Tag: Karen Tidbeck

The Best of Lightspeed Podcast 2013+

written by David Steffen

My last list for this podcast was actually a combined list of The Best of Lightspeed and Fantasy podcasts, since both were under the editorship of John Joseph Adams and then the two magazines were consolidated into one. The consolidation is still called Lightspeed and publishes four stories on their podcast every month, two of them SF and two of them fantasy (there are more on the site in text, but those are not part of this list). Both Lightspeed and JJA continue to be popular as they have been for years, garnering award nominations. I expect it will only be a matter of time until Lightspeed wins some of those.

John Joseph Adams continues to edit the magazine, and the stories are good as ever. Cutting down the great stories to just a few was a brutal process.

 

The List

1. The Battle of York by James Stoddard
How best to describe this. It is a myth written about the history of the USA based on half-heard fragments and scraps of memory by a person in the future after earthquakes have destroyed all the landmarks and EM has destroyed all the electronic records. It is over-the-top, bizarre, hilarious, yet tells a compelling story amongst it all. You’ve really got to read it just to see how it was done.

2. The Boy and the Box by Adam-Troy Castro
A boy has a box into which he has put the world. A good extension of the age-old “children would be scary if they had absolute power.”

3. Breathless in the Deep by Cory Skerry
Good action story about a pearl diver in a world where there is magic based around kraken ink.

4. A Fine Show on the Abyssal Plain by Karen Tidbeck
Another one that’s hard to explain. Very metafiction. Just read it.

5. Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang
On the surface it’s a story describing fanciful and imaginative fantasy planets, but the format is used to work well into a broader story.

6. HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
Written as a Kickstarter campaign to fund a world takeover by a mad scientist, with everything you can imagine like stretch goals, donation levels with appropriate rewards, reasons why you should fund, interaction with the Kickstarter userbase. Very fun!

7. Alive, Alive Oh by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
One of the more heartfelt stories I’ve read this year about a woman and her daughter on an off-Earth colony, and the reminiscences the woman has with her daughter about their old home.

Honorable Mentions

Division of Labor by Benjamin Roy Lambert

Ragged Claws by Lisa Tuttle

Get a Grip by Paul Park

 

 

 

The Best of The Drabblecast 2012

written by David Steffen

The Drabblecast is still as awesome as ever, and continues to be my favorite source of short fiction, bar none. I particularly look forward to Lovecraft month every August when they solicit brand new Lovecraft-style stories from established authors.

This year marked a milestone for me, the first time I’ve sold a story to the Drabblecast. You can read “Constant Companion” here as part of one of their trifecta specials.

On to the list!

 

1. Betty Flesh and the Meat Man by Damon Shaw
This story is super weird in the best of ways. It throws you for a few loops, and my favorite thing about it is that it never goes where I expect it to. A story about a butcher’s daughter meeting the last available suitor, but you have to read it to really get a sense of it. This is one of my Hugo nominations this year.

2. Jagannath by Karen Tidbeck
People act as the internal components of some bizarre hybrid creature.

3. The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi
A future where the earth can support very little normal life, and the people who’ve been modified to live there who almost don’t seem like people at all.

4. The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward Part 1 and Part 2 by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
The third installment of the same world that Mongoose and Boojum were set in, both great stories. This one is a Drabblecast original, as part of their Lovecraft month. Another story set in this Lovecraftian-esque space opera universe.

5. How I Crippled a World for Just 0.01 Cents by Michael W. Lucht
A scientist manages to travel into a parallel universe where scientific principles are covered by patent law, and the consequences of that law, he is put on trial for violating these laws when trying to create a device to send him home.

 

Honorable Mentions

My True Lovecraft Gave to Me by Eric Lis
Apparently I am not the only one who thinks the song “A Partridge in a Pair Tree” must be the product of a fevered mind.

The Elder Thing and the Puddle People by S. Boyd Taylor
One of the Lovecraft month stories, about a little girl who seems like an elder god to little creatures living in the pond.

Transfer of Ownership by Christie Yant