It is about time I posted my lasted short story recommendations. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Clarkesworld, Podcastle, and Flash Fiction Online (FFO) (all three some of my favorite magazines), trying to catch up on what they have published during the summer. That really shows in what made it to the list of recommendations.
In My Country by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld):
This was a strange and at times depressing story about what it’s like to live under the rule of dictatorship.
Our protagonist is a widowed husband and father who has, over the years, adapted to mechanics of the dictatorship ruling his country. He knows what to say, and more importantly not to say. He knows how to respond to the man in the blue house down the road, the one who might be listening to every conversation you have, even within your own home.
He gets by. He manages. His only concern is if his children will ever quite learn what to say and what not to say. And then his children grow up, and when the son becomes and author, it’s clear that this spells trouble. Clear to anyone but the MC, that is.
Soon, it’s his children who must teach him about the country they live in, about the things the MC do not understand or has subconsciously chosen to ignore. He learns this primarily through his son’s stories, the way they grow from being at first fantastical stories with a slight twist into tales clearly based on their own lives and their own country with ambiguous critic of its systems and rulers.
As a small aside, I think it’s worth reading “In My Country” alone for the references to the son’s stories. They all seem so interesting and potentially brilliant satires in themselves that I wish Ha would write them.
And, of course, the stories cause trouble, and the MC can no longer ignore the oppressive rule in his country.
There’s a bit of Orwell in In My Country, the story having a heavy focus on the way language is used by tyrants to oppress their people and the way people adapt. What is not being said often becomes as important as what is said.
There’s some Fahrenheit 451 in there as well, in Ha’s describtions of how the country became the way it is. It’s not that any particular opinions or topics are forbidden. What the government don’t want is ambiguity, stories that makes the people think for themselves. They want strong opinions and overly simple arguments, and the people are all to happy to eat the concentrated version of any discussion instead of the real meal.
Despite having similarities with two of the great literary dystopias, though, In My Country is very much its own thing. And I can highly recommend reading it.
On The Shoulders of Giants by Charles Chin (Podcastle):
An odd tale about people literally climbing a giant. They are born on the giant’s back and spend their lives climbing up its vertebrae, though none of them have an explanation as for why or know what they might find if they reach the top. Some do not even believe that the climbers will ever reach the top or that there even is such a thing.
The journey is so long that the age of people the MC meets on various paths on his journey reveals where on the giant’s body they were born. Themselves a T12, the MC usually meets older members born in the lumbar section.
On their way, the MC meets people with alternating views on the journey and how it is to be conducted. Some experienced climbers stop to give the MC advice, or they show him the best way ahead, where the ideal handholds are. Others steal rope ladders constructed along the way, making part of the journey difficult for others, because they might use the ladder themselves later on.
Realizing they will never reach the top, the MC instead begins to construct a path that will make part of the journey easier for others. Eventually, other, youngers travelers take up the task as well and help the MC construct a way up, becoming his disciples.
As the MC says: “It is not giving up to help others reach father than yourself”.
The story feels a bit on-the-nose in regards to the this moral lesson. Many characters enter the scene to hammer home one view on the theme only to disappear again. Still, the strange premise of the climbers and the giant made for an interesting story. Also, it does nicely highlight how the place and conditions of our birth will greatly affect our lives, how people born on the top will be blind to their own privileges, and how some born lower in the world will hurt their fellow strugglers just to make it a bit higher themselves even though this will make no real difference in their lives.
Pollen by Anna Burdenko (Clarkesworld):
Niko and her family are stranded on the distant planet, Beauty. They were sent as a vanguard to Beauty, a potential paradise for humanity with a stable climate, plenty of fauna, and no threat from major predators. Only, it is, of course, never this simple.
As we enter the story, everything has already gone horribly wrong, which in itself was refreshing, as the stranded-space-traveler trope might otherwise have made the story quite slow and dull.
Aside from her little sister, all of Niko’s family is dead. It turns out there is a predatory tree on Beauty, which sends out pollen that makes its prey hallucinate and then head for the tree themselves to be digested inside its trunk. This twist, too, was a nice addition that made the story more interesting than most stranded-space-traveler pieces.
The story was originally written in Russian, and while translations can sometimes feel a bit stilted and clunkier to read than stories originally written in English, especially if the translator has been very loyal to original writing, this was definitely not the case here. The prose and flow in the story were seamless. So, kudos to the translator, Alex Shvartsman, too.
The one thing that did make the story less than perfect was the end twist. Not because it was not a good twist, but because it seemed to be foreshadowed a bit too heavily. Normally, I do not mind that, but here it did take something away from the story.
Dislocated by Stephen Granade (FFO):
Teleportation is a thing, which is great… except if you happen to suffer from teleportation sickness. In that case, teleportation isn’t just bad. It’s terrible. As the world adapts, you are left behind. This is the premise of “Dislocated”. And who else should be our protagonist than the leader of a support group for people with teleportation sickness.
Granade used this to highlight all the ways teleportation could go wrong, the issues the users could end up suffering from. Constant temporal delay, temporal vibrations, etc. It gave the story a meta element, commenting on some common SF tropes in a way that was both funny and painful.
All the poor members of the group don’t just suffer from whatever condition teleportation left them with, though. They have to learn to live in a world where teleportation is gradually becoming the norm. A world where doors are no longer a common element to every building, a world commuting is not something to worry about. For most people.
On top of that, there’s a romantic sub-plot between the MC and one of the other group members, a relationship that is not made any easier by their combined symptoms.
This all mixed nicely into a story that showed the downside to technological landmarks, the effects on the people left behind. People who suddenly goes from being “normal” in every way, to being outsiders no longer able to function in society at the same level as most other people.
In many ways it reminded me of Sarah Pinsker’s novel We Are Satellites, though the speculative element in “Dislocated” and Granade’s take on it made the story its own thing.
There was so much great stuff here that my only complaint was — and I don’t often feel this way – that wished the story had been longer. Flash fiction just seemed like too short a medium to pack all of this. The romantic sub-plot especially, didn’t really seem like it had enough time to develop in a satisfying manner. That said, I did really enjoy the story as is.
Toby Backman 