For the November edition of my monthly short story recommendations, I’ve finally started to work through my backlog of Daily Science Fiction stories. I took a month or two away from DSF stories, for not apparent reason really. Getting back to them, though, I was reminded just why I love that particular magazine so much. They publish so many stories every year that you are guaranteed a bit of everything. Sure, I don’t love all of them, but I don’t think that I’ve ever gone through a whole month without finding at least one DSF story that I loved.
Your Attention Please by Karl El-Koura (DSF): A tiny piece, barely even a story. But I really liked the messaged and how the author used the far-future setting to reflect on our society today.
The story is set in a world where an AI pick people at random and let them briefly broadcast their message to the world. It’s a story about living for that brief moment of attention and a story that questions the information we so readily consume as well as the media and messengers who deliver them. For such a short story, it does a lot of work when it comes to asking critical questions about the world we live in, and it does it without getting preachy.
Babel’s End by Jean-Louis Trudel (DSF): This one was barely a story, but the premise was interesting enough that it slipped by my guard.
Alien capitalists are taking over Earth, convinced that they’re offering humanity a good deal, while the human protagonist sees the deal for what it is: colonization.
Again, there wasn’t much story here, but what there was depicted the downsides of unchecked capitalism and the need for constant growth in corporations in a way I had not seen done before. I’ll recommend this one for its original premise and critical view on our world.
The Bravest Thing My Dad Did for Me by Filip Wiltgren (DSF): I loved this premise. A story told from the perspective of a vampire’s child.
Sadly, a lot of the story is summarizing rather than dramatizing the characters’ lives. Which is doubly sad, because the vampire perspective does a lot to make the otherwise mundane life of your regular teenager interesting.
The story very much redeems itself towards the end, though. It ends up with a solid emotional gut-punch and, looking back, Wiltgren did a great job at showing the change many people go through during their teen years, starting to resent their parents only to come out the other side with a greater appreciation for all they’ve done for us.
Though I wished the middle of the story had been stronger, the ending and the premise placed this one high on my list of best stories for the month.
Number 39 Skink by Suzanne Palmer (Dozois’ Year Best Science Fiction 35 annual edition/ Asimovs): The premise of this story was a familiar one, a highly intelligent robot have been left behind by its human creators and is now struggling with its purpose. Palmer adds a lot to this tired trope, though.
Firstly, while the tone is appropriately flat since the POV is a robot, there are strong emotions on the page as the we’re shown the extent of the robot’s relationship with one of its creators. On top of that, Palmer created a vivid and stunning world, showing just how different and yet familiar life might be on far-away planets.
The plot was neither a strong or weak point, a sort of fall-from grace arc for the robot, but everything else was done perfectly. All-in-all a very satisfying story.
The Last Boat-builder in Ballyvoloon by Finbarr O’Reilly (Dozois’ Year Best Science Fiction 35 annual edition/Clarkesworld): I loved this story’s premise. In a near future, humanity have build squid-like biological machines to clean the oceans of plastic. These “squids” have gone beyond their initial purpose, though, and as other attempts at controlling nature gone before it, it only made things worse. The squids have multiplied, killed large amounts of fish to rid them of microplastic, and generally just made the seas impossible to travel safely.
What really made this story work for me was the information flow. The author managed to constantly deliver enough information to keep me hooked. And to avoid confusion, he slipped in small sections of in-world newspaper articles, speeches, etc. to deliver the blunt exposition when needed.
The plot was so-so with very little actually happening, and I’m not sure the MC was the right choice since it didn’t really seem to be their story. That said, I loved the premise, setting, and overall tone of despair and how the author brought it all onto the page. This was perhaps my favorite story of the month.
Toby Backman 