#ReadShortStories (41 to 45)

More disabled people destroying science fiction in this batch. And a couple of flash pieces from Nature Futures.

I have been too busy using up all of my brain spoons on various things (mostly work) so these preambles might continue to be short for the foreseeable future. Feel free to leave me a comment if you actually miss them.

Birthday Girl by Rachel Swirsky — A look at how approaches to mental illness/neurodiversity in children have changed over a generation. Highlighted by comparisons between the protagonist and her young niece. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/birthday-girl/

An Open Letter to the Family by Jennifer Brozek — An epistolary story set in the far future. A woman tells her family of upcoming medical plans. It was a more interesting take than I expected from the opening paragraphs. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/an-open-letter-to-the-family/

Heavy Lifting by A. T. Greenblatt — A coder/hacker girl working with her slightly douchey friend to tack down factory robots gone rogue in a (vague) post-apocalyptic world. A fun read.  Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/heavy-lifting/

A Picture is Worth by Beth Cato — An amusing flash piece about Martians who have severe ideological differences to the human race. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00884-6

The Librarian by Robert Dawson — A flash piece about a neglected library staffed only by a robotic librarian. I got an unnecessarily bitter vibe from it, though it wasn’t exactly a bad story. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00905-4

#ReadShortStories and a poem (111 to 115)

I've been making my way through Uncanny Issue Twenty-One, which is where all of this batch's stories are from. I'm not a fan of how the ePub issues have all the short stories, then the essays, then the poems, rather than mixing them up a bit. So I decided to do some mixing myself and threw in a poem (and some non-fiction, which I'm not reviewing) out of order. 

Unfortunately, since the new issue of Uncanny dropped a couple of days ago, being almost finished with this one isn't bringing me significantly closer to being up to date.

And Yet by A. T. Greenblatt — A haunted house as a portal to parallel universes — a pretty logical idea, really. Interestingly told in second person, which works well for it. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/and-yet/

Like a River Loves the Sky by Emma Törzs — A lovely, if somewhat sad, story about friendship, family and loss. And dogs and taxidermy. A nice read. I liked it.  Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/like-river-loves-sky/

The Testimony of Dragon’s Teeth by Sarah Monette — A story about ill-will and small malicious magic. Not a bad read, though not a favourite either. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/testimony-dragons-teeth/

Pistol Grip by Vina Jie-Min Prasad — A bit graphics for my tastes, this is a short story about super soldiers who have drawn the short straw in life. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/pistol-grip/

Editorial comment: I am a little disappointed by how aggressively not my thing "Pistol Grip" is since otherwise Vina Jie-Min Prasad has become one of my favourite short story writers. (I'm still going to keep reading her stories, of course, but my expectations for this one were probably too high.)

The Sea Never Says It Loves You by Fran Wilde — I really liked this poem, despite not usually being much of a fan of Wilde’s writing. It’s a somewhat story-driven about how unsatisfying loving the sea is (as the title says). Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/sea-never-says-loves/