There’s a new novelette out at GigaNotoSaurus and it’s a new take on a somewhat “classic” trope. That of robot wives and a community rocked by certain revelations. But it’s also a story that doesn’t fall into the “classic” and misogynist pitfalls that so often accompany those stories, that view with rosy nostalgia a past where nuclear families were just swell. The piece makes room for the hard truths that can go hidden in suburbia, and doesn’t give in to the gravity to crash into violence. Rather, it’s a different kind of revolution being waged, and it makes for a wonderful story. To the review!
Two short stories and two poems flesh out the first two weeks of Strange Horizons' August offerings. And, to be honest, the pieces would have to be really trying to be more thematically different from one another. The fiction starts off with something lighter and fun and then veers sharply into the bloody and horrific. The poetry is a bit more linked, circling around relationships, the first blush and long contentions and the hope and the way that society sometimes gets in the way and fucks things up. It's a varied and interesting collection of short SFF, showing how such disparate works can be united by the speculative and the strange, in every shape that takes. To the reviews!
October arrives at Uncanny Magazine with a flush of monsters and love letters, a complex web of desires, communities, and speculative traditions. The stories aren’t really what I’d consider spooky, though they do have an eye toward “classic” costumes—monsters, historical fashion, and robots. Instead, the stories and poems as well seem more concerned with the ideas and styles of the past, about the ways the present erases the past in order to create a new vision of the future. Or, perhaps, the ways that people now imagining the future come to override the imaginings from the past, so that what is futuristic and what is contemporary and what is anachronistic all are thrown into question. In some of the pieces, it means the styles of the past are updated and reinvigorated, while other works seek to find strength and joy in how the past imagined the future and how the past actually was, before time and taste and injustice erased everything that didn’t fit into the dominate narrative of history. So yeah, these are some complex and deep stories that still manage a sense of fun and focus. To the reviews!
It’s with sadness that I say that this will be the last time I review The Sockdolager, which ends its publication run with this issue. The good news is that wow are there a lot of stories to look at, eleven original stories that are mostly centered, in my opinion, around the theme of resistance. It makes sense for a publication that strived to push for being original and fun, impacting but enjoyable. It’s a difficult line to walk, and a bit of resistance in itself, trying to carve out a unique place within SFF. The stories move, largely looking at societies struggling with corruption and invasion, and people forced to find a way to move forward, to push toward justice even when it’s difficult, even when what they really want is just to rest. But there is no rest for the willing, and the characters prove themselves to be up to the task of moving forward, of resisting, of pushing for revolution and change. Sometimes it doesn’t work out too well, but often it’s still much better than it would have been. These are some fun stories, and a great final bow for a great SFF publication. To the reviews!
There's a pair of stories and a pair of poems in the first two weeks of Strange Horizons' August content. The stories present brilliant portrayals of minds that are part human and part computer. Minds that have been made into something else—into a ship, into a solar collector. This is not always a consensual act, and the stories look not only of the cost of such a transformation, but how these new beings interact with their world, their civilizations. Through war and extinction, the stories manage two very powerful looks at decay and hope. The poems as well provide a nice array of strange ideas and poignant memories, as they tour a house of birds and the filmography of a dead actor. It's an incredibly two weeks of content, and I will just get to the reviews!
As always, there’s a lot to see in the latest issue of Mithila Review, which seeks to look a bit at visual arts. For original fiction, there’s one flash, one short story, and one novelette, and there are nine different poems, not to mention a reprint and a load of nonfiction that I will leave you to discover on your own. What’s here, though, and what I’m looking at in my review, does an amazing job of showing people coming into contact with the unknown. Shows people who assume based on the narratives they have been told about the nature of the world. And who find that they can’t accept those narratives. That only by challenging the stories that other people tell about the world can its nature truly be revealed. The poems expand on this as well and everything works together wonderfully to create an issue that is cohesive and sharp. But I guess I should just get to the reviews!
The latest issue of Lackington's has a theme of Animals to it. And while it does feature a number of precocious and mischievous characters, this isn't exactly an issue I'd recommend giving to a young child as a diversion on a rainy day. Unless you want some very interesting conversations (and maybe therapy) later. The issue is full of stories that twist the unexpected, that show that just because there are talking animals in a piece doesn't mean they're all going to be sweet. Many of these are dark. And violent. And beautiful. The prose flows in good Lackington's style and the themes approach justice and human (and animal) nature, as well as loss, and dissolution, and expectations, and roles, and…well, you get the idea. It's a big issue full of characters and beasts great and small. And it's time for me to get to my reviews!
Well it's been a busy two weeks over at Strange Horizons, it would seem. Today I'm looking at two stories, two poems, and three pieces of nonfiction, which makes this a pretty meaty review. As is usual with the publication, the stories and poems aren't really linked thematically, so everything is interesting in its own way, more to be taken separately than together. Which is just fine by me when the quality of the work is so high. Few enough places put out such a great range of stories, poems, and nonfiction, which is probably why Strange Horizons nabbed a Hugo nomination this year. So to the reviews!
