New story out from Daily Science Fiction this morning! The Last Navigator.
This one is about a generation ship AI who finds the humans want to go somewhere a bit different…
Tag: short story glory
Mole rats, songbirds, whales
Today’s new story from me is in Nature Futures, and it’s called Without a Password.
As the post-story notes at the bottom tell you, the seed for this one stayed in my head eighteen years before it had enough to grow on. I’m told patience is a virtue.
Short stories I liked midyear 2021
The Red Mother, Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com)
The Station of the Twelfth, Chaz Brenchley (Tor.com)
Below Salt-Heavy Tides, Andi C. Buchanan (Mermaids Monthly)
Radioactivity, Octavia Cade (Uncanny)
For the World’s More Full of Weeping, Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Revolution Will Not Be Served With Fries, Meg Elison (Lightspeed)
Cause and Manner, Jeannelle Ferreira (Deadlands).
Redwood Houses, Amelia Gorman (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever, Audrey R. Hollis (Fireside)
The Case of the Turned Tide, Savitri Horrigan (Grist: Imagine 2200)
City Lights As Myth, Yong-Yu Huang (Strange Horizons)
To Rest, and to Create, L.A. Knight (Fiyah Issue 19)
Frequently Asked Questions About the Portals at Frank’s Late-Night Starlite Drive-In, Kristen Koopman (It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility)
Letters from the Ides, Jennifer Mace (Reckoning).
Ossify, Jennifer Mace (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
My Custom Monster, Jo Miles (Fireside)
The Shape of Wings and Feathers, Jenny Rae Rappaport (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Meditations on Sun-Ra’s Bassism, Yah Yah Scholfield (Fiyah Issue 19)
As I Wait for the Killing Blow, M. Shaw (Fireside)
How to Find Yourself in a Fairy Tale, A.C. Wise (Daily SF)
Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands, John Wiswell (Fireside)
The Tyrant Lizard (And Her Plus One), John Wiswell (Drabblecast)
Yes, the pun will make you squirm.
Today’s new story is a special case: Grist magazine is having a special climate fiction issue called Imagine 2200, and for it they selected my story A Worm to the Wise.
Frankly it is not easy to focus on hope and optimism this year, so I’m very pleased to have managed this story with its focus on soil science and community. I also love what Grace Abe did with the illustration. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the issue, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this one.
Quieter
My latest Analog story is out now in the Sept/Oct issue! You can buy Quieter Songs Inland with the rest of the issue here.
This Will Not Happen Again
Today I have a reprint out in Flash Fiction Online: This Will Not Happen To You.
Content note: this was written before the pandemic, but it is…not as irrelevant to the present day as one might hope, so if you were hoping for a happy story that is not at all plague-y, this may not be the story you were hoping for, and that’s okay too.
This was your plan, not mine
Today I have a new story out! Nature Futures has published Planned Obsolescence.
This story is for my friend Merc, who likes the stuff in it. It is also for my friend Mike. Most of my Nature shorts are for Mike. But Merc is still around to read it, and the Mike in question is John M. Ford. Sometimes half a conversation is better than none. This is me looping Merc into my conversation with Mike.
Anyway I hope you like it, even those of you who know neither of them. (But you can read both of their stuff when you’re done with this!)
This one has AIs and…what they do when they find out they’ve been made deliberately mortal.
Spring short story recommendations
Quintessence, Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Kuemo of the Masks, Naomi Libicki (Giganotosaurus)
My Mother’s Hand, Dante Luiz (Constelacion)
Photolinguistics, Jennifer Mace (Reckoning)
The Badger’s Digestion; Or the First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher, Malka Older (Constelacion)
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
The Music of the Siphorophenes, C.L. Polk (F&SF)
All Worlds Left Behind, Iona Datt Sharma (Khoreo)
Thirteen of the Secrets in my Purse, Rachel Swirsky (Uncanny)
Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld)
Phases of the Moon, Alice Towey (Fireside)
Bathymetry, Lorraine Wilson (Strange Horizons)
Unseelie Brothers, Ltd., Fran Wilde (Uncanny)
For Lack of a Bed, John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots)
Gender Reveal Box, $16.95, John Wiswell (Fireside)
The Machine Is Experiencing Uncertainty, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Escape Pod)
When Your Being Here Is Gentler Than Your Absence Hard, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Where you let yourself look
New story out today in Daily Science Fiction: Look Away.
This is not about a pandemic, but also it’s completely about this pandemic. And about other things that surround it. Like all Daily stories, it’s quite short.
Favorite stories, first quarter 2021
Wait, am I doing story recommendations in an organized fashion, aligned with the calendar and stuff? Eh. When it’s convenient, sure, I guess. It’s still mostly “I’ve accumulated a bunch of links on my to-do list and would like to clean them out again,” but let’s pretend it’s an End Of Q1 thing, it makes me feel accomplished. I’m actually behind where I would usually expect to be on reading periodicals, but there’s always time to catch up. Or not, the world is vast and beautiful. And, this time, full of poetry.
Trojan Road, Leah Bobet (Plenitude)
Salvage Song, Julia Da Silva (Reckoning)
Fractured, Aimee Kuzenski (Translunar Travelers Lounge_
Birds Are Trying to Reinvent Your Heart, Jennifer Mace (Baffling)
From the Embassy of Leaks to the Court of Cracks, Catherine Rockwood (Reckoning)
We Are Not Phoenixes, John Wiswell (Fireside)