Short Story Recommendations – 2019.01.07

All right. It’s 2019 and the year’s first short story recommendations are long overdue.

I’m still catching on the Daily Science Fiction backlog in my inbox, which is definitely showing. But that doesn’t make today’s recommendation any less deserving.

These Fine Vistas by Sandra McDonald (DSF): The story was mostly just okay. Solid sentence level writing, decent characterization, and a mildly interesting speculative element. However, the theme, how praise and staying in your comfort zone will get you nowhere in life, struck some of my core believes, and McDonald did a fine job at showing it throughout the story. It did a little murky in the end, when she also tried to shoehorn another theme in there, but it was the kind of story that felt like it was about so much than the story without ever getting preachy.

We Apologize for the InterruptionWe Apologize for the Interruption by Emma Miller (DSF): The story opens strong with lots of action, characterization, and a bit of humor. As it goes on, it becomes clear that the sentence level writing is just on the bad side of average, and the descriptions feel a bit off-handed at times. But the basic premise of a young woman trying to fight a global tech company, the high level of tension, and the absurd comedy created by the other characters’ reactions (or rather lack thereof) more than makes up for it. What was left was a pretty funny story with a message to tell.

Conqueror Sickness by Jarod K Anderson (DSF): A solid, well-rounded story, it’s length considered, that had a lot of emotional impact. The basic premise of natives only pretending to be conquered by European settlers only to lead them to fight (and inevitably lose to) one of their gods, was an interesting one. But it was the amount of characterization and emotion we get from the protagonist in so few words that really took this story from more than average to great.

Collision with Car by Aaron DaMommio (DSF): DaMommio uses a well-known speculative trope, a character knowing how they will die, to it’s fullest. It isn’t new or especially ingenious, but the way he manages to turn this knowledge into a conflict for the protagonist, then make the conflict personal, and ups it to being absolutely cringe-worthy in more than basic level storytelling skills. An excellent lesson to all the other would-be authors out there in how to make a story much more interesting with just a stroke of the pen.

Something Borrowed by Paul Starkey (DSF): A very brief story, but it’s worth the read for the twist on the otherwise overused time travel trope. And because the story is so short, around 200 words, it manages to pull off what so many lesser short stories fail at, being all about the end twist.

That’s it for this week (all right weeks; I’m working as fast as I can). Hopefully, I’ll be back with more varied recommendations soon. And, as always, you’re welcome to send me recommendations of your own if you think they deserve to make the list.