Short fiction recs! November--December 2022
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. “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills in Uncanny 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. 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 ( The Handmaid’s Tale 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 ...