Short fiction recs! Nov-Dec 2021
This is very late, but at least I did get this in before the end of the month. Some beautiful stories I read at the end of last year, from last November and December. Short Stories “The Language Birds Speak” by Rebecca Campbell in Clarkesworld The deep sea of meaning that underlies those flimsy little words. The richest parts of our selves beyond the reach of language, and words only float on it, moved by currents far deeper than anything they communicate, a rich, dark inlet of the great sea of meaning we cannot ever hope to speak. “But what if,” Tom asked, conspiratorial, “there was a language that bypassed conscious representation the way snakes and faces do? It’s more like pheromones. Like music or empathy. If you hug someone for thirty seconds, you’ll both release oxytocin. It’s not about the mind—it’s about body speaking to body. It’s a kind of truth that language can never capture.” A fascinating story about a primal language that says what ordinary human speech cannot....