They are a little late because vacations, illness, and life in general just getting in the way. But here they are, my short story recommendations for March 2023.
Housing Problem by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (Podcastle, episode 773):
This is a quite old story, originally published in Charm in October 1944. but the good people over at Podcastle decided to give it new life by creating an audio version. With good reason, too. Because while the story perhaps does not read like most modern science fiction or fantasy stories, the writing feels far from dated or stilted.
Housing Problem is a strange and wacky tale about a couple renting out their spare bedroom to an excentric old man. Besides being weird in general, the old man also seems to be luckier than most and then he has the strangest birdcage in his room, which is always covered.
One day, their lodger has to go on a trip, and he specifically instructs the couple to leave his birdcage alone. Naturally, they don’t, and the hijinks starts there.
Yung Lich and The Dance of Death by Alex Fox (Podcastle, episode 774):
Podcastle made it into the list twice this month, and like Housing Problem, Yung Lich and The Dance of Death was a funny, well-written piece with a strange and wacky premise.
At the start of the story, we meet Yung Lich, an undead who has recently been summoned from his grave by a Necromancer and has decided to use his second chance at life (sort of) to follow his dream of becoming a professional rapper.
I love the premise. Personally, I would have cast the necromancer as the MC and have the story focus on his frustrations with the unwilling Lich. Fox chose something different, though, and the story follows Yung Lich as he tries to make it in the world of hip hop. The result is a story that is probably more original than if Fox had chosen the more more well-trodden path I would have chosen. Also, the story becomes much more heartfelt as we see Yung Lich trying and failing to make a “living” as an artist while also having to deal with Frankenstein-like abandonment issues towards the necromancer who does not seem to take an interest in his creation.
The necromancer, of course, has sinister plans with Yung Lich, and at the undead rappers first chance for a live performance, things starts to go really wrong.
If you like the combination of fantasy and comedy, I can highly recommend Yung Lich and The Dance of Death.
Over Moonlit Clouds by Coda Audeguy-Pegon (Apex, issue 136):
I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for stories where the author turn otherwise absurd fantasy or science fiction elements on their head and make them more realistic somehow. In Over Moonlit Clouds, it is the werewolf trope that gets worked over.
In this story, while there are some physical changes occurring during fool moon, such as increased strength and seemingly changes in hormonal regulations, the people afflicted with lycanthropy don’t change into wolves. Instead, it’s primarily a mental condition making the lycanthrope more aggressive and paranoid once a month. As with so many other mental conditions, this leads to stigmatization of the lycanthropes, turning what is already a bad situation for them into something much worse.
In Over Moonlit Clouds, the plot consists of the narrator, an airline steward, recounting the events of one fatal flight. A lycanthrope had messed up badly and got themself stuck on a plane as their transformation happened. The narrator has experience with this sort of situation, but the general misconceptions about the conditions and the fear that causes in everyone else, along with an armed marshall who does not know what they are doing, means that everything spirals out of control.
On one hand, using lycanthropy as an analogy for mental disorders felt a bit off; even with the changes the author made to the werewolf trope, the lycanthropes in the story do seem to become more violent and dangerous to the people around them. So, the other passengers and flight crew members’ fear is not nearly as irrational as the author clearly wants it to be. Mostly, though, yeah, I get it. The way Audeguy-Pegon uses werewolves to highlight issues with how people with mental disorders are treated in society in general is absolutely brilliant.
Aside from the issue mentioned above, the situation in the story works really well as an analogy for mental disorders. The way a bad situation (for the onlookers, sure, but mostly for the afflicted person) can be mediated with a little compassion and understanding of the situation the afflicted person is going through. The way the situation instead escalates because people react to their own fears and misconceptions, and because they apply violence instead trying to deescalate the situation. It is all too familiar and all too real.
This month, I listened to/read stories from Clarkesworld, Podcastle, Uncanny, The Reckoning, Khoreo, Escapepod, and Apex. As you can probably tell by them making the list twice, Podcastle had a particularly strong line up through the last month.
Toby Backman 