This round-up has been on hiatus over a few particularly chaotic months, but is back for 2017. A few old stories and articles popped up in here because I was reading voraciously over that period - I just was encumbered by workload, a novel, and family events and illnesses. This month the round-up comes in three flavors: Short Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Non-Fiction Related to a Certain Odious Fool.
Short Fiction
"Ndakusuwa" by Blaize M. Kaye at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination
Pour one out for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, which is closing its doors. It paid more than double the professional average for short fiction, and steadily gathered interesting voices and great reprints. As I've gone through my back catalog, this one stuck with me. It's a flash fiction biography of a genius, from the first time she disassembled a clock, to all of the times she left her parents, always for further and less imaginable shores. Perfect poignancy.
"Mamihlapinatapei" by Rachael K. Jones at Flash Fiction Online
Another day, another title that's tricky on the tongue. You'll have to read to the end to learn the meaning of the title, and it's a joyous revelation. The line "For these children, there has never been a world without dinosaurs" gave me such a smile. It's exactly the sort of thing I crave people to speculate in our worlds of speculative fiction. This flash is saturated worldbuilding about coexistence and what it means to have to switch cultures and languages. Jones is, as always, really good at writing characters switching.
"Monster Girls Don't Cry" by Merc Rustad at Uncanny Magazine
My writing naturally lends itself to long scenes, which leaves me fascinated by writers like Walton and Zelazny, who are so comfortable with compact scenes. Rustad's story is a case study in how to do extremely quick cuts in prose, with some scenes lasting only a paragraph, but still being poignant. This takes such advantage of the short fiction form to build to some wonderful emotions.
"The Psittaculturist's Lesson" by Marissa Lingen at Daily Science Fiction
A cracking story of an assassination attempt on an empress whose magic and guards have stopped every avenue so far. More than their, she surrounds herself with parrots, and it's in teaching them language that the twist comes.
"My Grandmother's Bones" by S.L. Huang at Daily Science Fiction
When an editor asked for some good flash for a possible anthology, this was one of the first recommendations I emailed to him. This tab stayed open for a couple months because I relished in revisiting Huang's meditation on an adoration that existed in orbit with love and respect. It's a beautiful and concise view of a relationship.
"In Memoriam: Lady Fantastic" by Lauren M. Roy at Fireside Magazine
It opens complaining about a sexist obituary for one of the world's first superheroes, and it rolls on with rich personality from there. It's a great intersection in poking at superhero culture and at how we treat women, blended perfectly. The account of a fictional superhero life colors in how the narrator grew up, through the Halloween she dressed as Lady Fantastic, and her impacts later in life. Remarkably sweet.
