And at the very last minute, here are my short story recommendations for March. And why not start out with one masters of speculative short fiction. Ken Liu.
His second short story collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, came out about a year ago, and I’ve been listening to the audio book edition lately. I’ve praised Ken Liu and his other collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, here, and I especially love the emotional gut punch he manage to pack in every story.
The Hidden Girl and Other Stories was a very different reading experience, though. The stories weren’t bad, but the emotional effect, at least for me, just wasn’t quite there. Instead, the stories in this collection seemed to be focusing much more on the cool speculative ideas, to the point where they reminded me much more of Ted Chiang’s stories than what I was used to reading by Ken Liu.
I’ll repeat, the stories in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories weren’t bad. Most of them just fall a bit to the side of my reading preferences, but if Big Idea stories is your thing, I can definitely recommend the collection. And even though the collection as a whole didn’t hit home for me, there were some solid stories in between, and I especially enjoyed…
Reborn by Ken Liu (Tor.com): The story is set in a future where Earth have been invaded by aliens, which isn’t terribly original, but it’s the aliens physiology/philosophy which makes Reborn something special. The aliens shred their memories bit by bit, the same way that the molecules of our bodies are gradually exchanged. At the time of the story, they are trying to live peacefully alongside humans and integrate their societies, which the aliens don’t think should be problematic, since they are no longer the same people who violently invaded Earth.
Some people still fight the aliens and want revenge while others have accepted the aliens view on memories and have allowed them to remove their own memories of the war.
The story nicely sets up two opposing philosophies regarding how much emphasis and trust should be put in memories, and whether one can truly be held accountable for something they did in the past. This isn’t just a philosophical discussion, though. Liu ties the philosophical battle into a solid plot as the protagonist, a human lover of one of the aliens, struggle to accept first the one philosophy then the other. It was easily my favourite story in the collection.
Aside from Ken Liu’s collection, I’ve been reading a lot of Asimov’s lately. I got a value pack from Dell Magazines (8 Asimov’s and 8 Analog magazines) for Christmas, and they arrived about a month ago. So expect to be seeing a fair deal of recommendations from there in the future. The first one being…
Our Lady of the Open Road by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s): I already recommended this 2015 Nebula Award winner here, after listening to the audio version, but reading the original publication I just had to recommend it again.
The world-building was just excellent, and the story really showed that a mellow but personal conflict gets you a lot further than generic “the world is going to end” premise.
Also, Sarah Pinsker is just an excellent writer, one of the few authors whose short stories I generally enjoy as much as Ken Liu’s.
And finishing of with another Asimov’s story, we have…
In Native Ways by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s): The story has a very interesting premise, a mix of the very real idea of training animals for military purposes and the more out there idea of humans being able to slide into the minds of animals, like Wargs in A Song of Ice and Fire only with a science fiction spin.
The writing is okay without ever being a strong point of the story. Kowal mostly keeps from flowery descriptions, and when she tries one, it doesn’t turn out great. There are a few info dumps in the beginning of the story, but they’re brief, well spread out, necessary, and delivered as unobtrusively as possible.
Where the story really shines is when it comes to tension and pacing. It’s a great action-adventure ride.
The tension comes both in the form an inner conflict with the scientist MC working with the mind invasion of animals while starting an unethical relationship with her assistant and the outer conflict as the MC’s animals turn against her in what turns out to be a eco-terrorist plot.
The pacing is fast, with lots of action and plot turns and the MC being in constant danger, making it a surprisingly fast read for a novelette. It’s probably not the kind of story that stays with you for years and years, but it had me entertained all the way through.
That’s it from me in March. As always, if you have any short story recommendation you would like to share, drop them in the comments.
Toby Backman 