Okay, time for the "big one." (No, not novels. I barely read any novels released in 2015 and of those few I'd only recommend one, so no post for them.) If you haven't already, here are my posts about novelettes and novellas. And I'd be remiss to not point out that I have an awards eligibility post please read it please love me. Anyway, on to the stories!
This category always has the most things to consider, so even more than any other category, this is just basically "stuff I really liked/stayed with me" rather than "the best." I also tried to pick stories that I think have been more overlooked than others, not that there aren't good reasons for some stories to go viral, but I prefer to signal boost more obscure work. (And I still wish there was a flash category in Nebulas/Hugos. There's SO MUCH flash being published now, but flash would have a hell of a hard time getting nominated. It's different enough from short stories that I think there's a need for the category. But that's a post for another time, or more likely, never.) Nine stories, online links where available:
Showing posts with label short fiction round up. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short fiction round up. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Thursday, January 28, 2016
2015 Short Fiction Round-Up: Novellas
You may have seen my previous post about 2015 novelettes. Now, time for the novellas! Only three this time, because there just aren't that many novellas published in a year. But these ones were, and they're well worth checking out. No links, because I got these through the SFWA forum or private channels. If you're interested in reading them, you'll just have to find out how to get them yourself!
Monday, January 18, 2016
2015 Short Fiction Round-Up: Novelettes
I've always avoided doing best-of-year posts in the past, because a) nobody reads this blog and b) no matter how much I read, it never feels like enough. But then I realized that everybody feels the second thing, and views to this blog have grown steadily, so yes, let's have some best-of-year posts up in here.
First up is the novelette category. This is a length of story that I really like, because it allows for a more involved narrative but without the scene-stretching that defines many novellas. Also, there are fewer of them published every year, so it's a lot easier to make a decision! Submitted for your approval, six "little novels" that I really dug:
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Short Fiction Round-Up: Whenever Edition
It's been a long time since I did this, but that's not for lack of good short stories, it's because I suck at updating my blog. So here's some stories I read recently and liked, maybe you will too, you know the drill.
Division of Labor by Benjamin Roy Lambert (Lightspeed): If you don't use it, you lose it, literally. In a world where overspecialization leads to a society of grotesqueries, our protagonist tries to keep as much of his true self as he can. Resist psychic death!
On Murder Island by Matt Williamson (Nightmare): You know how whenever people talk about prisons there's always some libertarian yahoo who says we should just put all the murderers on an island and let them sort each other out? That's what happens in "On Murder Island," and Williamson perfectly captures the psyche of a man born on the island, who grew up under relentless, routine violence. Also check out Williamson's short story "Sacrament" in the Brave New Worlds anthology, it's the first thing I read by him and it blew me the hell away.
You Are Watching by Ann Sterzinger (The Big Click): Dystopic SF story? Crime story? Does it matter? This story ruled. When all the world's a prison, you can always think back to the simple days of the twentieth century, where we only watched one television at a time. So help me job.
The Pelican Bar by Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three, classic story): I was watching a panel at Readercon about genre definitions and someone brought up this story as an example of what you might call "slipstream" (it probably has another name by now, you know how it is). I was a little bored by the panel, and this story sounded interesting, so I looked it up on my phone and read it right there, because I'm the kind of asshole I am. What makes this story genius to me is the way it changes depending on whether or not you accept it as a science fiction story. It's a kind of technique I've been exploring in my own writing (P.S. sign up for Daily Science Fiction now to read my upcoming story! /self-promotion), and this story, with its overriding sense of strangeness, is just perfect slipstream/whatever. So yeah, reading all the Fowler now.
Division of Labor by Benjamin Roy Lambert (Lightspeed): If you don't use it, you lose it, literally. In a world where overspecialization leads to a society of grotesqueries, our protagonist tries to keep as much of his true self as he can. Resist psychic death!
On Murder Island by Matt Williamson (Nightmare): You know how whenever people talk about prisons there's always some libertarian yahoo who says we should just put all the murderers on an island and let them sort each other out? That's what happens in "On Murder Island," and Williamson perfectly captures the psyche of a man born on the island, who grew up under relentless, routine violence. Also check out Williamson's short story "Sacrament" in the Brave New Worlds anthology, it's the first thing I read by him and it blew me the hell away.
You Are Watching by Ann Sterzinger (The Big Click): Dystopic SF story? Crime story? Does it matter? This story ruled. When all the world's a prison, you can always think back to the simple days of the twentieth century, where we only watched one television at a time. So help me job.
The Pelican Bar by Karen Joy Fowler (Eclipse Three, classic story): I was watching a panel at Readercon about genre definitions and someone brought up this story as an example of what you might call "slipstream" (it probably has another name by now, you know how it is). I was a little bored by the panel, and this story sounded interesting, so I looked it up on my phone and read it right there, because I'm the kind of asshole I am. What makes this story genius to me is the way it changes depending on whether or not you accept it as a science fiction story. It's a kind of technique I've been exploring in my own writing (P.S. sign up for Daily Science Fiction now to read my upcoming story! /self-promotion), and this story, with its overriding sense of strangeness, is just perfect slipstream/whatever. So yeah, reading all the Fowler now.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Short Fiction Round Up: March-ish 2013
When Nick Mamatas announced on his LJ that he was working on a David Foster Wallace/Lovecraft mash-up, I knew immediately that it would be my kind of story. So I'm not surprised that Hideous Interview with Brief Man (published in Fiddleblack) was the best short story I read last month (or in February, whatever). It's obviously more relevant to your interests if you're a fan of DFW and/or Lovecraft, but for people who enjoy the former's work, the care taken to replicate his style is well appreciated. The format is of course familiar, and takes the conceit of an interview between the abyss and "an ugly half-orc who sweats excessively and whom nobody could ever ever love." This is supposedly the last SF story that Mamatas plans to write, which bums me out, though I look forward to reading his foray into crime fiction.
Liz Argall's Shadow Play (published in Daily Science Fiction) uses beautiful language to tell the story of a past-their-prime shapeshifter who haunts a low-rent puppet house on the bad side of town. The shifter may no longer have a story of their own, but they can still tell stories, for the cost of a token. This flash piece paints a vivid picture of people and memories that are almost all used up. I look forward to reading a lot more of Argall's work.
The first thing you'll notice about Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince by Jake Kerr (Lightspeed) is its structure, but it is far from a gimmick story. Through false Wikipedia entries mixed with secondary source materials, Kerr builds an entire near-future world, one devastated by an asteroid impact. This structure tells a story in a way straight narrative never could, and focuses more on the titular author's reactions to the Meyer Impact, and how his philosophy and work was shaped by the event and how it goes on to influence the world. The false interviews, novel excerpts, and speeches play off the Wikipedia entries very nicely, each informing and supporting the other. My only real complaint about this story is that I couldn't click on the hyperlinks.
Liz Argall's Shadow Play (published in Daily Science Fiction) uses beautiful language to tell the story of a past-their-prime shapeshifter who haunts a low-rent puppet house on the bad side of town. The shifter may no longer have a story of their own, but they can still tell stories, for the cost of a token. This flash piece paints a vivid picture of people and memories that are almost all used up. I look forward to reading a lot more of Argall's work.
The first thing you'll notice about Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince by Jake Kerr (Lightspeed) is its structure, but it is far from a gimmick story. Through false Wikipedia entries mixed with secondary source materials, Kerr builds an entire near-future world, one devastated by an asteroid impact. This structure tells a story in a way straight narrative never could, and focuses more on the titular author's reactions to the Meyer Impact, and how his philosophy and work was shaped by the event and how it goes on to influence the world. The false interviews, novel excerpts, and speeches play off the Wikipedia entries very nicely, each informing and supporting the other. My only real complaint about this story is that I couldn't click on the hyperlinks.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Short Fiction Round Up: January 2013 (more or less)
It's a few days late, but here's the list of the best short stories I read in January and the first few days of February.
"The Golden Age of Story" by Robert Reed: I've been aware of Reed for almost a decade now, since he was published all over F&SF and Asimov's (where this story appeared, February 2013 issue) when I started reading those magazines on and off back in the early aughts, and also saw his name occasionally in the online magazines. But for some reason, I always ignored his stories when I encountered them. Maybe I read a "bad" one and just instinctively stayed away. But I doubt I'll ignore his name after reading this, a masterfully woven series of vignettes about an experimental nootropic that turns its users into geniuses and pathological liars, and the ramification on society when a significant percentage of its members are reporting from a reality vastly different from the one we inhabit. In some ways "The Golden Age of Story" reminded me of the "neuro-SF" of Daryl Gregory, a.k.a. the best writer I discovered in 2012.
"The Wanderers" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: Our broadcast transmissions got out to deep space, and attracted alien visitors who love ultraviolence just as much as humans. The group of aliens named for our cultural heroes come to rule us, but when they arrive, we're already gone. A tromp through "city and suburb" reveals no humans to conquer, but plenty of sights to interpret through the lens of creatures that have only known humanity through our broadcasts, yet perhaps understand us better than we do ourselves. The humor in this story is also not to be glossed over, as the alien warlords pay homage to our "goddess Herbal Essence" or describe the post-apocalyptic wasteland as "no explosion marks... more like The Road." I'd never heard of Stufflebeam before this, but definitely looking forward to watching her career.
For the past few months, I've really been enjoying plowing through a few collections of Robert Silverberg's short fiction that are cheaply available on Kindle. Silverberg is not the first name one thinks of when thinking of New Wave science fiction, and I wonder why. Maybe because he started as a pulp writer, which is more an accident of timing than of any lack of quality on Silverberg's part. Some aspects of his stories are outdated, but they're from the sixties and seventies, so what do you expect? The stories in Volumes 2, 3, and 4 are all quite good, but some representative stories that I thought were especially good were "Schwartz Between the Galaxies" (an anthropologist struggles to continue his work on an Earth with one homogenous, globalized culture), "Hawksbill Station" (what Terra Nova could have been if it wasn't fucking awful), "When We Went to See the End of the World" (darkly ironic story about apocalypses both futuristic and present day), and "The Wind and the Rain" (in which we're reminded that conservation shouldn't be about saving the planet, it should be about saving humans) Seriously, I could have listed about a dozen stories here. It always does seem silly to review things this old on a blog but if you like New Wave SF or are just interested in reading some then buy these, especially if you have a Kindle.
"During the Pause" by Adam-Troy Castro: Of course I'd like this story, it's just one long damn hypothetical argument. An alien transmission describes a "phenomenon" that will soon (and you will eventually find out just how soon!) overtake the Earth. There is nothing we can do to stop it. The horrific phenomenon is described in ghastly detail, even as the alien message laments that much of it is untranslatable. There is something we can do, doomed as we are, to make our existence meaningful. But it comes at a cost. Anything more would ruin the story, which you should just go read. I thought about this story for like two weeks after I read it, and it's still in my head.
That's all for now. As per usual, if you know of any short stories that I should have already read, link them in the comments.
"The Golden Age of Story" by Robert Reed: I've been aware of Reed for almost a decade now, since he was published all over F&SF and Asimov's (where this story appeared, February 2013 issue) when I started reading those magazines on and off back in the early aughts, and also saw his name occasionally in the online magazines. But for some reason, I always ignored his stories when I encountered them. Maybe I read a "bad" one and just instinctively stayed away. But I doubt I'll ignore his name after reading this, a masterfully woven series of vignettes about an experimental nootropic that turns its users into geniuses and pathological liars, and the ramification on society when a significant percentage of its members are reporting from a reality vastly different from the one we inhabit. In some ways "The Golden Age of Story" reminded me of the "neuro-SF" of Daryl Gregory, a.k.a. the best writer I discovered in 2012.
"The Wanderers" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: Our broadcast transmissions got out to deep space, and attracted alien visitors who love ultraviolence just as much as humans. The group of aliens named for our cultural heroes come to rule us, but when they arrive, we're already gone. A tromp through "city and suburb" reveals no humans to conquer, but plenty of sights to interpret through the lens of creatures that have only known humanity through our broadcasts, yet perhaps understand us better than we do ourselves. The humor in this story is also not to be glossed over, as the alien warlords pay homage to our "goddess Herbal Essence" or describe the post-apocalyptic wasteland as "no explosion marks... more like The Road." I'd never heard of Stufflebeam before this, but definitely looking forward to watching her career.
For the past few months, I've really been enjoying plowing through a few collections of Robert Silverberg's short fiction that are cheaply available on Kindle. Silverberg is not the first name one thinks of when thinking of New Wave science fiction, and I wonder why. Maybe because he started as a pulp writer, which is more an accident of timing than of any lack of quality on Silverberg's part. Some aspects of his stories are outdated, but they're from the sixties and seventies, so what do you expect? The stories in Volumes 2, 3, and 4 are all quite good, but some representative stories that I thought were especially good were "Schwartz Between the Galaxies" (an anthropologist struggles to continue his work on an Earth with one homogenous, globalized culture), "Hawksbill Station" (what Terra Nova could have been if it wasn't fucking awful), "When We Went to See the End of the World" (darkly ironic story about apocalypses both futuristic and present day), and "The Wind and the Rain" (in which we're reminded that conservation shouldn't be about saving the planet, it should be about saving humans) Seriously, I could have listed about a dozen stories here. It always does seem silly to review things this old on a blog but if you like New Wave SF or are just interested in reading some then buy these, especially if you have a Kindle.
"During the Pause" by Adam-Troy Castro: Of course I'd like this story, it's just one long damn hypothetical argument. An alien transmission describes a "phenomenon" that will soon (and you will eventually find out just how soon!) overtake the Earth. There is nothing we can do to stop it. The horrific phenomenon is described in ghastly detail, even as the alien message laments that much of it is untranslatable. There is something we can do, doomed as we are, to make our existence meaningful. But it comes at a cost. Anything more would ruin the story, which you should just go read. I thought about this story for like two weeks after I read it, and it's still in my head.
That's all for now. As per usual, if you know of any short stories that I should have already read, link them in the comments.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Short Fiction Round Up, December 2012
It's the last day of the month, which means it's time for the monthly rundown of "best stories I read this month, but were not necessarily released this month." Yeah!
I usually hate speculative (and non-speculative for that matter) Xmas stories. There's one by China Mieville I really like, but other than that, I can't think of a single holiday story that I didn't find ultimately cloying. But now I guess there are two Xmas-themed short stories I like, now that I've read In the Late December by Greg van Eekhout. An immortal being traverses the universe, giving hope and toys to the remaining consciousness clusters as they are swallowed one by one by the process of entropy. This should be an Xmas standard.
I don't know whether the timing of Your Final Apocalypse by Sandra McDonald was decided because of the "Mayan apocalypse" or not, but it's a far better end-of-the-world story than 99% of disaster porn out there. The cold, clinical POV (my favorite kind) describes an alien intelligence extracting Earth experiences, then leaving them behind like empty husks. The chilling fate of the protagonist is something that will stick with you far beyond the first read. More like this, please, science fiction.
I enjoyed most of the stories in Terry Bisson's collection TVA Baby, but if I have to pick one to feature (and according to the arbitrary rules I just made up, I do), then I'll select the title story, a neat little bit of ultra-violence that follows the escapades of a clearly insane person, with a nod to television culture. Really hilarious in places, like most of Bisson's work. Read it online, then pick up the collection at PM Press.
Earthrise by Lavie Tidhar, over at Redstone Science Fiction, is a very good latter-day cyberpunk story set in a world dominated by a social media web called the Conversation. A collection of tropes -- the outlaw terrorist artist, the domed cities, the uploaded minds -- somehow turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. I have Osama on my reading list for January, and reading this story makes me really look forward to it. Tidhar's prose just sings.
That's it, I'm tired of writing! As always, if you have any stories that you think I should feature in January, please leave them in the comments.
I usually hate speculative (and non-speculative for that matter) Xmas stories. There's one by China Mieville I really like, but other than that, I can't think of a single holiday story that I didn't find ultimately cloying. But now I guess there are two Xmas-themed short stories I like, now that I've read In the Late December by Greg van Eekhout. An immortal being traverses the universe, giving hope and toys to the remaining consciousness clusters as they are swallowed one by one by the process of entropy. This should be an Xmas standard.
I don't know whether the timing of Your Final Apocalypse by Sandra McDonald was decided because of the "Mayan apocalypse" or not, but it's a far better end-of-the-world story than 99% of disaster porn out there. The cold, clinical POV (my favorite kind) describes an alien intelligence extracting Earth experiences, then leaving them behind like empty husks. The chilling fate of the protagonist is something that will stick with you far beyond the first read. More like this, please, science fiction.
I enjoyed most of the stories in Terry Bisson's collection TVA Baby, but if I have to pick one to feature (and according to the arbitrary rules I just made up, I do), then I'll select the title story, a neat little bit of ultra-violence that follows the escapades of a clearly insane person, with a nod to television culture. Really hilarious in places, like most of Bisson's work. Read it online, then pick up the collection at PM Press.
Earthrise by Lavie Tidhar, over at Redstone Science Fiction, is a very good latter-day cyberpunk story set in a world dominated by a social media web called the Conversation. A collection of tropes -- the outlaw terrorist artist, the domed cities, the uploaded minds -- somehow turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. I have Osama on my reading list for January, and reading this story makes me really look forward to it. Tidhar's prose just sings.
That's it, I'm tired of writing! As always, if you have any stories that you think I should feature in January, please leave them in the comments.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Short Fiction Round Up, November 2012
I totally suck at blogging regularly, I know. And probably the last thing someone who sucks at blogging regularly should do is start some kind of blog series, but since this is mostly links and I'm only going to do it once a month then maybe it's not that onerous a task. So, without further bloviating, here are a couple of short stories that I really enjoyed reading this month, and maybe you will too! (P.S. Not all of these were published in November 2012 and I'm not going to only commit myself to posting about current stories. These are stories that I read in November.)
First up, "Robot" by Helena Bell. I'd fallen behind on reading Clarkesworld Magazine and for that I have no excuse because it's one of the best short fiction rags out there. And this is one of the best stories I've read in Clarkesworld for quite some time. I'm not sure if the nod to Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" was intentional but I'd like to think it is. Just like the list of dos and don'ts in the Kincaid piece paint a vivid picture of the titular girl's world, the list in "Robot" gives an indirect view of the world that the "robot" (which is not actually what the creature is at all... or is it?) inhabits and of the changes being wrought to humanity due to contact with the creatures. Just a really awesome piece of work.
On the homage front, just today I read "A Game of Rats and Dragon" by Tobias Buckell on Lightspeed and found it an awesome update of the classic Cordwainer Smith story. I got into Smith last fall after a mention of him on another blog. I'd never heard of him, but within that morning I'd read everything of his available online for free, and ordered the best-of collection. Then, the complete collection soon after. If you'd have told me that some of the most whacked-out, mind-bending, truly alien SF ever had been produced by a fucking Golden Age writer, I'd have never believed it. Smith was born too early, and died too young. And Buckell's story puts a modern twist on one of the best of Smith's tales, placing it within the milieu of virtual LARPing. Read it, then read the original, or maybe do that backwards. (For bonus lolz, check out the comments. A few people are quite upset with this story for... not being written by Cordwainer Smith, I suppose.)
"Beneath Impossible Circumstances" by Andrea Kneeland (Strange Horizons), much like Bell's story above, tells you more by what it's not telling you than by what it is. At its core, this is the story of a break-up, but also a break-down, of either society or the natural order or both. I really dig these kind of dystopic stories where you aren't exactly told what precipitated the downfall, just left with the result: a world where the "unreal" is overtaking the "real," and of course all the questions about whether that matters and if so, why? And Kneeland's prose is fantastic: "The sun is a whitehaired girl, fever sleeping and swaddled in a blue blanket." Spec-fic needs more poets, I think.
That's it! Hopefully, check in next month for the best short stories I read in December that I was moved to write about before becoming sick of blogging. And if you have any recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.
First up, "Robot" by Helena Bell. I'd fallen behind on reading Clarkesworld Magazine and for that I have no excuse because it's one of the best short fiction rags out there. And this is one of the best stories I've read in Clarkesworld for quite some time. I'm not sure if the nod to Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl" was intentional but I'd like to think it is. Just like the list of dos and don'ts in the Kincaid piece paint a vivid picture of the titular girl's world, the list in "Robot" gives an indirect view of the world that the "robot" (which is not actually what the creature is at all... or is it?) inhabits and of the changes being wrought to humanity due to contact with the creatures. Just a really awesome piece of work.
On the homage front, just today I read "A Game of Rats and Dragon" by Tobias Buckell on Lightspeed and found it an awesome update of the classic Cordwainer Smith story. I got into Smith last fall after a mention of him on another blog. I'd never heard of him, but within that morning I'd read everything of his available online for free, and ordered the best-of collection. Then, the complete collection soon after. If you'd have told me that some of the most whacked-out, mind-bending, truly alien SF ever had been produced by a fucking Golden Age writer, I'd have never believed it. Smith was born too early, and died too young. And Buckell's story puts a modern twist on one of the best of Smith's tales, placing it within the milieu of virtual LARPing. Read it, then read the original, or maybe do that backwards. (For bonus lolz, check out the comments. A few people are quite upset with this story for... not being written by Cordwainer Smith, I suppose.)
"Beneath Impossible Circumstances" by Andrea Kneeland (Strange Horizons), much like Bell's story above, tells you more by what it's not telling you than by what it is. At its core, this is the story of a break-up, but also a break-down, of either society or the natural order or both. I really dig these kind of dystopic stories where you aren't exactly told what precipitated the downfall, just left with the result: a world where the "unreal" is overtaking the "real," and of course all the questions about whether that matters and if so, why? And Kneeland's prose is fantastic: "The sun is a whitehaired girl, fever sleeping and swaddled in a blue blanket." Spec-fic needs more poets, I think.
That's it! Hopefully, check in next month for the best short stories I read in December that I was moved to write about before becoming sick of blogging. And if you have any recommendations, feel free to leave them in the comments.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)