#ReadShortStories of various provenances (141 to 145)

A varied batch this time, breaking up my anthology reading again. Mostly based on whim. And I'm afraid I'm too tired for much of a preamble today, so here are some story mini-reviews!

Loss of Signal by S.B. Divya — A near future space programmed powered by human minds who have been extracted from their non-functional bodies. This story raised a lot of ethical points, not all of them explicitly, and made me feel a little uneasy. The premise is interesting but I’m ultimately not sure how I feel about the story (though I definitely liked it more than I disliked it). Source: https://www.tor.com/2018/08/01/loss-of-signal-sb-divya/

Sugar Ricochets to Other Forms by Octavia Cade — A pretty weird story. On the one hand, we have a couple of women running a brothel staffed with magic automaton boys made out of sugar and cake (who often come back with parts missing in the morning). On the other hand, there is a clockwork witch made of brass I love with baby crabs lured by sugar. A compelling read, but also a strange one. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Flower of Arizona  by Seanan McGuire — A story set in the 1920s about a cryptozoologist and a circus performer. And a spate of murders. I enjoyed it and, since it seems to be the set up for more stories about these two characters, I looking forward to reading more about them. (I picked this story to try because the blurb on the author’s website had the greatest promise of Aeslin mice, and I was not disappointed.) Source: Hugo voter packet

Frozen Voice by An Owomoyela — Children living in a post-alien invasion world. Aliens who force their language on humans and technically prevent starvation etc by having killed most of the population. Also, they’re afraid of books. The writing style was quite visceral and I enjoyed being drawn into the story. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/owomoyela_07_11/

Kill Screen by EC Myers — A teenage girl makes an AI program of her recently deceased best friend. It was a bit morbid, mostly because it dealt with the question of why the friend had killed herself, but also for other reasons (spoilers). I mostly enjoyed it, but it also made me feel uncomfortable (intentionally, I assume), especially near the end. Source: Mother of Invention edited by Rivqa Rafael and Tansy Rayner Roberts

#ReadShortStories that are flashy (87 to 90)

A bit of a jump in numbering this batch because I didn't want to repeat the stories that appeared for the first time in my Hugo posts and my final review of The Underwater Ballroom Society. If you missed reading my Hugo posts, you can see my thoughts and reviews of the short story ballot here and the novelette ballot here. (For completion, my novella discussion is here.) If you want to check out my reviews of the last few stories in The Underwater Ballroom Society — and my review of the whole anthology, you can find the final and complete review here.

This batch, which brings the total number of stories I've read this year to 90, contains some flash, a poem and the first story in the next anthology I've started reading: Not So Stories edited by David Thomas Moore. This anthology attempts to decolonise stories in the vein of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories and make them relevant to the modern age. With stories written by culturally diverse writers, of course. So far, it seems to be off to a good start.

How the Andan Court by Yoon Ha Lee — A flash piece that is more of a love letter explaining the absence of roses. Source: http://www.yoonhalee.com/?p=235

Ships in the Night by S B Divya — A flash story about a girl who can see futures and the changes everyone and everything will go through, who meets a girl who is unchanging. Source: http://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/slipstream/s-b-divya/ships-in-the-night

Persephone in Hades by Theodora Goss — A narrative poem (is that the right term?) about Persephone missing winter while held prisoner by Hades. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/persephone-in-hades/

How the Spider Got Her Legs by Cassandra Khaw — Probably my favourite Khaw story so far. Told in the style of Kipling/traditional children's cosmology stories as suggested by the title. It was also a bit longer and more complicated than I might have expected with a few acts to the story rather than just one simple origin explanation of how the spider got her legs. Anyway, I rather liked it. Source: Not So Stories edited by David Thomas Moore

#ReadShortStories (51 to 55)

Another mixed bag of stories. I am not keeping up with Uncanny, despite my subscription: I read one more story in the Jan/Feb issue and, meanwhile, the March/April issue arrived. Whoops. But hey, better than nothing and I think I'm a reasonable way through the fiction. The other stories were a bit random and older. I realised that sorting my Pocket queue by oldest at the top was going to make getting through the stories I've had on there the longest easier. We'll see how that goes.

The two best stories in this batch were easily "Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage" by Marissa Lingen and "Fiber" by Seanan McGuire (which I just really want to spell correctly — ugh, US English, why?). Both were funny, in different ways, and thoughtful too.


The Egg by SB Divya — Sad flash about uterine replicator-type technology as a solution to infertility. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/519256a

Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage by Marissa Lingen — A delightful story about a sorceress who was betrayed and who went on to solve a somewhat military problem with communication rather than force. I quite liked it. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/lines-growth-lines-passage/

Fiber by Seanan McGuire — A really fun and entertaining story about cheerleaders with supernatural inclinations, yoghurt and other monsters. A very enjoyable read. Source: http://www.tor.com/2015/12/01/reprints-fiber-seanan-mcguire-unbound/

Ten Days’ Grace by Foz Meadows — A story set in a dictatorially Christian future, about a woman who was forced to marry a stranger to be allowed to keep her daughter. Not a bad read. Source: http://www.apex-magazine.com/ten-days-grace/

Let There Be Light by Chen Quifan  — A series of glimpses at a high tech future world where, despite convenient technology, people aren’t magically happy. Some interesting ideas, but light on plot. Source: http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/future-societies/chen-qiufan-translated-by-ken-liu-/let-there-be-light_scifi

Runtime by SB Divya

Runtime by SB Divya is a science fiction novella and the author's debut book. I bought it from Tor.com a while ago but hadn't gotten around to reading it until now. What triggered my picking it up was reading an excellent short story by Divya, "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse", which made me want to read more of her work. I am not actually sure whether that story and Runtime are set in the same future, since they're set in different parts of the US, but they could be.

The Minerva Sierra Challenge is a grueling spectacle, the cyborg's Tour de France. Rich thrill-seekers with corporate sponsorships, extensive support teams, and top-of-the-line exoskeletal and internal augmentations pit themselves against the elements in a day-long race across the Sierra Nevada.

Marmeg Guinto doesn’t have funding, and she doesn’t have support. She cobbled her gear together from parts she found in rich people’s garbage and spent the money her mother wanted her to use for nursing school to enter the race. But the Minerva Challenge is the only chance she has at a better life for herself and her younger brothers, and she’s ready to risk it all.

This was an interesting read, a bit different to what I usually end up reading with the racing element. Marmeg comes from the lower echelons of society which means she has no rights to anything except US citizenship and voting. Other aspects of civilised society, such as healthcare and education, have to be earned, either by being born well-off or by working very hard to make enough money to buy these things. Marmeg's plan is to win a race, or at least place in the top five, and use the prize money to get herself an education and help her brothers. The race is over several miles of difficult terrain and to be competitive one has to augment their bodies. The rich racers can buy fancy augments, but Marmeg scrounged hers from bins and wrote custom software, which is her specialty.

There was a lot of front-loaded world building in this novella. It was interesting social world building for the near future US society, but was a little tricky to keep track of since I was quite tired when I started reading. As I got further in the novella, however, I got used to the new terminology and didn't feel like I had to be really paying super close attention to follow the story. Anyway, I don't think that's really a flaw of the novella so much as unfortunate timing on my part.

I enjoyed this novella, but I didn't love it as much as I loved "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse", which unfortunately raised my expectations quite high and was a sort of similar kind of story (with a dystopian society). So while Runtime wasn't disappointing at all, it wasn't quite a five-star read either. I still highly recommend it to all fans of near-future SF, especially stories exploring the tribulations of the most disadvantaged people in society. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for other work by Divya.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2016, Tor.com
Series: No?
Format read: ePub
Source: purchased from iBooks store

#ReadShortStories (46 to 50)

Three stories from the same issue of Uncanny, this batch. After realising how many short stories I was enjoying from Uncanny, I thought I should support them and subscribe. (It's also possible to support them on Patreon, but a yearly ePub subscription isn't very expensive, so I went with that.) They have rather more stories per issue than I realised, so I'm not even halfway through issue 20 (Jan/Feb 2018) yet. Expect more in the near future.

My favourite story from this batch was hands down "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse" by SB Divya and, in fact, prompted me to finally pick up her novella, Runtime. Keep an eye out for my review of that in a couple of days. Also, if you happen to know whether "Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse" and Runtime are set in the same future, please let me know! I'm not sure whether they are, but I feel like they definitely could be.


Praying to the God of Small Chances by L Chan — A flash piece about wanting a miracle cure for the protagonist’s father’s cancer and an encounter with a god of small chances. The idea was interesting, but there just wasn’t much to the story, even considering that it’s flash. Source: http://arsenika.ink/fiction/praying-to-the-god-of-small-chances/

She Still Loves the Dragon by Elizabeth Bear — A lovely story about a knight errant who set out to meet a dragon and do the one thing she had not done: stand naked in front of the dragon she loved. Written with strong references to songs and ballads, including the ballad this story would become. It was a very nice story but I didn’t love it as much as I felt like I should have (whatever that means). Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/still-loves-dragon/

Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse by SB Divya — This story was right along the lines of what we were after for Defying Doomsday: it featured a protagonist with disabilities and an apocalypse. Also queer relationships. The apocalypse itself was a bit unexpected — I didn’t realise at first that it was set in the (former) US — and centred around what seemed to be a fracturing of the country into police states and safe states. The setting was very extreme (violent and oppressive) and affecting, which contributed to making this an excellent story. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/contingency-plans-apocalypse/

The Hydraulic Emperor by Arkady Martine — An interesting story about aliens, desire, obsession and sacrifice. I found it an interesting read that got into various characters’ psychology, not just the narrator’s. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-hydraulic-emperor/

Four-Point Affective Calibration by Bogi Takács — A flash story about calibrating a psychology (?) experiment and what different emotions mean to the narrator. Also what aliens mean to the narrator. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/four-point-affective-calibration/