2020 online short SFF - misc 4

I think I am... basically done with online short fiction? More or less? I'm sure there's a lot more out there I would have liked and honestly I think there's stuff out there that I *did* like but lost track of, this was not the most organized year for me. But I definitely feel like I'm in the wrapping-up phase. Oh, I guess there might be more in the New Decameron, if I get to that. Hm.

One more from Strange Horizons (Jul-Dec):

Alone, Emma Törzs. A biologist trying to track a rare bird comes to an unexpected conclusion.

A bunch from recs from Jedusor:

Cascade, A.J. Fitzwater, Future Fire. Grieving friends imagine a better alternate history into being.

Drones to Plowshares, Sarah Gailey, Vice. A captured enforcement drone is shown another way of life.

Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise, Lauren Ring, Apparition Lit. An astronaut trapped in a timeloop.

Deceleration, Alison Mulvihill, Strange Horizons. An end-of-the-world story.

All the Times I'm Ten, Ephiny Gale, The Year After Magazine. A chosen one who keeps reincarnating as chosen ones.

A Hench Helps Her Villain, No Matter What, Izzy Wasserstein, Escape Pod. Supers-as-kink is not new, but this was cute.

The Moneylender's Angel, R.H. Cloake, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Two dockworkers, a significant object, and some backstory. I really liked this.

Cemetery Boys

Cemetery Boys, Aiden Thomas. This was awesome! YA about a trans witch boy who summons a dead boy and then can't get rid of him. Excellent pacing and really nice construction - without getting too spoilery about it, this is the story of two people trapped in transitional states who are able to help each other out of them. (Spoilers: PLUS KISSING.) This is exactly why I can't quit YA. Strong visuals and a nice tight timeline - it would make a terrific movie, and I would love to sit in a theater (or, you know, in front of Netflix) and have these feelings again for two hours. I have immediately added it to my Lodestar noms and would recommend it to anyone willing to read dude-centric YA who likes YA.

ETA: I forgot to talk about the Spanish! So, there was occasional dialogue in Spanish in this, for flavor I guess, or to make the point that they were sometimes speaking Spanish, or because English wouldn't have exactly the same weight, some of which got directly translated and some of which didn't. I always thought it was entirely clear from context what was going on, but I could also more or less read the Spanish*; I remember being really frustrated by untranslated French in books when I was younger (I don't remember what I was reading, as a teen, that just assumed everyone read a little French, but I recall it coming up more than once and I hated it), so I really can't say how it would read to someone else. The reason I actually wanted to mention it though was that I was thinking about what you would do with the Spanish if you wanted to translate this book *into* Spanish, and what I decided was that just as the Spanish mostly shows up in dialogue between certain people, what you would do is keep some English in the conversations between certain *other* people, to indicate in the other direction that those conversations were in English. Sort of fun to think about which words would get the "this is a word of cultural significance that we don't translate" treatment. (I am not *nearly* fluent enough to actually do this work, just to think about it, to be clear.)

*Funny story about my semiliteracy: I recently tried reading a couple of the Strange Horizons stories in Spanish, in their annual bilingual issue, and was just like, fuck, I understand many of these words but what the fuck is going on here. But then I tried reading them in English and was like okay I understand all of these words but what the fuck is going on here, so I guess my Spanish reading experience was not as far off as I thought. (Also one of them seemed like a less direct translation, like there was some stuff that was just left out of the English, which may have been part of the point but I'm *really* not fluent enough to get if something clever was happening with that, alas.)

The Daughters of Ys

The Daughters of Ys, M.T. Anderson and Jo Rioux, 2020 graphic novel. Damn this was good. Rioux's art is gorgeous - reminded me a lot of Charles Vess - and it was *gripping* (like, you know Certain Things are going to go down, but now *how* exactly). I had the theme from Der Erlkonig stuck in my head for half of it (it's a quick read so that wasn't that long in clock time) and it was very apt. Definitely adding to my Graphic Story noms - thank you to my friends for the loan!