of these. A couple moves into their new house, the house of their dreams. But
dreams are mysterious things, and not always pleasant. . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This isn’t your standard haunted house story.
This story is a door into secret passages of the heart. Eerie and unsettling,
gripping and haunting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/folk-hero-motifs-in-tales-told-by-the-dead/" target="_blank">“Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead”</a> by KT Bryski in Strange Horizons<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But Skullbone is the original
corpse, the same cadaver who walked to the living lands and returned with his
lover; he tunnelled under the mountains and brought darkness to these lands of
light perpetual; his metatarsals were the first frigid flesh to tread upon this
wind-swept snow. So Skullbone ties a piece of rope around his shrunken waist
and gives the other end to his fellow-corpses. “As long as I keep tugging the
rope regular,” says Skullbone, “let me be. But if I tug three times, haul me
back.”</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt;">The dead have their own fairy
tales, which they tell one another at a bar that serves only briny seawater. And
the great hero of their fairy tales is Skullbone—“hero, trickster, corpse.”
This story is delightful. A wonderfully strange, evocative, beautiful weaving
of folk tales and hero motifs, refracted through the lens of the dead.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-36386295565238435132022-11-10T12:43:00.007-08:002022-11-11T09:21:53.668-08:00Quote: Basho on his life in poetry<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Within this temporal body composed
of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of an
adequate name, I think of as windblown. Like delicate drapery, it may be torn
away and blown off by the least breeze. It brought me to writing poetry many
years ago, initially for its own gratification, but eventually as a way of
life. True, frustration and rejection were almost enough to bring this spirit
to silence, and sometimes pride brought it to the brink of vanity. From the
writing of the very first line, it has found no contentment as it was torn by
one doubt after another. This windblown spirit considered the security of
court life at one point; at another, it considered risking a display of tis ignorance
by becoming a scholar. But its passion for poetry would not permit either.
Since it knows no other way than the way of poetry, it has clung to it
tenaciously.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> --Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) from his travelogue, T<i>he Knapsack Notebook</i>, translated by Sam Hamill in the book <i>Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings</i><br /></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134752925334693273.post-61419850264953189582022-10-24T11:17:00.005-07:002022-10-24T11:17:45.568-07:00Quote: The October Country<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Libre Baskerville", Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 24px;">“The October Country …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…”</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Libre Baskerville", Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 24px;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Libre Baskerville", Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 24px;">--Ray Bradbury,<i> The October Country</i></span></p>bean-writerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09574157518553636032noreply@blogger.com0