psocoptera

(Personal update: spouse caught kid's stomach bug, and now I have, although I seem to have it less badly although possibly with worse fever. Ugh.)

The Difference Between Love and Time, Catherynne M. Valente, Tor.com. Reprint from a 2022 anthology. NOVELETTE. This is Valente doing her gonzo thing, which often makes my eyes roll but then gets me in the end - if you liked Space Opera you'll probably like this. Wouldn't be surprised to see this one on the ballot.

Judge Dee and the Mystery of the Missing Manuscript, Lavie Tidhar, Tor.com. I find this series of vampire detective stories amusing.

How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, The Full Fruit of Love's Full Folly, PH Lee, Tor.com. This is more genre-referential than I usually like, featuring Stanisław Lem and an Ursula who is three different Ursulas at once, but it was funny and cute.

Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man, Rich Larson, Tor.com. NOVELETTE. And here's Larson doing his cyberpunk thing. If you've been reading my recs for awhile you probably already know whether you like Larson's cyberpunk thing.

D.I.Y, John Wiswell, Tor.com. This one absolutely reeks of ballot. A fine little story about not getting into magic school, and monopolies, and collective action. I don't know that I personally am nominating it, but I fully expect to be seeing it.

Mostly familiar names here, but there are a couple of new-to-me authors at the end. (Or, well, names I didn't recognize, which is not to say I haven't recced their stuff before.)

To Embody a Wildfire Starting, Iona Datt Sharma, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Dragon shapeshifters and the aftermath of a revolution. NOVELETTE

Clay, Isabel J. Kim, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Golems, mass production, individuality.

Bonsai Starships, Yoon Ha Lee, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Look, this one had me from the title.

At the Foot of the Dragon Stair, Aliette de Bodard, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Historian-monks and cycles of history.

The Mountains of Another World, Where Eagles May Fly Free, Aimee Ogden, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. A fisherman and three eagles, the day after an attempted revolution.

The Splinters of Our Bond, Marissa Lingen, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. A fairy tale.

I Will Sing Your White Bones Home, Cat Hellisen, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. An interesting twist on "the Little Mermaid", with some fun biology detail.

Forte, Samuel Chapman, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Fencers from opposing schools, a romance. NOVELETTE.

Witchbreaker, Leah Ning, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Sword-and-sorcery adventure with a time-bubble twist.

Half my household has covid. Not me, not yet at least. So far it's the two of us who didn't have it in April. They're doing okay so far. (I am sad and anxious but what else is new.)


Spirochete, Anneke Schwob, Strange Horizons. Demonic possession, spoons, priorities.

Obsolesce, Nadine Aurora Tabing, Strange Horizons. An aging robot in a mostly-uploaded world.

Lay My Stomach On Your Scales, Wen-yi Lee, Strange Horizons. Bodies and being embodied; a manananggal and something else.

The Crow Husband, Sarah McGill, Strange Horizons. Offbeat and lovely, about different kinds of relationships, and wanting them or not. Le Guin-esque.

Born from the Drowning Forest, James Rowland, Strange Horizons. Look, this one is... maybe unforgivably self-forgiving, self-justifying, but also irresistible.

Off to an auspicious start this year as it turns out my Khoreo subscription has expired and with it my access to all the 2022 issues, which I was apparently supposed to be downloading as we went. I don't mind subscribing again but have run into Technical Troubles. (WHY does the password-reset email just send me back to the page to get another password-reset email?) This is what I get for dipping a toe into paywalled content, I guess.

Anyways, I've read almost nothing yet, but here's what was in the file before today:

The Future History of Your Body, Davian Aw, Daily Science Fiction. Flash piece about anthropology and deep time.

Simons, Far and Near, Ana Gardner, Cast of Wonders. Young people picked to go ahead of ships evacuating Earth and prepare.

Hush, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Tor.com. A mom trying to help a kid get home in the middle of xenophobic riots.

The Part You Throw Away, Elizabeth Bear, The Sunday Morning Transport. A family cleaning out a house and dealing with family ghosts.

More soon.

Innocent Bird, Rachel Swirsky. Didn't quite do what I wanted it to do, but was interesting enough to mention.

The Revolution Will Not Be Served with Fries, Meg Elison, Lightspeed. Food service workers and the question of who would actually be worse off under new robot overlords.

Stowaways, Andrew Dana Hudson, Lightspeed. Flash piece about infectious artwork.

Space Pirate Queen of the Ten Billion Utopias, Elly Bangs, Lightspeed. Utopia and escapism and change. This is a feelgood story but, you know what, I did feel good, and I liked it, and it's very nicely written. F/F.

Entanglement, or How I Failed to Knit a Sweater for My Boyfriend, Carrie Vaughn, Lightspeed. Fun story about the boyfriend sweater curse and how clothes work over wings.

Top Ten Things to See Before the World Burns, Aimee Ogden, Lightspeed. A survivor of one catastrophe tours memorials of others.

I am still reading (I have half of Lightspeed left, plus a bunch of stuff in tabs) but I will probably be reading up until the last minute, so I wanted to go ahead and put some likely nomination picks out there now. (And will edit this post later to add things.)

Novelettes!

My favorite so far:

Preserved in Amber, Samantha Murray, Clarkesworld. Alien contact, and aphantasia, and life and death and having children. Really really good. Powerful and perfectly constructed.

Pretty sure I'm also nominating:

Quintessence, Andrew Dykstal, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is a good old-fashioned Problem Story - miners, in a harsh environment, facing A Problem. Really well-done, tense and non-obvious the whole way.

Sarcophagus, Ray Nayler, Clarkesworld. An explorer on a distant planet, an encounter. Tense and vivid.

I will probably fill remaining slots with however many of these:

The Badger's Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher, Malka Older. A scholar studying an interesting practice. This is lovely and charming, with a Le Guin feel.

The Language Birds Speak, Rebecca Campbell, Clarkesworld. A mom and her language-delayed child and a promising study.

You Are Born Exploding, Rich Larson, Clarkesworld. A mom and a child and a virus. Heartbreaking.

(emet), Lauren Ring. F&SF. A programmer working on facial recognition experiments with golems.

L'Espirit de L'Escalier, Catherynne M Valente, Tor.com. Orpheus and Eurydice; Orpheus succeeds. (This one smells like ballot, to me - I strongly suspect we'll see this up for at least one of a Hugo or a Nebula.)

Behind the cut, all the other 2021 novelettes I read and recommended: ( Read more... )

The Graveyard, Eleanor Arneson, Uncanny. I'm a big fan of competence porn but I also like what you might call "reasonableness porn", where people calmly keep trying to do the thing that seems like it makes sense to do. This story might not have a lot of "drama", in the sense of unnecessary conflict, but I found it refreshing.

From the Archives of the Museum of Eerie Skins: An Account, C.S.E. Cooney, Uncanny. A hate crime and a response.

Mulberry and Owl, Aliette de Bodard, Uncanny. Justice and grappling with the past. NOVELETTE.

A Better Way of Saying, Sarah Pinsker, Tor.com. A small story about movies and writing and magic.

L'Espirit de L'Escalier, Catherynne M Valente, Tor.com. Orpheus and Eurydice; Orpheus succeeds. NOVELETTE.

The Tyger, Tegan Moore, Tor.com. I loved this. The magic of being in a life-sized diorama, plus the magic of being in a museum after hours... made me think of visiting the Streets of Old Detroit, or my favorite desert-at-night corner at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Important and powerful places to Younger Me.

Let All the Children Boogie, Sam J. Miller, Tor.com. I like a good Teen Story from time to time and this has so many good pieces.

Clarkesworld publishes so many words a month! Which is good if you like words, but less good if you are trying to read all the words in a compressed time period because you've been saying for years you're going to start doing this a different way but haven't yet.

Anyways!

Deep Music, Elly Bangs, Clarkesworld. A fun story of alien contact. F/F.

Terra Rasa, Anastasia Bookreyeva, transl Ray Nayler, Clarkesworld. A Russian retreat to the North story from 2018, I guess in this case more of a "flight to the North". I'm deeply interested in retreat-to-the-North stories from non-North American perspectives - I would love to see someone do an anthology of works in translation on that theme. Or, even better, Retreat to the Poles - Perihelion Summer is totally a Retreat to the Poles work, which suggests there must be more - although I am also specifically interested in how people in the global south might think or write about retreat-to-the-North.

Mercy and the Mollusc, M.L. Clark, Clarkesworld. This isn't a Nausicaa fanfic but it's not *not* a Nausicaa fanfic if you know what I mean. (I know authors don't like having their work described like that, but honestly a story immediately becomes so much more meaningful to me if I make that kind of connection or put it in that kind of context. Sorry, authors.) Anyways, this is a cool thing about terraforming and a friendship/working relationship between a human and a giant snail, and also about getting older and reaching new stages of your life and looking back on your choices. NOVELLA

Mamaborg's Milk and the Brilliance of Gems, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Clarkesworld. SFnal breastfeeding/pumping.

Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self, Isabel J. Kim, Clarkesworld. Emigration and the divided self. An intriguing magical-realism premise well-executed.

55 Plaque, Isabel Lee, Clarkesworld. Alien contact, cults, difficult family relationships. NOVELETTE

Sarcophagus, Ray Nayler, Clarkesworld. An explorer on a distant planet, an encounter. Tense and vivid. NOVELETTE

Best-Laid Plans, David D. Levine, Clarkesworld. A mouse researcher on a space station (owned by a small liberal-arts college!) faces A Problem. Manages to not be too cute, and it was fun to see this type of scientist get to solve this type of problem.

Vanishing Point, Robert V.S. Redick, Clarkesworld. Displacement and dissent and defection and return. Arty and moving. F/F. NOVELETTE

Bots of the Lost Ark, Suzanne Palmer, Clarkesworld. Secret Life of Bots sequel!! Yay! I think it's better if you remember the details of that one, which you can read/reread here. NOVELETTE

Bast and Her Young, Tegan Moore, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Institutional memory and the way women get forgotten.

Quintessence, Andrew Dykstal, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This is a good old-fashioned Problem Story - miners, in a harsh environment, facing A Problem. Really well-done, tense and non-obvious the whole way. NOVELETTE.

Parchment Sky, Stephen Case, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Reminds me a lot of that Ted Chiang Tower of Babylon story.

Concerto for Winds and Resistance, Cara Masten DiGirolamo, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. A rare negative comment! I was really into this story but I felt that the open ending was a cop-out. I'm not anti-open-ending in general (although I guess it is rarely my favorite thing) and I do see what the author was probably trying to do with it, but it came off like a long tease and then a fizzle, and I was irritated enough to want to complain about it, so.

A Stranger Goes Ashore, Adam R. Shannon, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Hoooly shit. This is like half an argument about climate collapse and space exploration and half Junji Ito.