A Few Short Notes On Some Short Fiction 2

A sequel to that other post:

• Jonathan McCalmont has started reviewing the stories making up Sisters Of The Revolution, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. This makes me want to return (in a much more rigourous way) to my own read through of The Space Opera Renaissance. But it hasn’t happened yet.
• McCalmont also appears, as usual, in the latest Interzone which didn’t have a great issue for fiction. I don’t think Rich Larson has ever written a bad story but ‘Lotto’ was too abbreviated to be great. My favourite story probably wasn’t as good as ‘Lotto’ though. ‘Spine’ by Christopher Fowler is a Seventies throwback to the age of Peter Benchley which is a pure nostalgia rush.
• You might also remember I picked up Interzone’s sister magazine, The Third Alternative, in actual paper at Mancunicon. Turns out, if its not on my Kindle, I don’t read it (and if it is on my Kindle, I usually still don’t read it).
• My discovery of the month has been Kelly Robson (I know, I know, I’m late). ‘Two-Year Man’ reminds me a bit of A Day In The Deep Freeze – a crushing dystopia made all the more horrific for being so modest and the story made all the bleaker by the inextinguishable spark of humanity still present. ‘The Three Resurrections Of Jessica Churchill’ is equally well-written but a lot blunter.
• I also enjoyed ‘Between Dragons and Their Wrath‘ by An Owomoyela and Rachel Swirsky which pulls off the trick of being Weird but not arbitrary and ‘The Sincerity Game’ by Brit Mandelo is one of those stories that doesn’t need the SF element (it is an acutely observed relationship story with some fiercely brilliant writing) yet it isn’t superfluous and adds an extra bit of flavour. Not as good as those but worth a read is ‘The Plague Givers’ by Kameron Hurley, published on her Patreon. It also makes me a bit sad as Hurley could’ve been the saviour of epic fantasy but modern publishing has made that impossible by pushing her into a succession of unnecessary trilogies.
• ‘The Plague Givers’ will be reprinted in Uncanny #10 which will also contain stories by JY Yang and Alyssa Wong so that looks like it will be pretty good. And Uncanny and Wong are up for Hugos (well, the Campbell in Wong’s case) so that is pretty good too.
• The Hugo short fiction categories are not pretty good because once again they’ve been hijacked by the Puppies. In Best Short Story, the most interesting looking title is Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle which tells you everything you need to know. I’ve no intention of reading the shortlist (as I did last year) but I have read ‘Asymmetrical Warfare’ by SR Algernon, a terrible bit of flash fiction which is still too long and essentially retreads Terry Bisson’s ‘They’re Made Out Of Meat’, and ‘If You Were An Award, My Love’ by Juan Tabo and S. Harris. I won’t link to the latter both because it is on Vox Day’s website and because it has no redeeming features whatsoever. It is essentially an offensively personal attack on John Scalzi which is dressed up as ‘If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love’ by two people who don’t understand what that story was about, don’t understand what a parody is, don’t understand what a pastiche is and basically don’t understand anything at all about writing. It is purely an attempt to poison the well and confirms that any higher motives the Puppies claimed to have were all lies.
• I thought at first I might read some of the Best Novelette shortlist because ‘And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead’ by Brooke Bolander and ‘Folding Beijing’ by Hao Jingfang, translated Ken Liu, are both published in real venues. However, the Bolander is just a written version of this song so I’ve lost interest. It was also nominated for the Nebula, a reminder that not everything bad in SF can be laid at the door of the Puppies.
• The Best Novella shortlist only contains one joke entry and two stories that I’d actually like to read: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor and Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (although vexingly the latter isn’t published in the UK for another year). And – shock, horror – I’ve already read one of the nominees! As the author readily admits, it is a joke premise (what if an anthropomorphic animal story was written for adult SF fans?) and the problem with a joke premise is that it rapidly becomes tiresome over this length, particularly since there is a real sense that Polansky is doing a lot of padding.