I appologize for being a little– okay, very late with the story recommendations. But there’s no such joy as the joy of expectation, right? Right?
Right. Let’s just get on with it. You didn’t come here to read my ramblings anyway. Or at least not ramblings unrelated to stories.
Chrysalis by Will Shadbolt (Daily Science Fiction): I’m not usually a fan of stories which are all about the twist ending, since even when we’re talking flash fiction, they’re usually 90% boring buildup and 10%, hopefully, interesting plot twists. Chrysalis is so short, though, that the twist is about 50% of the story. Also, the buildup is pretty solid with some interesting alien biology used to create the twist.
You can Adapt to Anything by John Wiswell (DSF/Flash Fiction Online): All right, scientists opens a portal to alternate universe, goes through, and gets stuck. It’s been done before. What makes this one worth the read, though, is the added twist that the protagonist starts to fall in love with the parallel of their significant other.
It makes for a fairly original conflict, which drives both the plot and the character development and makes the science fiction element an integral part of the story. That, and the writing is just good.
It speaks of this story’s quality that it was picked up not only by DSF but also FFO, the two premier flash fiction magazines out there.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2/Exhalation: Stories): I might’ve been ranting a bit about the Exhalation: Stories collection over here, but Ted Chiang is still Ted Chiang, and even when he’s not at his best, he’s still more than worth reading. The title story, especially, was nearly everything I had hoped for.
It’s about a people of mechanic humanoids who one day stumble upon an anomaly in the physics of their world, leading the protagonist, a scientist, to investigate his own brain. He discovers that their minds do not run on oxygen as previously thought but on differential pressure. Not only that, but the differential pressure of their world is waning with every breath they take, leading to the previously mentioned anomaly.
The story is an analogy for how entropy works, but it’s told using such a unique premise and speculative element which also ties nicely into that analogy that it was a very interesting read. It’s the kind of big “What If” stories Chiang does better than most. The ending could’ve been stronger, since it’s mostly the narrator explaining the speculative element directly to the reader, but the story as a whole was well worth the read.
Omphalos by Ted Chiang (Exhaltation: Stories): This was the other story in Chiang’s second short story collection that wasn’t just an original and well thought out idea but also, mostly, had solid storytelling.
Like many of Chiang’s older stories, this one’s about religion. The story takes place on an Earth where Young Creationism is true. Like in his other stories, Chiang has gone to great length to investigate what the premise of his story would entail, resulting in a very original setting where primordial humans with no navals and trees with no rings are excataved, showing the world was created as-is around 8.000 years ago.
Chiang doesn’t avoid the science vs. the bible conflict that Young Creationism have lead to in our world, but he doesn’t turn the story into moral preaching either. Instead, he twists the conflict, in a way I won’t spoil here, making for a very interesting and unique story. Go read.
Toby Backman 