It’s that time a month again, and I have very strong lineup waiting for you. I’ve been digging through anthologies and the dark corners of the web to give you some the best short fiction out there. So here goes.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things): As always, Gaiman’s imagination is enviable. That and he has a knack for making the thoughts and actions of his characters ring true of real life in a way that most authors can only dream of. Here he combines the familiar scene of teenage boys crashing a party, not knowing how to talk to girls, with the odd idea that the girls are from outer space. It’s strange. It’s funny. It’s Gaiman at his best. (Also, it got turned into a movie.)
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales/Uncanny): Fairy tales within a fairy tale, and all of them wildly original and all of them highlighting the mistreatment some women endures, both physical on psychological. This is a great mix of classical fantasy tropes like the trial of seven and original elements such as the princess on top of the glass hill and the woman who’s married to a bear and has to wear down her iron shoes to overcome a curse. It gets a little heavy with the moral preaching, but then again, it has a lot to say.
Gingerbread by Dafydd McKimm (FFO): This is one of the best things about being a slush reader, when you finally stumble across a story that just sweeps your feet away. I won’t claim this one is perfect, but the emotions were spot on and jumped right off the page, and the descriptions are excellent. It’s a story about a grown-up version of Hansel having to deal with the traumas he and Gretel went through, yet another great twist on a classical fairy tale.
Also, a general recommendation for FFO is due. I might be a bit biased seeing as I slush read for them, but really is a great magazine. I’ll especially recommend this year’s February edition. Though none of the stories made the recommendation list, three of them were close calls.
Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion by Caroline M. Yoachim (Clarkesworld): Yoachim is one of my absolute favorite short story writers. Here, her background as a flash fiction writer shines shows as she takes the list format and turns into a full length short story. It’s a story about a mother who’s lost her child in the alien invasion and the micro stories that spirals off that initial conflict.
The different characters and their view on the situation on Earth after the invasion are used to highlight the emotional stages of grief (the aliens accidentally started terraforming Earth and killing a lot of animals, humans, and plants before realizing the planet is inhabited by sentient lifeforms). The focus is definitely on the emotions, and Yoachim uses images, of the birds that no longer exists, of the woman craddling her fake baby, of the trees that are all the wrong color, to show these emotions rather than tell them. The ending is a bit “meh” but otherwise this is an excellent story.
That’s it for this month’s reviews. As always, if you have any stories or magazines you would like to see on the list in the future, mention it in the comments and I’ll give it a read and see if it’s something I like.
Toby Backman 