Story Recommendations June 2020

It’s that time of the month again (which has apparently become a more or less arbitrary point around the midpoint). It’s time for the monthly short story recommendations.

I returned to doing a bit of flash fiction reading this month (aside from reading slush at Flash Fiction Online), and it more than paid off, with two entries making the list for June and a couple coming close. This is despite the fact that I didn’t get around to reading more than a dozen or so flash pieces.

I’m going to start with something different though, something relatively new, a Podcastle original from early May.

Salt and Iron by Gem Isherwood (Podcastle): This is a story about a broken woman, a grizzly fighter at the edge of society. It has some interesting and original speculative elements: The warrior protagonist with her iron hands, the fairies which are evil tyrants, the folklore magic. It all adds up and helps creates an interesting story world.

The story does follow the common plot beats of the genre and the grizzled-warrior trope very tightly, so it’s relatively predictable. However, it’s well-enough executed that it’s still a more than good story.

A Hook, An Eye by Erin Strubbe (DSF): This one is all about the world building, the unique speculative element, and how they’re used to convey theme and character.

It opens with a hook, quite literally someone being hooked in the mouth, and it expands on this weird piece of world building from there. The hooks turn out to be a sort of jewelry used to show a girl’s transition into womanhood, and the author nicely uses it to show society’s view on women, rites-of-passages, and how we imprint certain moralities into angsty teenage girls.

On top of that, the writing is more than passable with nice and easy flowing sentences which still manage to convey strong images.

I am NOT Little Red Riding Hood by S. L. Sabovic (Grievous Angel/FFO): I love a good take on classical fairy tales, especially when the story isn’t trying to hide where it got its premise/inspiration. Add to that a strong message about the drawbacks of macho culture, a meta take on the nature of stories and how they can portray or hide the truth, and a clear and distinct narrative voice, and you end up with something well above your average flash fiction piece.

As the Last I May Know by S.L. Huang (tor.com): It’s been far too many years since I read anything from Tor.com, mainly because they tend to publish novelette and novella length stories, which are usually too long for me when it comes to reading online. But when I saw that they had a couple of stories on the 2020 Hugo Award shortlist for Best Story, I figured this was as good as time as any to go back to an old favorite. It doesn’t hurt that this particular story was written by one of the absolutely best writers of speculative fiction to break through in the last couple of years, S.L. Huang (who also made the recommendation list last month).

This story takes its premise from Roger Fisher’s idea that a president wanting to fire a nuclear weapon would first have to kill a human being with his own hands.

It follows the girl tasked with carrying the launch codes in a capsule near her heart, highlighting the moralities imprinted on her by her teachers and the president, her role in society, and her lack of choice in the matter. On top of this in itself interesting premise, there’s some truly excellent sentence level writing. The metaphors are clear and original, the verbs are active, and the nouns are precise and well chosen. It all combines to build clear and fleshed out setting while still keeping the story short and engaging.

Perhaps best of all, though, are the characters and how they deviate from the standard tropes. The protagonist is a child, but Huang doesn’t dumb her down; she just gives the protagonist another frame of reference than adults (which is far much more accurate to real life). Her teacher is a priest, but he’s not a fantatic and neither wholy good or evil. The antagonist is a warmongering president, but he, too, is neither fantatic or convinced that his opinions are the right ones.

This story definitely deserves the Hugo Nomination.

That’s it for this month. As always, if you have any short story recommendations, post them in the comments and maybe they’ll make the list next month.