There is seemingly an endless amount short fiction stories to be had from several sources: free online fiction; multi-author anthologies; single-author collections; and individually-published novellas for starters. I love the short fiction form, not only because I can easily squeeze in more reading in my day, but because of the economics of short fiction storytelling. There's no padding here, just pure story.
Here's a roundup of my recent adventures in short fiction reading…
Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant
As noted above, one of the pleasures of reading short fiction is the economy of storytelling. There's no need to fill the narrative with unessential details when the core story is powerful enough as-is. That's especially true when it's the story depicted in Mira Grant's thought-provoking novella Kingdom of Needle and Bone. At its surface, it's the story of how a pediatrician deals with the oncoming outbreak of a new, deadly measles-like disease. Isabella first encounters Morris's Disease because her niece is Patient Zero. Isabella goes to great lengths to deal with the disease and its impact, even going so far as to propose something unethical. It's this depiction of the escalating situation that will keep readers riveted. Readers can also look beneath the surface of the story to find a fascinating examination of the vaccination controversy, or more accurately the impact of the misinformation surrounding vaccinations and the delicacy of a successful "herd immunization." As Izzy puts it, Morris's Disease doesn't care about your feelings and opinions—all it does it kill. It's that danger that propels Izzy to take action of such high stakes; even readers are left pondering whether it was worth the ultimate cost. It's those kinds of thought-provoking ideas that linger with readers and best exemplify what science fiction can do.
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen
Almost as old as fairy tales, or so it seems, is the practice of retelling fairy tales. This proves to be not as repetitive as one might think. As Marissa Meyer states in the introduction to Jane Yolen's magical collection How to Fracture a Fairy Tale, fairy tales have lots of angles from which to view them. Yolen's collection is proof of that sentiment. It contains twenty-eight alternate versions of fairy tales that differ slightly from the originals, thus providing a remarkably different kind of story. Take, for example "Snow in Summer," in which a faux Snow White moves in with seven strangers to escape her evil stepmother. Or "The Bridge's Complaint," an alternate take of "Three Billy Goats Gruff" from the bridge's point of view, wherein we learn about the relationship it formed with the troll. Icarus is the point-of-view character in "Sun/Flight," which offers a new situation allowing him to fly too high. "Sleeping Ugly" is obviously a re-spun "Sleeping Beauty." What's not obvious is the new, unexpected turn of events. Each of the stories in this collection are light and fun making the entire collection a breezy read with genuine smile-inducing moments.
Untranslatable by Alama Alexander
Alma Alexanders' Untranslatable is a themed collection of stories about non-English words that are not easily translatable. The stories are not about the words themselves, but about the ideas behind them. For example, the story "Dreamshare" exemplifies the Japanese idea of Ikigai, a reason to get up in the morning or a reason for continuing to live. In this affecting story, a visitor arrives at a small fishing village and brings with him a very powerful and addictive drug called Dreamshare that allows two people to experience intense hallucinations and experiences. The arrival of Dreamshare shatters the world of Nang Sar, a woman who is set to marry her beloved Sarav Iorn. When Iorn disappears, Sar learns that the drug has played a part in his disappearance. At the risk of her life and at a potentially destructive cost, she sets out to find him. Sar's quest will easily have readers rooting for the idea of true love. The fable-like feel only adds to the story's feeling of significance.
The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume Five: Black Moon by Seabury Quinn
Night Shade Books has been dutifully reprinting Seabury Quinn's The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, named after the titular character, a recurring staple of Weird Tales magazine since his first appearance in 1925. Jules de Grandin and his trusty sidekick Doctor Trowbridge are similar in some respects to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, except Quinn's stories are usually steeped in the supernatural. Night Shade is reprinting the entire run of the occult detective tales in chronological order. The latest and final volume of the sequence, Volume 5: Black Moon, includes stories that appeared between 1938 and 1951. The stories, apropos of their time and venue, are sheer pulp entertainment, oftentimes substituting over-the-top story elements for believability. They're also rip-roaring fun. Take, for instance, the titular tale "Black Moon" in which de Grandin, Trowbridge and their acquaintance, Hiji, a British detective, travel to Virginia to investigate a bizarre series of murders in a black community. The trio encounter a woman who takes them in and helps with their investigation, which ultimately involves voodoo worshippers. Not only is it entertaining to watch de Grandin deduce what's going on and how he reacts to the situation, it's also interesting to see how writers in the first half of the twentieth century reflected race relations in their writing. Coinciding with the other de Grandin stories I've read, this one was good, fast-paced, pulpy fun.
The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Tor.com keeps pushing out consistently high-quality short fiction. Take, for example, P. Djèlí Clark's chapbook The Black God's Drums, a tantalizing blend of steampunk and magic set in an alternate New Orleans. This is an America that's very different than our own. The American Civil War is still being fought, although not in the neutral territory of New Orleans, which is surround by a huge wall to protect it from storms. The protagonist of this fast-moving adventure is a thirteen-year-old orphan nicknamed Creeper. She ekes out a meager living by thievery, aided by some special abilities granted to her by Oya, the god of storms. Creeper's heart is filled with wanderlust; she would rather travel the skies aboard an airship. When she overhears some shady dealings involving a powerful weapon called The Black God's Drum, she offers to trade the information to the captain of the airship Midnight Robber in exchange for a spot on her crew. Before Captain Anne-Marie will even consider it, she insists on retrieving the weapon first. What follows is a veritable non-stop adventure that would be imminently readable for any one of its qualities: the world-building around the impact of an alternate Civil War; the way Creeper, nee Jaqueline, handles herself and her relationship with the powerful God that resides partly within her; the faction of swamp-people hellbent on changing the city to suit their values, or destroy it in the process; or the colorful characters who surround Creeper and Anne-Marie, whether it's the crew of the Midnight Robber or a pair of…let's say well-informed nuns. The fact that The Black God's Drums combines all of these elements, and does so successfully, is an impressive feat not to be missed.
Lightspeed Magazine #104 (January 2019) edited by John Joseph Adams
In "The Book Collector" (first published in the 2006 anthology Sex in the System edited by Cecilia Tan and recently reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams), Sarah Micklem imagines a believable future in which a software company specializes in creating characters for virtual reality pornography. Col (short for Columbine) is one their star programmers who works on tailor-made character requests, usually for rich clients, as opposed to the lesser-skilled coders who stamp out generic characters to be inserted into video games. Col's latest creation is based on her memory of a painting of a book collector. Like many of the software developers, Col has an implant that allows her to jack into virtual reality to test her creation by experiencing them firsthand. Col falls in love with her creation, despite the fact that she knows she will have to give him up when the project ends. The level of realism with this particular creation is unsurpassed and, having been based on her own fantasies, Col cannot help but fall in love with him. What's interesting to see here is not just how Micklem imagines the future of virtual reality, but also how Col has more personal connection with her digital creations than the flesh-and-blood coworkers who become increasingly distant as the project progresses.
Galaxy's Edge Magazine #36 (January 2019) edited by Mike Resnick
As previously noted in this space, Galaxy's Edge Magazine, edited by Mike Resnick, is an excellent source for good short fiction. Case in point: "All Show, No Go" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, a fun story about a man and his robot. The story has a retro feel, suitable because the plot deals with the robot's ability to duplicate near-perfect duplicates of objects, an ability which the pair use in a get-rich-quick scheme to create copies of rare pulp science fiction magazines. Their plan does not go down without complications, however, and their solution to their problem is quite clever. This one moves at a brisk pace, made all the more so because of the straightforward writing style. (Bonus reference for fans of classic science fiction: the robot is referred to as a "Rossum" and is named Otto, nods to the 1920 science fiction play "Rossum's Universal Robots", or "R.U.R.," by Czech writer Karel Čapek, who coined the term "robot"; and, I suspect, Eando Binder, the pseudonym for classic sf writers Earl and Otto Binder, who wrote a short story in 1939 called "I, Robot.")
The Very Best of the Best edited by Gardner Dozois
The Very Best of the Best, edited by Gardner Dozois, is an excellent capstone to an impressive 35-year short fiction journey in the pages of the anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, which curated over six hundred pure science fiction stories along the way. The new retrospective volume covers fiction between 2003 and 2017 and, along with its sister volumes The Best of the Best and The Best of the Best Volume 2, serves as a reminder how truly valuable the series has become. As evidence, consider Yoon Ha Lee's short-but imaginative story "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" originally appearing in Lightspeed Magazine. It's about Shiron, and enigmatic gun-for-hire; or maybe it's more accurate to say it's about her gun, named Arighan's Flower, which is unimaginably powerful. Shiron's gun has the ability to kill the entire ancestral line of its target, an ability that Shiron is hesitant, though not completely averse, to using. When an artificial being named Kerang approaches Shiron with startling news about her weapon, she is faced with hard choices. The nature of Kerang's news gives Lee a little room to wax philosophical, much to the reader's enjoyment, as do the additional ideas behind what weapons in this universe can do.
New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl
New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl is a marvelous new anthology by a diverse group authors who serve up enjoyable array of just-as-diverse stories. For example, there's "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex" by Tobias Buckell, a short story about a hard-up cab driver in a futuristic New York that is a popular tourist spot for alien visitors. Tavi's dilapidated cab is desperately in need of repairs and he's seemingly one step away from losing his hard-to-come-by license. Things go from bad to worse when he takes on his latest fare, an octopus-like alien. This version of New York has a lot of cool, advanced tech that is often the appeal of futuristic science fiction but, as seen from from Tavi's point of view, none of the glamour. It's this contrast that elevates the story and makes it an interesting visit for readers. Another fine entry in New Suns is "The Fine Print" by Chinelo Onwualu, which looks at the perils of giving in to outdated traditions. In this captivating tale, a village man must come to terms with a contract he signed with a Djinn to grant him his greatest desire. In fact, every male in the village older than fifteen gets to place an order from the annual catalogue of wishes at a cost decided by the Djinn. This practice, over time, has reclassified the women of the community as second-class citizens, if even that. The protagonist, Nuhu, now finds the terms of his contract unacceptable and tries to find a loophole. The immersive narrative offers up some fairy-tale-like world building and thus pulls readers along while they root for Nuhu. It's also powerful because, by story's end, you'll be taken aback by the normalcy of the gender inequality.
John DeNardo is the founding editor of SF Signal, a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy blog featuring news, reviews and interviews. You can follow him on Twitter as @sfsignal.
