So far, my monthly short story recommendations have been a mix new and older publications. Partly, it is because I like digging through the achieves of my favorite magazines and bring out those almost forgotten gold nuggets. However, it’s also partly because I’m lazy and tend to stick to a few magazines I know an like.
I’m striving to read more widely, though, and trying to keep up with new publications. So, starting here in January, the recommendations will be of stories published within the last month or two (mostly; let’s see how well I manage to keep up). I’ll probably make exceptions for stories I stumble upon in Best-of anthologies and other short story collections, like the Tobias S. Buckell story below.
Excuse Me, This Is My Apocalypse by Amy Johnson (Escape Pod, December 2022):
While never laugh-out-loud hilarious, this story had me chuckling multiple times.
Our protagonist has anger issues and is trying to deal with her issues and the world in general by escaping into her VR server where she can be alone in her post-apocalyptic scenario. Unfortunately for her, the server isn’t private, and soon unwelcome guests start arriving.
The MC tries to escape the intruders, but more just keep popping up. Worse, they start complaining about inconsistencies in the post-apocalyptic scenario she has set up and then begin altering it. It all culminates when the protagonist eventually tries to leave the server and finds she can’t. Neither can any of the intruders.
The story does become a little preachy towards the end, as the reasons for the protagonist’s anger issues are dumped on us through an expository monologue. Also, I kind of wish the story had been longer and delved even deeper into how the various characters have to deal with being stuck together. The humor more than compensated for these minor weak points, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this story.
Cold Relations by Mary Robinette Kowal (Uncanny, January 2023):
This is a slow burn of a family drama. That’s not usually my kind of thing, but Kowal manages to pull it off. I’m especially impressed with how she made the story read as if it part of a larger world through hints and glimpses and how she could almost make me believe in the reality of this made up place. On top of that, the characters felt like real people.
Too often, inter-character drama stems from one or more of the characters acting like idiots, but in Cold Relations the main conflict comes about because of simple misunderstandings, people acting on false assumptions and forgetting other people’s feelings when dealing with their own grief. You know, the kind of conflict most of us will deal with at some point or another. People making understandable but wrong decisions.
The exposition could have been smoothed out here and there, and the magic in itself was not all that interesting. However, that only pulled the story down from excellent to merely great. I still highly recommend reading/listening to Cold Relations.
The story follows Claudette, a magic user struggling to make a living with the help of whatever cantrips government regulations allows her to cast.
She has a strained relationship with her brother who she feels abandoned their now deceased mother and only made things even worse by stealing from Claudette’s college fund, causing to her to drop out of school. Their relationship grows worse yet when it turns out the brother, in an effort to make a living, has started training to become a government mage, a group of people Claudette utterly despises.
Things could have ended there, leaving us a bitter, half-finished story, but then Claudette learns that her brother has gone missing. From there, it turns into a story about family, about forgiving, and about healing. And Kowal pulls it off expertly.
Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness by S.L. Huang (Clarkesworld, December 2022):
In this story, several powerful people have suffered online harassments to the point where it has ruined their lives and even caused some of them to commit suicide. Early in the story, it is suggested the perpetrator might be a rouge AI. The story then delves into what this might entail. Was a crime committed? If so, who is the real culprit? When is the AI to blame, when is the programmer, and when it humanity itself?
Honestly, I was a bit hesitant about putting this story on the list because of the way the narrative was set up.
It is written as a piece of investigative journalism. Part of me do like that choice. It’s different, it feels timely in a world where true crime podcasts and amateur journalism are internet phenomenons, and it fitted nicely with how much emphasis was put on exploring the themes and scientific elements of the story. Really, it just seems like the right choice. However, it’s not nearly as well executed as I feel a writer of Huang’s caliber should be able to.
The journalist narrator/POV character stays very objective and distant, which might make them a good journalist but makes for a bland narrator. Also, the very direct discussion about the theme and moral standpoints of the story, sometimes made it read more like an essay than a story.
Still, I will recommend Murder by Pixel.
While I wish the execution had been different, but I loved how Huang explored not only what AIs might be capable of (if not now, then in a near future) but also the moral dilemmas their existence leads to.
There are plenty of stories out there about the potential pitfalls off AIs, but this was definitely an angle I have not seen before. And Huang raises some very interesting (and somewhat disturbing) questions as to where blame is to be placed for AI’s shortcomings and biases. Furthermore, she paints a haunting picture of just how inadequate our legal system is setup to deal with modern problems like AIs.
Brickomancer* by Tobias S. Buckell (Re-printed in Year’s Best Fantasy edited by Paula Guran, August 2022):
A brief story with a cool concept. Brickomancer feels like a very condenced version of N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. Both plays around with a speculative element where cities play a major role in interdimensional conflicts, both are set in New York, and both focus heavily on discrimination and gentrification.
That said, the speculative elements are very much unique, and I definitely prefer Buckell’s fanatasy idea (but prefer Jemisin’s novel as a whole) where a lone graffiti artist keeps the gates to the world of demons closed by painting wards in the right places. The story is a brief one, though, and heavy on world building. So it becomes mostly an exploration of the speculative idea, leaving the plot and character development a bit lacking. Still, it is a very cool idea, and because Buckell keeps the story short, the idea is enough to carry it through.
* This story isn’t freely available, so the link is for Buckell’s website.
This last month, I went through newer releases from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, Podcastle, and Uncanny. On top of that, I finished going through Paula Guran’s 2022 Years Best Fantasy anthology. I did not manage to read all the November/December stories from any of the magazines listed, but Clarkesworld is the one magazine I would like to highlight this month along with Guran’s anthology.
Some stories are, of course, stronger/more in line with my tastes than others, but Clarkesworld’s December issue generally consists of well-written, well thought through stories with interesting science fiction concepts.
As for Year’s Best Fantasy, 2022, Guran manages to cover a wide array of fantasy stories while keeping a high standard for the stories she chose. If you want to get a sense of just how much fantasy has to offer beside the classic farmboy adventure set in a medieval European setting, this anthology is a good place to start.
That’s it for me. I hope to see you around.
Toby Backman 