2018 online short SFF - Lightspeed Jan-Apr

The Court Magician, Sarah Pinsker. I think I was more interested in this as a metaphor (for how power structures exploit technological enthusiasm - like try reading this as being about people working in AI face recognition) than in itself.

The Eyes of the Flood, Susan Jane Bigelow. I like the way this short postapocalyptic piece develops.

The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births, José Pablo Iriarte. NOVELETTE Reincarnation.

The Streets of Babel, Adam-Troy Castro. A little fable about capitalism.

Four-Point Affective Calibration, Bogi Takács. Talking to aliens.

The Independence Patch, Bryan Camp. Adolescence, growing up.

What Is Eve?, Will McIntosh. A seventh grader changes schools (what happens next will etc etc). This is terrific and made me sob, definite nomination. NOVELETTE.

Nitrate Nocturnes, Ruth Joffre. A timer story in Lightspeed!. This is a beloved premise in fanfic and I'm always interested to see what pro fic does with the same ideas. NOVELETTE

a trio of books

Everything I am supposed to be doing involves phone calls or driving places or complicated logistics and I just don't want to deal with any of it, ugh. So, books!

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a 2016 fantasy novel about an Adventuring Party on a Quest to Defeat the Dark Lord who for prophecy reasons conscript the assistance of a Mirkwood-esque giant evil spider, who their wizard shapeshifts into a humanoid to travel with them. Deconstruction of fantasy tropes ensues, while also still being a really satisfying fantasy adventure. Fun, especially if you're the kind of person whose reaction to a hideous spider-human amalgamation is "woobie!".

The Wicked King, Holly Black. 2019 book two of the trilogy that started with The Cruel Prince, which I talked about here. What I really want from this series is power-exchangey makeouts, and I think maybe Black didn't want to get as much into dubcon territory in a YA series as I want to read, so maybe what I really want is to go see what people are up to in its AO3 tag. But, anyways, this felt a bit funnier than the first one, and the web of intrigue and plots and counterplots was enjoyable, and I'll surely read the third one. Bets on the title? I'm guessing "The Heartless Queen".

That Inevitable Victorian Thing, E.K. Johnston. 2017 YA alternate-history SF romance. As far as I can recall I got interested in reading this book because of its beautiful cover design! And then it turned out to be extremely relevant to my interests, so, good work cover designers, I guess! I'm going to go ahead and spoil this one because I don't think anyone else is going to be able to tell if it might be relevant to their interests unless I do - queer love triangle with a polyam ending!

More details: in a world where the British Empire has prospered through a sort of non-exploitative imperialism and aggressive intermarriage with the elites of the countries it wants to keep in its sphere (so the Crown Princess, for example, is of Chinese, Zulu, and Iraqi descent) and where many marriage matches are suggested by genetic supercomputer, a pair of childhood sweethearts expecting to marry meet the disguised Crown Princess, in Canada for one summer of freedom. Hijinks ensue Romance develops between the princess and the girl of the pair, who is also struggling with the revelation (via heteronormative supercomputer) that she's intersex. This is a low-key book in a lot of ways - there isn't a lot of Big Drama - and I loved that. Just a sweet, lovely story about young people figuring themselves out, set in an interesting world which is obviously very much "what if we could have some of the fun trappings of a Victorian-ish setting without the ghastly racism/colonialism", which is a kind of alternate history I enjoy a great deal, although I know it's not to everyone's taste. Also this book is extremely Canadian and as a bit of a Canadaboo I enjoyed already knowing the tunes to the Log Driver's Waltz and the Rover and thinking about my own distant childhood memories of swimming in Lake Huron and that sort of thing. Also also according to the author's note it started life as a Pacific Rim/North & South fusion fanfic, which, like, I don't even know North & South except from a few gifs, but wow yes, I can sort of see how you cross those to get the worldbuilding.