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Ten short story recs
Sep. 21st, 2016 08:38 pmMy short story rec list I made last summer has had a small surge in notes again recently, and every time I am reminded of that post's existence I am made happy again. I should do another such rec list! Maybe I should do one every year.
So here's another ten recommended short stories where only two are written by men.
(For the record, last time the authors consisted of seven women, one nonbinary person, and two men. The numbers turned out to be the same this time too.)
And somehow I neglected to mention last time around that all the stories I was reccing were sff but they were. That is once again the case! I love sff so much.
Here we go:
1. Soteriology And Stephen Greenwood: The Role of Salus in the Codex Lucis, by Julia August
So this story is written as a series of emails between various academics and also a young woman named Cara who has found an important historic artefact but has very different priorities with respect to the translation of it that she's asked for help with. I love the juxtaposition between academia and Cara, and how we the readers can figure out what's going on with Cara because we're genre readers, while the academic she's in contact with is mostly just baffled and frustrated by her.
2. The Comet, by W.E.B. Du Bois
This is an early work of Afrofuturism, written nearly a century ago (in 1920), and it's fascinating as a look at the ideas of the time. It's about a black man and a white woman who are the only survivors in New York of the deadly gas from the passing of a comet.
3. First Do No Harm, by Jonathan Edelstein
In the far future in south-central Africa, Mutende is studying to be a doctor, but is frustrated by the lack of innovation allowed. I love how grounded and immersive the story is in its setting!
4. Madeleine, by Amal El-Mohtar
Madeleine, dealing with the grief of losing her mother, is part of an experimental drug program. She has an odd reaction, with strangely intense flashbacks to her past. And then a girl named Zainab starts showing up in these flashbacks, and unlike everything else, Madeleine knows Zainab was never actually part of her memories and childhood. I really enjoy the relationship that develops between Madeleine and Zainab, and I love the ending of the story!
5. Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman, by Rebecca Fraimow
The story consists of a letter from Yudah to the object of his affection, outlining exactly why he's such a catch. And this story is so charming? Like, Yudah's convinced me! I'd marry him, if I were Bluma!
6. The Scrape of Tooth and Bone, by Ada Hoffmann
Alternate-19th-century dinosaur fossil wars! OBVIOUSLY I WAS ALL OVER THIS. And it's so great, really lives up to this excellent premise! I was delighted.
7. Hunting Monsters, by S.L. Huang
Combines several different fairy tale elements into a coherent whole that gives me SO MANY FEELINGS ugh. It's a story about...family, and complicated histories, and what to do when people aren't quite who you thought they were.
8. So Much Cooking, by Naomi Kritzer
The chronicles of a family dealing with a major epidemic as told through a food blog. Such a neat premise and very well executed, I was impressed. But also the story was really good at just making me care super lots about every single character in it.
9. Grandmother-Nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, by Rose Lemberg
A secondary-world fantasy with absolutely wonderful worldbuilding. I love the different way of doing family structure in this culture, and the ways in which almost all of the major characters have difficulty in one way or another fitting into expectations. It's lovely and I want to read five million more words of it. (It's already the longest story on this list so that's saying something.)
10. The Six Swans, by Mallory Ortberg
Back when the Toast was still running, Ortberg had a semi-regular series called "Children's Stories Made Horrific". This story is one of those, and it's AMAZING. By far the best of the lot, imo. Worth being read as a story, not just as a humour column like a lot of the others were. It's a retelling of the fairy tale by the same name, but with emphasis placed on various horrible things that the original takes for granted, and I as a fairy tale nerd was super duper here for everything this story chose to do. And I'm pretty sure people who aren't such fairy tale nerds would like it too!
So here's another ten recommended short stories where only two are written by men.
(For the record, last time the authors consisted of seven women, one nonbinary person, and two men. The numbers turned out to be the same this time too.)
And somehow I neglected to mention last time around that all the stories I was reccing were sff but they were. That is once again the case! I love sff so much.
Here we go:
1. Soteriology And Stephen Greenwood: The Role of Salus in the Codex Lucis, by Julia August
So this story is written as a series of emails between various academics and also a young woman named Cara who has found an important historic artefact but has very different priorities with respect to the translation of it that she's asked for help with. I love the juxtaposition between academia and Cara, and how we the readers can figure out what's going on with Cara because we're genre readers, while the academic she's in contact with is mostly just baffled and frustrated by her.
2. The Comet, by W.E.B. Du Bois
This is an early work of Afrofuturism, written nearly a century ago (in 1920), and it's fascinating as a look at the ideas of the time. It's about a black man and a white woman who are the only survivors in New York of the deadly gas from the passing of a comet.
3. First Do No Harm, by Jonathan Edelstein
In the far future in south-central Africa, Mutende is studying to be a doctor, but is frustrated by the lack of innovation allowed. I love how grounded and immersive the story is in its setting!
4. Madeleine, by Amal El-Mohtar
Madeleine, dealing with the grief of losing her mother, is part of an experimental drug program. She has an odd reaction, with strangely intense flashbacks to her past. And then a girl named Zainab starts showing up in these flashbacks, and unlike everything else, Madeleine knows Zainab was never actually part of her memories and childhood. I really enjoy the relationship that develops between Madeleine and Zainab, and I love the ending of the story!
5. Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman, by Rebecca Fraimow
The story consists of a letter from Yudah to the object of his affection, outlining exactly why he's such a catch. And this story is so charming? Like, Yudah's convinced me! I'd marry him, if I were Bluma!
6. The Scrape of Tooth and Bone, by Ada Hoffmann
Alternate-19th-century dinosaur fossil wars! OBVIOUSLY I WAS ALL OVER THIS. And it's so great, really lives up to this excellent premise! I was delighted.
7. Hunting Monsters, by S.L. Huang
Combines several different fairy tale elements into a coherent whole that gives me SO MANY FEELINGS ugh. It's a story about...family, and complicated histories, and what to do when people aren't quite who you thought they were.
8. So Much Cooking, by Naomi Kritzer
The chronicles of a family dealing with a major epidemic as told through a food blog. Such a neat premise and very well executed, I was impressed. But also the story was really good at just making me care super lots about every single character in it.
9. Grandmother-Nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds, by Rose Lemberg
A secondary-world fantasy with absolutely wonderful worldbuilding. I love the different way of doing family structure in this culture, and the ways in which almost all of the major characters have difficulty in one way or another fitting into expectations. It's lovely and I want to read five million more words of it. (It's already the longest story on this list so that's saying something.)
10. The Six Swans, by Mallory Ortberg
Back when the Toast was still running, Ortberg had a semi-regular series called "Children's Stories Made Horrific". This story is one of those, and it's AMAZING. By far the best of the lot, imo. Worth being read as a story, not just as a humour column like a lot of the others were. It's a retelling of the fairy tale by the same name, but with emphasis placed on various horrible things that the original takes for granted, and I as a fairy tale nerd was super duper here for everything this story chose to do. And I'm pretty sure people who aren't such fairy tale nerds would like it too!
