Things get profoundly weird in these April short stories from Motherboard’s Terraform. Very. Very. Weird. From planets where people worship different body parts of their prophet to visions of the future or present where people experience alterations in their perception, the works are all about bending the rules of what makes logical sense in what might be attempts to shake and call into question the fundamental and assumed orderliness of the universe. It finds characters embracing the dark and the unknown, rushing into the jaws of chaos, and struggling against the feelings of stagnancy and inertia. There are some really strange works on display here, but I’m going to give it my best in reviewing them!
April marks a rather full month of short SFF releases from Tor dot com with three short stories and a novelette, a mix of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, all of it unfolding in the “real world,” though sometimes twisted by technology, sometimes touched by magic, and always heavy with a waiting darkness. The stories certainly lean on the dark side of things, revolving around exploitation, grief, and death. That might come in the form of a family who transforms when they die into heirlooms for their relatives to treasure and care for, or in the form of a military experiment targeting a person who can’t feel physical pain but can definitely experience other kinds. There’s artificial intelligences helping to facilitate social justice, and even a creepy dog who might hide a menacing secret. It’s an eclectic month of fiction, to say the least, offering a solid tour of how SFF approaches death, recovery, and hope. To the reviews!
The two latest short stories from Beneath Ceaseless Skies provide an excellent one-two punch of women with power dealing with ghosts, family, and hope in settings touched by devastation and twisted magic. Both stories find characters on journeys who come across situations that maybe they should have just left alone. But, drawn into the intrigue, danger, and violence of them, they choose to move forward and through, fighting their way to a place where maybe justice can mean something again, where they can be helped and healed by family (even those not related by blood). These are some thrilling and epic reads, and I’ll get to my reviews!
The latest two issues of Strange Horizons bring a new short story and two new poems into the world, touching on language and grief, movement and gaze. The pieces follow in the wake of loss, revealing holes where people used to be. For some people, those holes represent a sort of unfillable gap, a vortex threatening to pull them under. For others, what grows to take that space can be something beautiful in its own right, a sort of freedom that comes if the situation before had been less than ideal. And for some it’s a mix, a mess of emotions and intentions and hurts, and the pieces treat all of this with care. So let’s get to the reviews!
April brings three short stories and three poems to Uncanny Magazine, most of them dealing with romantic relationships. About both the ways that people can find ways to help and affirm each other and the ways that people can hurt each other. Relationships are moments of vulnerability, and some of the characters understand and respect that, working to try and make something beautiful and resilient. Others, though, can only imagine relationships in terms of dominance and superiority, of being able to control and own their partner. It’s a month that has plenty of uncomfortable moments, but also a lot of beauty. Let’s get to the reviews!
Two new short stories mark the fiftieth issue of Diabolical Plots, and the works seem very much to be concerned with generational shifts and issues. To me, at least, the stories focus on the ways that the past builds up systems designed to exploit rather than help younger people. That envision the past and present as castles that must be defended, as sacred objects that should not change or adapt because for the older people policing them, they are comfortable and safe. Only the story reveals how that’s often not even the case, and makes compelling strides to complicate and challenge those systems by showing just how much they tend to let everyone down. Let’s get to the reviews!
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| Art by Chainat / Fotolio |
It’s springtime in horrorland with two new stories from
Nightmare Magazine that examine tropes and truisms. The stories revolve around
ideas, the first around the genre of gothic horror, celebrating it without
defending the parts of its history that have been riddled with Issues. Meanwhile
the second looks at a saying about hearts and wolves, making literal something
that might have otherwise been purely figurative. And in both stories the focus
is on escaping the gravity of oppressive and prejudiced violence. It finds
characters seeking to pull free from the expectation or requirement that they
suffer, that they die, that they become consumed to support the dominant
narratives. Subversion rules the day in these stories, which I will get right
on reviewing!
