#ReadShortStories (36 to 40)

A mixed bag here, from flash to long novella to getting back into New Suns to starting a new (to me) issue of Uncanny. I really enjoyed "Geometries of Belonging" by Rose Lemberg and I am definitely going to read more stories set in that universe. On the other hand, I was stuck part way through "Blood and Bells" for a long time which is one reason why my progress on New Suns has been so slow of late. The book is already out so I will try to get through the last few stories quickly and get my full review written up and posted soon.

Please [redacted] My Last E-mail by Kurt Pankau — A flash in the form of an email about an earlier email that was definitely not full of factual information about a robot army. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00797-4

Geometries of Belonging by Rose Lemberg 

Although I was warned, I was still surprised at how long this story was. It’s a novelette but it must be close to the upper limit. It took me a few days of reading in short- to medium-sized bursts to get through it. But I really enjoyed it. 

The world building is quite substantial so it did take me a little bit to get fully immersed in the world, but once I did I was hooked. The attitudes of the main character are deftly used to highlight the way the world works and even allow us to learn about other countries in this world. There were significant elements of both trans and autistic (I think) experiences, though not named as such, because fantasy world. I found these were presented in a very compelling way that left much scope to empathise with the protagonist. 

I gather there are other stories set in the same world and I am now very keen to read them and plan to track down what I can. 

Source: http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/geometries-of-belonging/

Blood and Bells by Karin Lowachee — This story was a slog to get into and I ended up setting it aside for quite a while. When I came back to it and read further it was more interesting (to see the actual plot develop). Gang warfare and a father trying to protect his kid in the middle of a murder investigation. Source: New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl

Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister by Silvia Moreno-Garcia — An enticing story about a witch living in a city and attempting to lead a normal life. I enjoyed the time and writing style especially. Source: New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl

The House on the Moon by William Alexander — A mostly fun story but an unsubtle one. A kid with a cane on the moon, a field trip to a castle, some depressing recent (future) history. Quite readable, though the ending was a little confusing, with an element out of left field. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-house-on-the-moon/

Spelling the Hours edited by Rose Lemberg

Spelling the Hours edited by Rose Lemberg, subtitle Poetry Celebrating the Forgotten Others of Science and Technology, is not the kind of book I would usually go out of my way to pick up, mainly because I don't read very much poetry. I'd glad I did, though.

"When I first envisioned Spelling the Hours, I imagined a crowd of poets first researching and then writing about forgotten figures of science and technology around the world. What happened instead was much more intimate: many, if not all the poets wrote about people with whom they were already deeply familiar." - From the Introduction

The idea behind Spelling the Hours was to highlight some of the overlooked figures in science and technology. In practice, this means that it was a collection of poems about people other than straight cis men in science and tech. A lot of the poems were about women who did not get contemporaneous credit or recognition for their work. There was a lot of breadth in the topics covered from physics and astronomy to medicine and computing. Some of the names were familiar to me, like Jocelyn Bell and Lise Meitner, but most were not. I imagine that most readers will find at least some new names in this volume.

I'm not going to comment on every poem individually. One that particularly stood out to me was "Girl Hours" by Sofia Samatar, the last poem in the chapbook. It focusses on Henrietta Swan Leavitt and the "girl hours" used to perform calculations. I liked how it mimicked the structure of a scientific paper but in reverse and it was a poignant note to end the chapbook on.

They were all good poems though and I highly recommend this chapbook to fans of science and poetry and to anyone interested in hearing about some overlooked scientific names. I should add that, one of the reasons some of the names were familiar to me is because I am a scientist myself and some of these stories get around a bit more in the scientific community (I've seen an award named after Lise Meitner being presented and I heard about Jocelyn Bell pretty much when I learnt what a pulsar was). I imagine a different spread of names might be familiar (or more unfamiliar) to different people.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2016, Stone Bird Press
Series: no
Format read: paperback
Source: gift from publisher

An Alphabet of Embers edited by Rose Lemberg

An Alphabet of Embers edited by Rose Lemberg is an anthology of flash fiction that was funded by a Kickstarter (that I missed) last year. The stories are 500–1400 words long, which ranges up to a little longer than what I would normally call flash, and one of the aims of the anthology was to include diverse voices. On that point, the editor has certainly succeeded. There are also some lovely illustrations by M Sereno throughout the anthology, to enhance the reading experience.

An anthology of unclassifiables – lyrical, surreal, magical, experimental pieces that straddle the border between poetry and prose.

This is an anthology filled with gorgeous writing, multicultural stories, and variety. While there is a certain "feel" to the stories in the anthology, the stories themselves covered a lot of ground in terms of setting and theme. Some of the stories are multilingual, containing phrases in other languages and the modern wonders of ebooks and Google Translate meant that I could look these up as they appeared. Said technology also showed me that I really didn't need to pause in my reading to check these phrases; the stories were not lesser without full understanding.

Having said that, there were a few stories which, for various other reasons, went over my head a little. There weren't any stories that I actively disliked, but there were a few that I don't think I personally grasped. That's more a reflection on me than the stories themselves, however. And there were several stories I liked a lot, which I will talk about in more detail shortly.

What I found interesting about this anthology, and didn't actually notice until I was close to the end, was the way in which the stories were grouped. Similar stories were grouped together in what felt like rolling waves throughout the book. When I first started reading, I thought all the stories would be somewhat surreal fantasy, but before I knew it the tone gradually shifted to more realistic stories, or more science fictional stories, or stories that were both beautiful and horrifying (not necessarily in that order). This sort of grouping could have backfired, but in this case it worked well; the stories didn't echo each other, rather they built upon each other while also pushing the anthology forward.

(Usually, for an anthology, I would write a bit about each non-flash story. However, since this is an entirely flash fiction anthology, I won't be doing that.)

My favourite stories, those that jumped out at me when I read them, or stuck with me after I moved on, were these (bulleted list for ease of reading):

• “Mistletoe and Copper, Water and Herbs” by Mari Ness — About a woman asking a witch to help her have children, a request delivered not quite how she hoped.
• “An Awfully Big Adventure” by Nisi Shawl — The youngest of three sisters talking about how she is the brave one, always the one to jump in first. Contains cancer.
• “Everything Under One Roof” by Zen Cho — A story about a magical food hall and two friends who find their way there.
• “The Swing, or How to Ricochet According to Sylvia Plath” by Nolan Liebert — Detailing the key days of a life. I found it very emotional.
• “Dreaming Keys” by Mina Li — A woman who discovers that keys can unlock dream worlds. A story I enjoyed because it was fun.
• “Telomerase” by Ian Muneshwar — As cancer takes the narrator, their partner loses words. Sad but powerful.
• “The Binding of Ming-tian” by Emily Jiang — A lovely, horrible story. The description of foot binding made me cringe.
• “Rhizomatic Diplomacy” by Vajra Chandrasekera — A story of war, aliens and featuring a clone-in-alien-body narrator. One of the most science fictional stories
• “Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar — A story about a girl with a book around her neck.

An Alphabet of Embers was a gorgeous read that I highly recommend to people who enjoy lyricism in their stories, or surrealism, or just plain like flash fiction and/or very short stories. The shortness of the stories made it easy to pick up and read a bit of this anthology in between other things. It also lead me to finish the anthology more quickly than I expected, when I wanted a break from other things. It also features a very diverse lineup of authors and hence is ideal for sampling new authors and hopefully enjoying them enough to seek out more of their work. I know there were some authors in here that I have been meaning to get around to reading for some time and now I have even more motivation to do so.

4 / 5 stars

First published: May 2016 (March for Kickstarter backers), Stone Bird Press
Series: No.
Format read: eARC
Source: The publishing team