Welcome to the October edition of the monthly short story recommendations. As promised a month ago, there will be a fair deal of stories from the Unidentified Funny Objects 8 (UFO 8) anthology in this post. Sadly, those aren’t available for free, but I’ve linked to the author websites instead, so maybe you’ll find something else to your liking there if you don’t have said anthology.
Right. Let’s get in to it. First story on the board:
Zaznar The Great’s Fifty-Sixxth Proposal to the Council for Urban Investment by Jared Oliver Adams (UFO 8):
This was a very short story, so it didn’t really bother me that it had very little in the way of plot or character development. This one was all about the humor.
The story follows a water-dwelling creature trying to move out of the slums by presenting its ideas to the Council for Urban Investment. The ideas all focus on completely normal elements of human cultures, which the alien council see as ludacris (which they well might be).
It was a great little piece of satire, using the alien species to show just how weird some parts of human society really are.
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Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal by Illimani Ferreira (UFO 8):
Another golden nugget from the UFO 8 anthology.
Go back and kill Hitler. According to the trope, this is the first thing any time traveler would/should do. Ferreira twists that trope and tells us the story of a, presumably, would be tyrant whose life is being controlled by a medling group of time travelers.
The protagonsit insists he’s a normal person and not a potential mass-murderer, and the time travelers insists that his lack of murdering is only do to their interventions. It’s not a jokes-through-out kind of story, but I loved the premise, and the author really got the most out of it. The comedy all came from the characters and their absurd situations rather than slapstick moments. This was, In my opinion, one of the best stories of the UFO 8 anthology.
The ending did feel somewhat weak, but I was entertained well enough throughout that it didn’t bother me all that much. Also, the story reminded me a lot of one of my all time favorite time traveler stories, Desmond Warzel’s Wikihistory on Tor.com.
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Just one more story from UFO 8 before we move back into familiar territory.
Pet Care for the Modern Mad Scientist by Michael M. Jones (UFO 8):
This story follows the significant other of a mad scientist. Not the evil kind of mad scientist. The, “Honey, I accidentally cloned the cat” kind of scientist. This couple gets in over their head as the cloned cat spontaneously produces another clone at random points during the week.
As in Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal mentioned above, the humor in this story comes mostly from the silly premise and the characters’ actions, which works really well. It didn’t have me laughing as hard as Terribly and Terrifyingly Normal, but it landed a stronger ending, and overall it was a very entertaining story.
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And for the final story of the month, we switch back to my old favorite, Daily Science Fiction. Actually, I’m starting to build a bit of a backlog of DSF stories. So don’t be surprised if the next couple of posts will be 90% DSF stories.
Like Blood for Ink by Aimee Ogden (DSF):
Yet another great flash fiction piece by Aimee Ogden, who has already made the monthly recommendations list several times.
The story opens with the editors’ note: “As a parent, this story struck close to home. Enjoy.” Which couldn’t be more true. This is an emotional little piece about the fear of what we might pass on to our children. On top of that, there’s an unique speculative element which is gradually revealed, leaving just enough information to keep the reader hooked until the end. I won’t spoil the story by revealing more than that. You should really just go ahead and read it already.
That’s it for me. I hope to see you in a month. And feel free to comment if you know of any stories you feel deserve to make the list.
Toby Backman 