I’ve been out and about for this round of story recommendations. As always, flash fiction has taken up a fair amount of the reading, though with less focus on a single magazine as both Every Day Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and Factor Four Magazine have been given their fair chance. All of them are great magazines, by the way, which you should totally check out (and all of them are free or have free sample stories).
Though, I’ve also read a fair deal of Clarkesworld stories (one of the most award-winning speculative magazines in recent years), listened to a bit of Podcastle (my favorite of the fair amount of podcasts for speculative fiction out there), and read stories from the late Gardner Dozois’ last Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology.
So this should be the widest reaching of my story recommendations so far. I hope you enjoy.
Earth Proxima by Jeff Gard (EDF): A flash fiction peace about aliens arriving at the more rural parts of Earth. The scenes from the alien computer’s POV were stilted and actually a bit annoying, but the other scenes made up for it. The farmer’s down-to-Earth view of the alien visitor and his bitter, sarcastic attitude towards it made for fun read.
Armistice by J. Mark Matters (DSF): The first read was kind of ‘meh’. It’s a speech, rather than a story, about a war between aliens and humans. But it’s a story you literally need to read twice. Backwards the second time. Some might find it gimmecky, but I was too busy being impressed with the author not just managing to write a story that works both forwards and backwards but one that actually changes 180 degrees when you read it the other way around.
Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld): So far, reading Clarkesworld has meant reading a lot of “close, but not quite there” stories. This one, however, was all there.
It’s a grimmer look at what meeting King Kong meant to some of the people on the expedition to Skull Island but also a look at what the murder of the great ape meant to the people of New York. Really, the only way in which the story was somewhat lacking, was in the character motivations. It’s never revealed why the people of New York loved King Kong so much. Other than that, an all-round excellent story.
Body and Soul by Filip Wiltgren (DSF): This is story is simply good craftmanship. It had a few hiccups, but it also had a decent speculative idea, solid plot progression, a strong emotional arc for the protagonist and an even stronger yet not overexplained theme.
It’s about a couple split between the choice of rejuvenating their bodies or their minds. They each end up chosing differently. We never get any explanation of how this speculative element came to be, which I actually see as strong point of the story. The more in-depth the explanation, the clearer it would’ve been that this wasn’t reallity.
Dear Sarah by Nancy Kress (Infinity Wars): This is a story about a woman who has to choose between loyalty to her family and loyalty to her country. Aliens have landed on Earth, but the technologies they’ve brought with them have only benefitted the already rich, while the working class can only watch as their jobs disappear. The protagonist has joined the army despite her family being part of the resistance/terrorists fighting the government and their alien allies.
What really made this story sing wasn’t just the nicely flowing dialogue, the well-fitting narrative voice, or the interesting dilemma the protagonist was in (though all of that helped). It was the way it opened my eyes to how technological advances look in the eyes of those who doen’t benefit but might actually suffer from them. If a story can humble you, make you more sympathetic towards other people as well as entertain, then it’s as close to perfect as a story will ever be.
That’s it for this week (yeah, as if these post are ever going to be a weekly thing). See you for the next round of short story recommendations.
Toby Backman 