The Best of Podcastle 2017

written by David Steffen

Podcastle is the weekly fantasy podcast published by Escape Artists.  At the beginning of the year it was co-edited by Graeme Dunlop and Jen Albert.  Partway through the year Graeme retired from the position and his co-editor seat was filled by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali.  As well as weekly full-length feature episodes, they also publish occasional standalone flash stories as bonus episodes, as well as triple flash stories for the occasional feature episode collection.

Because of an author pay-rate change in 2016, they qualified within 2017 as a qualifying market for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, which means they have to meet certain criteria.

In February Podcastle once again participated in the Artemis Rising event across the Escape Artists podcasts, publishing fantasy stories written by women and nonbinary authors.

Podcastle has had a solid year; it was super hard to winnow the full list of 75 stories down to the necessary count.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Podcastle are marked with an asterisk (*), novelettes are marked with a double-asterisk.  If the original publisher was someone besides Podcastle, the original publisher is noted in parentheses for award-eligible fiction.

The List

 

1.  “How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love” by Baker & Dovey* (first published in No Shit There I Was)
Included in an anthology of bar-style exaggerated story, an over-the-top fun exaggerated epic fantasy.

2.  “The Chaos Village” (and part 2) by M.K. Hutchins**
Neuro-atypical man ventures into the chaotic ever-shifting area feared by most to explore.  Sequel to Golden Chaos.

3.  “Home is a House That Loves You” by Rachael K. Jones*
Everyone turns into structures of their choice when they get older.  You can live on to support your family long after your fleshy body passes away.

4.  “All of the Cuddles With None of the Pain” by J.J. Roth*
Artificial companions mimic human babies that won’t grow up and leave you behind.  But sometimes they become human…

5.  “Winter Witch” by Matt Dovey*
The witch can’t fix everything, but sometimes she can make a difference.

6.  “Zilal and the Many-Folded Puzzle Ship” by Charlotte Ashley*
An intricately built boat can be reconfigured in many different ways.

7.  “Six Jobs” by Tim Pratt
Recruited for magical work at a young age, moving from job to job.

8.  “Shadow Man, Sack Man, Half Dark, Half Light” by Malon Edwards* (first published in Shimmer)
A compelling dark story with less common monsters.

Honorable Mentions

“Blackbird Pastry” by Megan Branning*

“The Names of the Sky” by Matthew Claxton*

“A Whisper in the Weld” by Alix E. Harrow

“Maiden, Mother, Crone” by Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky

 

The Best of Lightspeed (and Fantasy) Podcast 2015

written by David Steffen

Lightspeed is as good as ever, another big source for my award nominations each year.  John Joseph Adams continues to edit the magazine.  In 2015 they ran the wildly successful Kickstarter for their Queers Destroy Science Fiction special issue.  The QDSF special issue was published in May, and the Queers Destroy Fantasy followup was published in the occasionally-resurrected Fantasy Magazine page in December.  The QDSF issue was edited by Seanan McGuire, Steve Berman, Sigrid Ellis, Mark Oshiro, and Wendy N. Wagner.  The QDF issue was edited by Christopher Barzak, Liz Gorinsky, and Matthew Cheney.  Check out the Destroy site for more information about this series of projects (People of Color Destroy Science Fiction is the 2016 special edition upcoming)

Lightspeed publishes about half of their stories in podcast form.  The Lightspeed podcast published 52 stories, and the QDF special issues published 2 more.

The List

1. “Nothing is Pixels Here” by K.M. Szpara
Compelled to seek out the rare glitches in a simulated world, a man and his boyfriend decided to visit the real world for the first time since they were kids.

2. “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline M. Yoachim
A scientist is visited by an entity that calls itself Achron, that exists outside the ordinary stream of time.  The story is split into sections based on fantastical versions of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World, which I enjoyed.

3. “Violation of the TrueNet Security Act by Taiyo Fuji”, translated by Jim Hubbert
The original Internet had been abandoned when the search engines went berserk and wiped everyone’s computers, locked everyone out of the Internet.  Now there is only TrueNet, the next generation of the Internet, with human safeguards in place to ensure that automated programs can’t overrun everything again.  But why did the search engines lock everyone out in the first place?

4. “Ghosts of Home” by Sam J. Miller
Very cool idea for a story, exploring the idea of household spirits in a time after the housing bubble popped.  What happens to all the spirits in those empty foreclosed homes?

5. “Veil of Ignorance” by David Barr Kirtley
Based on the theory that difference in perspectives perpetuates inequality because a person is more willing accept bad things happening to people if they’re certain it will only affect other people, a group of friends takes a drug that makes them as a group unable to be certain which one of them they are, to put down a veil of ignorance to see if they will treat each other better from the simple fact of each person not knowing whether they are the one mistreating or being mistreated.  Tricky point of view in this one, but I think it was pulled off nicely.

 

Honorable Mentions

“Werewolf Loves Mermaid” by Heather Lindsley

“Tea Time” by Rachel Swirsky

“The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente

 

 

 

 

Long List Anthology Kickstarter: The Home Stretch!

written by David Steffen

A City On It's Tentacles (1)It occurs to me 20 days into a 26 day Kickstarter campaign for the Long List anthology that I have not actually mentioned the Kickstarter campaign on my own website.  It has been a crazy 20 days and so much has been happening this particular thing has been postponed while I was working on other factors related to the campaign.  Well, better late than never, and with 6 days left in the campaign there is still some time for those who are interested to back the project to get their rewards and to help push toward the couple of remaining stretch goals.

You can read more detailed information on the Kickstarter page, but I’ll give a brief rundown here.

Purpose

Every year the Hugo Awards celebrate short stories (and other content) related to SF fandom as nominated and voted by supporters of WorldCon.  The works on the ballot receive a great deal of attention as they are distributed in a packet to voters and the voters discuss them.  Every year after the awards are given out, the Hugo administrators publish a longer list of nominated works which receive much less attention though they are also works that were greatly loved by the voting fanbase.  The purpose of the Long List anthology is to publish as many of the works from that longer list as possible.

Goals

The campaign’s base goal was relatively modest–only covering the purchase of nonexclusive reprint rights for the stories in the short story category, with stretch goals to add novelettes and novellas.  The campaign got off to big start with the base goal being reached just 2 days into the campaign, and the stretch goals being reached only a few days later.  Since the stretch goals were reached so early in the campaign I got to work making ever larger and ever more exciting stretch goals.  This added up to three stretch goals to produce an expand an audiobook of those stories for which audio rights could be acquired, produced by Skyboat Media who you may know as the folks who produce the excellent award-winning Lightspeed Magazine podcast.  The first of those goals has been reached, so there will be an audiobook which will contain 8-9 of the short stories.  There are two stretch goals remaining to add novelettes and novellas to the production.  I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with Skyboat Media–they have produced many of my favorite podcast fiction recordings and I am very excited to hear their productions.

Table of Contents

The following is the list of the table of contents of stories that will be part of the anthology.

Note that there will be 3 formats of the anthology:
1.  Ebook:  Will contain all of the stories (180,000 words of short fiction).
2.  Print book:  Will contain all of the short stories and all of the novelettes. May contain novellas depending on printing constraints. (around 140,000 words for short stories and novelettes)
3.  Audiobook:  Will contain at least 8-9 of the short stories (close to 40,000 words, which I think comes out to perhaps 4 hours of produced audio?), and if higher stretch goals are reached may contain novelettes and novellas which will add more content.

The following is the full list of stories:

Short Stories

  • “Covenant” by Elizabeth Bear
  • “This Chance Planet” by Elizabeth Bear
  • “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet
  • “The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard
  • “The Truth About Owls” by Amal El-Mohtar
  • “When It Ends, He Catches Her” by Eugie Foster
  • “A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone
  • “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones
  • “Toad Words” by T. Kingfisher
  • “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik

Novelettes

  • “The Magician and LaPlace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill
  • “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys
  • “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson
  • “The Bonedrake’s Penance” by Yoon Ha Lee
  • “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” by Scott Lynch
  • “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
  • “We are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller
  • “Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy” by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu
  • “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson

Novellas

  • “The Regular” by Ken Liu
  • “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky

 

Rewards

There are a variety of backer rewards left for those who might be interested, listed briefly here.

  • Copies of ebook, print book, audiobook or combinations thereof.
  • A sonnet or sestina written by Ruthanna Emrys
  • A question for Rachel Swirsky which she’ll answer in a blog post
  • A “Women Destroy Science Fiction” (Lightspeed Magazine special edition) audiobook autographed by Gabrielle de Cuir
  • Special thank you within the audiobook
  • 11×17 poster prints of the wonderful cover art for the anthology “A City On Its Tentacles” by Galen Dara)
  • Custom digital art by Sam J. Miller in which he will sketch an animal of your choice in the occupation of your choice
  • Studio recording copy of the Long List anthology with director notes and narrator autographs
  • Audio recording of your story by voice actors Stefan Rudnicki, Wilson Fowlie, or Graeme Dunlop
  • Voice mail recording by voice actor Stefan Rudnick (of Skyboat Media)
  • Story critiques by Yoon Ha Lee, Anaea Lay, or me
  • Consultation with Skyboat Media regarding suitability of book for audiobook format
  • Lunch with Skyboat Media at WorldCon 2016 in Kansas City
  • Breakfast and watching recording session at Skyboat Media in Los Angeles
  • Audiobook co-producer credit

Interview: Ann Leckie

LeckiePhoto-160x240Ann Leckie‘s Ancillary Justice swept the awards. (See the list below.) The sequel, Ancillary Sword, is due in October 2014. The third novel in the trilogy will be titled Ancillary Mercy. Lecke is a Clarion West graduate, former VP of SFWA, founder of GigaNotoSaurus, and former slush editor for Podcastle. Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Subterranean Magazine.

CARL SLAUGHTER: YOU’RE A CLARION GRADUATE. WHAT DID YOU LEARN AT CLARION THAT MADE A CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE IN YOUR WRITING CAREER?

ANN LECKIE: I learned a *lot* at Clarion West. It would have been difficult not to. But I think there were two things that made the biggest difference.

One was something that, when I say it, maybe sounds kind of trivial. But it was so important. Which was, that before I went, I knew that I wanted to write, and I had been writing–of course, you have to send a sample of your fiction with your application. And I had written two novels (now trunked, fortunately) and several short stories, and had been submitting those short stories. But I was hesitant to say, “I’m a writer.” I would, when asked, kind of hedge. “I’m trying to write.”

After six weeks of being with people who took my work seriously, who all assumed that of *course* I was a writer, I went home feeling like I could take my own work seriously now. Not that I was holding back, or not taking it seriously before. But the “gosh should I really be doing this, am I wasting my time, what if I’m not really a writer?” part of my internal critic was gone, which psychologically freed me up to push harder and be more confident in my work. This might not be a big deal for some folks, but it was really important to me.

The second thing is maybe also a bit odd. So, our week six instructor was Michael Swanwick. Who is awesome. I mean, he read every single story each of us had applied with and also every single story we’d turned in during the entire workshop, and gave us critiques on every one of them. This is an amazing commitment, an incredible gift to us. And he’s Michael freaking Swanwick, right? So when he critiqued the story I’d turned in for week six, he gave me all kinds of fabulous advice, much of it very specific, and I noted it all down and was all set to revise the story according to his advice. Because, seriously, it was, no question, excellent advice. How could it not be?

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it was excellent advice for an entirely different story. Not the story I’d written, but the story he’d perceived in the shambles that was my first draft. And I said to myself, “Self, you can’t actually take any of that advice. Instead, you need to rewrite the story in such a way that Michael Swanwick would not have misread it.”

That story turned out to be my first genre sale, my first pro sale, and my first appearance in a Years Best anthology. And the vitally important lesson Michael Swanwick taught me was that sometimes you ought to ignore even the very best advice. Even if it comes from Michael Swanwick. Maybe that sounds trivial, too. But anyone who’s been faced with several, possibly contradictory critiques of a story will probably know how incredibly useful that knowledge is.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: FROM THE FIRST DRAFT OF ANCILLARY JUSTICE AS A SHORT STORY UNTIL YOU SOLD THE NOVEL MANUSCRIPT WAS, WHAT, 10 YEARS? WERE THERE TIMES DURING THAT DECADE WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER FINISH THE BOOK OR THOUGHT IT WOULD NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH TO SELL?

ANN LECKIE: Oh, merciful Unconquered Sun, yes. Pretty much the entire time I was working on it, plus the entire time I was querying agents. I’ve come to think of that as the normal emotional background of writing, actually.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: YOU WERE WORKING ON THE MANUSCRIPT WHILE YOU HAD YOUNG CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE. HOW DID YOU MANAGE BOTH AT THE SAME TIME?

ANN LECKIE: With some difficulty. At first, I would write in the few hours a day that my toddler napped, while my older child was at school. When he stopped napping, I signed him up for morning nursery school and wrote then. Once both kids were in school full time it got easier, though I’d made my life a bit more complicated by taking a job as a lunch lady. I wasn’t able to finish Ancillary Justice, though, until I quit that job and had school hours to myself. It would have been a zillion times harder if I’d had a full-time day job to handle. I’ve been really, really lucky.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: ANCILLARY JUSTICE SWEPT THE AWARDS. ANY IDEA WHAT THE APPEAL OF THE STORY IS THAT MADE IT SO POPULAR?

ANN LECKIE: I honestly don’t. Well, I did sit down to write a kind of story that I thought I’d enjoy reading. I threw in things that appealed to me–heck, I crowbarred them in. I was working the whole time with the assumption that it would never sell so I might as well please myself. I guess there are other people out there who like the same kinds of things I do!

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: YOU HAVEN’T DONE SHORT STORIES IN A WHILE. TOO BUSY WITH NOVELS?

ANN LECKIE: Pretty much, yes! Though I’d like to do more short fiction some time.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT WAS YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH GIGANOTOSAURUS AND WHAT WERE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF YOUR TIME THERE? WHAT ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT POD CASTLE?

ANN LECKIE: I started GigaNotoSaurus because I’d inherited a bit of money, and I felt that there weren’t enough places publishing longer fiction. I’ve been really pleased with how it’s turned out: in its first year, two stories I published were nominated for Nebulas, and another one the next year. And I published some amazing work by amazing writers, like Zen Cho’s “House of Aunts” or Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s “Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon.” Or Yoon Ha Lee’s “The Winged City.” Or…I could go on.

Podcastle–when Rachel Swirsky became editor of Podcastle (that was before PC had even started running) she asked me if I’d like to read slush for her. And I said yes, because it seemed like it would be fun. And it was! I also did some episode intros, and narrated some stories, which was also great fun. When Rachel was ready to step down, she asked me if I was interested in editing, but I was already setting up GNS, and felt two editing gigs would be too much. So I stayed on slushing for Anna and Dave when they took over.

I enjoyed it very much, but I’ve stepped down as slusher there, and turned over my GNS editing duties to Rashida J Smith, because noveling right now is taking up a lot of brain space.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT PERSPECTIVE DID YOU GAIN DURING YOUR TIME AS SECRETARY OF SFWA?

ANN LECKIE: There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes at a volunteer organization. Orgs like SFWA continue to exist and function because of the hard work of folks who actually have lots of other things to attend to, and they spend their free time doing that hard work. And it’s easy for members to think of the Board (or whatever the org equivalent is) as “them” to our “us” but really “they” are us to begin with. I’ve come to be a bit more patient with how slow some organizational decisions are, and how easy it is to think a particular issue or procedure is just a matter of immediately doing one particular thing, when really it’s more difficult and complicated than that, for reasons that aren’t necessarily visible to me.

 

CARL SLAUGHTER: GOT ANY ADVICE TO ASPIRING SPECULATIVE FICTION WRITERS?

ANN LECKIE: Yes! Don’t give up. Be willing to take criticism, be willing to reconsider what you’re doing, but once you’ve decided on what you’re doing, do that. Don’t worry about what someone told you editors want or don’t want, don’t worry about whether your work is marketable, don’t worry about lists of “rules” that tell you not to use second person or never to use adverbs or whatever. Just do it, and do it as awesomely as you can at that particular time in your life, and trust the universe for the rest. And when it’s done, send it out and try to forget about it, and start working on the next thing. And speaking as a former slusher–when you submit, always read and follow the guidelines!

 

Ancillary Justice won the following awards:

2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Golden Tentacle for best debut novel of 2013.
Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year.
British Science Fiction Association BSFA Award for Best Novel of 2013.
Nebula Award for Best Novel.
Locus Award for Best First Novel.

The novel was also nominated for the following awards:

Shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award.
Tiptree Award Honor List for 2013.
Finalist for the 2013 Compton Crook Award.

 

Carl_eagle

 

Carl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

Review: Hugo Short Story Nominees

written by David Steffen

And here it is my favorite category of my favorite SF award, the Hugo Award for Short Story. Another smaller batch this year because the Hugo rules require the nominees to have a minimum of 5% of the total nomination ballot. On the one hand, it’s great that there are so many great short stories being published every year that the nominating vote is spread that thin. On the other hand, I want more stories and it’s disappointing to have less stories to read just because there are more great stories out there this year than ever based on an arbitrary percentage threshold.

Neil Clarke, editor of Clarkesworld, has posted an editorial suggesting that the rule be changed to encourage more short stories to end up on the ballot in the face of increasing Hugo voters. Personally, I would love to see that rule changed. My preference would be to allow the top 5 and count any ties for 5th place as nominees. A too-large ballot can be detrimental if you’re using a simple voting scheme where each voter picks only one story–two stories by one author will self-compete and if people’s first and second choices are very close in their mind there would be no way for them to support both. But the Hugo Awards use an instant runoff scheme where you can rank all the stories in the order that you like them, so if your favorite gets eliminated your vote will still support your second favorite, and so on.

The rules can change if people get involved and raise their voice about what they want. A few years ago, Neil Clarke was a major voice in saving the SemiProZine category by helping people understand the value in the award, and this can be the same.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s go on to the stories!

 

1. “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere”, John Chu (Tor.com, 02-2013)
A few years ago, the world inexplicably changed so that any lie you utter would be met with a downpour of cold water that falls from nowhere combined with a feeling of angst, both proportional to the audacity of your lie. These effects can only be counteracted by saying something unequivocal. You can avoid saying the truth and you can mislead as long as you don’t utter something that can’t be untrue. The protagonist Matt is gay and has managed to avoid coming out to his traditional-minded Chinese parents for years. Now Matt and his boyfriend Gus have decided they want to get married, and Matt needs to break the news to his parents, over his sister’s objections.

At first I thought the speculative element of the water was more than a bit corny. But the story doesn’t make a joke of this concept and runs with it. As with the best speculative fiction, it’s not about the speculative element. It’s about how that element allows us to look at the real world through the lens of the speculative. This story did an excellent job of that. It’s a great story, well told, and I highly recommend it. Easy choice in this category.

 

2. “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor.com, 04-2013)
People send their dreams and wishes floating down the Mae Ping River with the hope that those dreams will be captured, read and come true. It is a surprise what some wish for and why. One can never know what’s inside someone’s heart,what they really truly want, and those dreams sometimes reveal our true selves.”

This is the introduction before the story starts, and the story is exactly what is described by those few sentences. The story starts by explaining the wishes of a bunch of people that are cast into the river, and then as the story plays out it’s shown how those wishes are granted, not always in a straightforward fashion. Young Tangmoo dies in the opening paragraphs, drowned in that same river, and the story rolls back to reveal his wish and the wishes of others.

This was an interesting thought experiment about how one must be careful what one wishes for, but to me it never really extended beyond a thought experiment. Some of the turns of phrase were interesting and strange and definitely lent something to the story. But in the end I just was never really connected with it, and the concept itself was also not something new to me. Not bad by any means, but easily forgettable.

 

3. If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”, Rachel Swirsky (Apex Magazine, Mar-2013)
This story starts out with the whimsical hypothetical in the title, as spoken by a woman to a friend she loves dearly, and continues on to give real life reasons why she is pondering this whimsy.

The characters read as real once the story got to the story, but I found all the hypotheticals more irritating than entertaining or illuminating. If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then D. A story this short shouldn’t feel too long, but to me it did. Eventually the story gets to the actual story behind the hypotheticals, but by that time I was just impatient for it to be over.

 

4. Selkie Stories Are for Losers”, Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons, Jan-2013)
A girl’s mother leaves her family behind. The girl thinks the circumstances imply that her mother is a selkie (a mythical shapeshifting creature that could turn into a seal by pulling on her sealskin, but would be trapped in human form if that skin was stolen).

Most of the body of the story is the girl criticizing the tropes of selkie stories, which I wasn’t very interested in, partly because I haven’t seen enough selkie stories to really say whether her tropes are actually accurate or not. While some of the circumstances of her mother leaving match a selkie story, I didn’t see any really strong evidence that that was the case, so it just seemed to be a story about a neurotic fixation caused by family trauma. The family trauma, perhaps I should’ve felt moved by, but it happened before the story started, and rather than confront the real situation she spends all of her time obsessing about selkie stories.

Not my thing, I guess.

Review: Nebula Short Story Nominees

written by David Steffen

You can find a full list of the 2013 Nebula nominees here. This is a review of the short stories nominated this year for the Nebulas, which are chosen by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

1. ‘‘Alive, Alive Oh,” Sylvia Spruck Wrigley (Lightspeed 6/13)
The story of an interplanetary colonist from Earth who traveled with her husband with the expectation that they would be able to return in ten years, but a pathogen keeps them from returning. Their daughter, born on the colony, has never seen Earth and has grown up with her mother’s stories of the old world. This story has roots in the experience of immigrants here on Earth, but is all the more heartfelt for the differences rendered by SFnal treatment.

Top notch. Not much else to say, just go read it. This is easily my pick for the category.

 

2. ‘‘The Sounds of Old Earth,” Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed 1/13)
Old Earth isn’t worth preserving anymore, most people say. It should be broken down into its component materials for the further development of New Earth. But not everyone wants to evacuate the planet. For people who have spent their whole lives there, raised their families there, that’s a difficult and painful transition to make.

Not a bad story. I felt for the character, but it was a bit maudlin for my tastes. There is conflict, certainly, but nothing that the character can do anything about so the story just kind of happens around him. Not bad, but just not my cup of tea, I guess.

 

3. ‘‘Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer,” Kenneth Schneyer (Clockwork Phoenix 4)
This is told as though it were one of those audio tours you can sometimes get at museums to walk you through the exhibits in some meaningful order. It steps through an artist’s works from the beginning of her career to her death, examining how her technique changed with events in her life, in particular in the representation of loved ones who had died.

I found the technique for this one served to only increase the distance between me and the character so that she’s a historical figure of little importance to me rather than really immersing me in the story. It was very faithful to its medium–I would enjoy listening to this in headphones as I walked around an art exhibit looking at each of the works as it’s described. But on its own, without the actual art having been created and shown to me in parallel, it reads pretty much like I’d expect a museum tour to read without being able to be there or look at anything–kind of interesting but very prolonged and all of the most interesting stuff is not onstage. I found some of the discussion questions after each painting rather annoying because so many seem to be based around the writer of the audio tour not really paying attention to the quote the author herself gave about why some figures are drawn differently than others. If Mr. Schneyer hired an artist to make the paintings that go along with this story and presented them together, I’d happily buy the ebook for that.

 

4. ‘‘If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” Rachel Swirsky (Apex 3/13)
This story starts out with the whimsical hypothetical in the title, as spoken by a woman to a friend she loves dearly, and continues on to give real life reasons why she is pondering this whimsy.

The characters read as real once the story got to the story, but I found all the hypotheticals more irritating than entertaining or illuminating. If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then D. A story this short shouldn’t feel too long, but to me it does. Eventually the story gets to the actual story behind the hypotheticals, but by that time I was just impatient for it to be over.

 

5. ‘‘Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons 1/7/13)
A girl’s mother leaves her family behind. The girl thinks the circumstances imply that her mother is a selkie (a mythical shapeshifting creature that could turn into a seal by pulling on her sealskin, but would be trapped in human form if that skin was stolen).

Most of the body of the story is the girl criticizing the tropes of selkie stories, which I wasn’t very interested in, partly because I haven’t seen enough selkie stories to really say whether her tropes are actually accurate or not. While some of the circumstances of her mother leaving match a selkie story, I didn’t see any really strong evidence that that was the case, so it just seemed to be a story about a neurotic fixation caused by family trauma. The family trauma, perhaps I should’ve felt moved by, but it happened before the story started, and rather than confront the real situation she spends all of her time obsessing about selkie stories.

Not my thing, I guess.

Review: Nebula Novelette Nominees 2012

written by David Steffen

On to the next category of the Nebula awards, the Best Novelette, which covers fiction between the word counts of 7,500 and 17,500 words. Generally I’m not a big fan of novelettes because to me they feel like short stories that have overstayed their welcome. Even though they can be more than twice as long as a short story I rarely feel like they have more meaningful content than a short story and so the story is just diluted in a larger space. It’s an awkward length, I think, not enough room to spread into more plot arcs like a novel would do but too long for the appealing conciseness of a short story.

But if I’m going to read some novelettes, I may as well read the ones that other people nominated for the Nebula award. They’re supposed to be the cream of the crop, after all. So, here goes. I’ve read all 7 of the nominees and rank-ordered them based on preference.

Nebula Award for Best Novelette

1. The Waves by Ken Liu (Asimov’s 12/12)
Maggie Chao is a resident of a generation ship headed for a distant colony that will take 400 years to reach its destination. She’s settled in for her leg of the journey, raising a family that will take her place, when they receive a message from Earth with the formula for eternal youth. Eternal youth, while attractive, poses its own difficulties in an enclosed environment where all of the resources have been scheduled and rationed precisely to allow them all to survive to their destination. And this isn’t the only major change to their lives as they continue and as they land to make their colony. Technology has been developing on Earth while they traveled, and a singularity has already passed by the time they land, and it may not be the only one.

This story had a very Golden Age feel to me, in the best way possible. There were characters, and I liked those characters, but what really made it memorable to me was the progression of technologies from start to finish, each one being kind of its own stage of worldbuilding. It evoked a really nice sense of wonder that kept me interested and happy to be reading it. The main story is interspersed with Maggie telling different mythical Creation tales, each of which ties into events in the main story in interesting ways.

 

2. The Pyre of New Day by Catherine Asaro (The Mammoth Book of SF Wars)
Hypron is a telepath with withered legs who lives with his brother Oxim on the bleak muddy landscape of a frontier planet called New Day. They’d come here with other colonists to this terraformed world to make a life for themselves, but were abandoned by the founders of the colony when the terraforming failed, and the atmosphere turned more and more toxic. As more and more colonists died, Hypron’s telepathy proved a major weakness for him as he was forced to live through each person’s grief as their loved ones died. But he and his brother have survived, eking out a life here by working together. Until the day that Oxim is killed by pirates, leaving Hypron alone on their tiny home in the middle of the mud sea and with no way to get food, to call for help, or transport himself away.

Meanwhile, Soz Valdoria finds him by chance. She is a Jagernaut, one of a class of technologically enhanced human rumored with a vicious reputation as monstrous killers. Her ship needs maintenance after battling a monster in the mud sea, and she needs a place to dock it. She too is a telepath, and she follows Hypron’s grieving thoughts to his home and docks her ship there to do her maintenance. She befriends Hypron. Soon the pirate ship that killed Oxim returns, and Hypron and Valdoria have to work together to survive.

I liked both characters in this story quite a lot. I really wanted them to survive. The worldbuilding was interesting, and the story well written. The main flaw I saw in this story was the power-balance didn’t lend itself well to providing the story with tension. At the beginning of the story when Hypron realizes he is alone and without any conceivable way to survive, there is absolutely nothing he can do but contemplate suicide to make his end more quick. While I felt for the guy, there wasn’t much tension in that inevitable fate from which he has no power to escape. When Valdoria shows up at just the right time, she of course turns Hypron’s chances completely around, but she is so capable that when the pirates show up again I never had the slightest doubt that she would take them out. So again, I never felt a lot of tension.

But the story has plenty of good things going for it.

 

3. The Finite Canvas by Brit Mandelo (Tor.com 12/5/12)
Molly is a medical doctor on the barely habitable old Earth, which has been abandoned by most of humanity. Her clinic is supported by a donor, but she’s barely scraping by to get herself in food and clothes. A woman walks in to her clinic, named Jada, hard in body and mind, a wanted assassin and member of a crime syndicate fleeing pursuit here. Her body is covered in stylized scars, each marking one of her kills. Off-planet she would have an artist do the scarring for her, but there is no such luxury here on old Earth. She is here to ask the doctor to give her a new scar to commemorate Jada murdering her partner. In exchange, Jada will pay her money that Molly sorely needs for medical treatment, and give her a story.

I enjoyed this story. I really felt that both characters were real people, who find common ground despite all their differences. Jada tells her story as Molly adds to Jada’s scars. I really was enjoying this story until the ending, where it takes a sudden turn that for me came out of nowhere. Judging by the story’s text, this turn was meant to be understandable and justifiable, but I didn’t find it that way. The ending made me wonder what exactly I had missed in everything that came before it that made that ending work, wondering if I’d missed the point entirely.

 

4. Close Encounters by Andy Duncan (The Pottawatomie Giant & Other Stories)
This story tells of events later in the life of Buck Nelson, one of the cheerful and vocal alien “contactees” of the 1950s and 1960s. Once very vocal and happy to share his stories, he’s withdrawn from the public eye over the years. A reporter, Miss Hanes of the Associated Press, knocks on his door and tries to get him to talk again. He rebuffs her, but she’s persistent, and eventually she talks him into talking with her about his stories about alien contact with the alien who called himself Bob Solomon and their travels together to the moon, Mars, and Venus. He’s been telling stories for so long after the contact that even he doesn’t remember which ones were true. The date is nearing of the annual picnic which he used to invite people to join him in stargazing in the hopes of Bob Solomon coming back.

I liked Buck a lot, a colorful salt of the earth kind of guy. His interaction with Miss Hanes was very entertaining. Likeable characters are a definite plus, but though there was an ending that tied things up, I felt like the story in general was kind of meandering and too slow to get where it was going.

 

5. Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 8/22/12)
Renn never learned great skill in art, but she did develop a skill in magic that allows her to paint things perfectly at the cost of destroying the artistic subject. Her former teacher, the great artist Lisane de Patagnia is dying–she has not given Renn her estate, but she has insisted that Renn paint her with magic. This is a practice forbidden due to the fatal consequences, but she wants to leave something behind that will become her legacy and Renn’s when she and Renn are both gone.

Lisane collected student lovers like trinkets, using them and discarding them when they disinterested her, always in pursuit of someone. Renn was one of her lovers, but so were others, including Orla who is receiving Lisane’s estate.

This is a story of loss and of grieving, and of finding your own place in the world. It was well-written, but I found that I couldn’t relate to any of the characters enough for the story to really have an impact. Lisane is selfish to the point of sociopathy, pursuing her art and her carnal desires in the most selfish possible way, with utter disregard for the well-being of those she tears apart in the process. And the students who flock to her become such doting doormats with utter disregard for their own well-being that I couldn’t relate to them either.

 

6. Swift, Brutal Retaliation by Meghan McCarron (Tor.com 1/4/12)
Sisters Brigid and Sinead are mourning their brother Ian. Ian was a fan of pulling pranks, and now that he’s gone the sisters have started to pull pranks on each other in escalating fashion. They begin to see visions of their brother, and they realize that he always manifests during an act of a prank. Does he manifest because they are evoking his spirit in pulling pranks the way he would have? Or is he trying to stop them? Or something else entirely?

I didn’t really care about what seemed to be the central questions of the story, why the pranks brought their brother around. And in the end I didn’t really care about any of the characters. A story about grieving is a great way to emotionally connect with me, but mixing it with childish and malicious pranks leaves me not liking any of the characters. By the end I didn’t care what happened to any of them.

 

7. Fade to White by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld 8/12)
Joseph McCarthy has become President of the United States and life is good for everyone. Yes it is good, as defined by the goodness measures laid down by President McCarthy, everything from the war effort to the structure of the family unit. Never mind the radiation and the widespread impotence or the government choosing your occupation. The story is told as alternating propoganda videos by the McCarthy administration and two children who are trying to find their place in this world.

I felt like I should like this story. For those who may not know, Joseph McCarthy was the US Senator who singlehandedly started the Red Scare, lying his ass off to convince people that Communists were infiltrating us, thousands of spies acting as normal American families. Anyone could be a Communist spy, and you had to keep vigilant and report the slightest odd behavior. But McCarthy never showed any evidence of this in our world, and eventually was disgraced because everyone came to the conclusion he was lying.

McCarthy as President is a great premise for a dystopian future. Even I (who generally doesn’t have interest in politics) can’t help but extrapolate from that basic premise to something really terrible.

I generally liked the sections of this story that were told as editing notes on propoganda tapes. I’ve always liked stories that felt like “found” documents, and this had that feel. The propoganda feel gives an uneasy overpatriotic ring to this part of the story, very creepy.

But the “honestly” told parts of the story bothered me. I mean, bothered me in a way that meant I didn’t like it rather than the seat-squirming involvement in the propoganda sections. I’m having trouble putting my finger on exactly why, but it meant that I didn’t like the story in the end. The closest I’m able to put it to words at this moment is that the “honestly” told parts of the story felt somehow even less genuine than the things that were clearly meant as propoganda. The over-the-top propoganda videos seemed to have been meant as a cautionary tale, and these other sections were meant to show the real life behind the propoganda, a life that isn’t so great. But to me these other sections didn’t ring true, to the point that they feel like propoganda directed at me and authored by Valente, using the obvious propoganda to try to drive me toward believing the other part is authentic when it really just felt like a more subtle propoganda to me. And, I mean, the main message I can detect there isn’t a bad one, that McCarthyism is a scary thing and that it’s a good thing that it didn’t sweep the American mindset and stay there. But the way that it’s told makes me want to distrust every part of the story as more propoganda, and that means that everything is so disingenuous to my gut feelings that there’s nothing of meaning here to me. In the end, this story just ended up just leaving me irritated.

The Best of Podcastle

podcastle-iconPodcastle is a podcast of fantasy stories, which I’ve been listening to for the past couple of months to get caught up on their backlog. They’ve provided a whole lot of great stuff for free distribution. They do ask for donations, but they are not required to listen to their fiction. Now that I’ve listened to all of their episodes, I’ve made a list of my top ten favorite episodes (and some honorable mentions that almost made the list).

If you like this article, you might also want to check out The Best of Pseudopod, in which I make a similar list for Podcastle’s horror counterpart, and The Best of Escape Pod, the science fiction counterpart.

1. Cup and Table by Tim Pratt
Read by Stephen Eley

Superpowered agents on a quest to find the Holy Grail. You can’t get much cooler than that! On top of that, the protagonist has a confused time sense, and Pratt’s writing of the story in non-chronological order works surprisingly well. And if that’s not enough, the ending was both cool and unpredicted (by me anyway).

2. A Heretic by Degrees by Marie Brennan
Read by Paul Tevis

Worldbuilding at its best. The strange world of Driftwood is revealed to the reader bit by bit. I know from experience that this is a tough balance to strike. Too much at once and it gets boring. Not enough and it’s confusing. Parallel worlds have always been one of my favorite fantasy elements.

3. Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery by John Schoffstall
Read by Heather Lindsley

This one starts out relatively normal and ramps up the weird as it goes on which, for me, made it easier to digest. I don’t particularly like the protagonist of this one, but she feels like a real person and that’s more important to me than likeability anyway. If you’ve never read any surrealism you might want to give this one a try just to see what you think. There are some lewd images and swear words–they fit well within the story, but just FYI.

4. Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters by Tim Pratt
Read by Matthew Wayne Selznick

Clearly Tim Pratt’s style is well suited to my reading tastes! This is a very long one, one of the Podcastle “Giant” episodes, and one of the few Giants that I’ve liked. Most stories this long are much longer than they need to be–they could benefit by cutting their length in half and they seem to be padded for word count. This one is worth every word, every second. I do love superheroes, and this story gives nods to old-school superheroes alongside more modern styles, and has some unique ideas I haven’t seen in any other superhero stories (which is hard to do in this day and age). Lots of good rip-roaring action, as well as some good mystery elements.

5. Come Lady Death by Peter S. Beagle
Read by Paul S. Jenkins

This is an oldie but a goody. First published back in 1963, it tells the story of Death in human form who attends a party. The setting is similar to Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, but the style and plot are all their own. It’s not the first time I’ve seen a female Death figure (Susan Bones from Pratchett’s Discworld series, for instance), but this incarnation is distinct and provides an enjoyable experience.

6. Nine Sundays in a Row by Kris Dikeman
Read by Kane Lynch

I have a lot of respect for anyone who can do a nonhuman point of view well, and Kris Dikeman has done that with this story. It’s the tale of a deal with the devil with the point of view of the devil’s dog, sent to watch over the supplicant who must spend every Sunday night at a crossroads for nine weeks in a row in order to earn a meeting with the devil. The characters are great, and the ending is fitting. A great story.

7. Komodo by Tim Pratt
Read by Cat Rambo

Yes, another one by Tim Pratt! Apparently I’m a huge fan, though I made the list on the stories without thinking much about the authors. His style and subject matter must just be particularly well-suited for my tastes. So I’ll definitely be watching for more from Pratt. This is the tale of a very powerful sorceress living in the modern day, when she comes up against something that seems to be beyond her abilities. She’s a well fleshed-out character, and the magic system in this is really good, not like anything else I’ve read.

8. Colin and Ishmael in the Dark by William Shunn
Read by MarBelle

Usually I don’t like omniscient point of view, where the narrator is an apparently corporeal third party in the room, unable to affect, only to observe. But it works well in this story, describing an encounter between a prisoner and a guard in a pitch black jail cell. The story is told almost entirely through dialogue between the two, and because the scene is dark, the actual events that are occuring are not always straightforward to interpret. This helps keep the story as disorienting for the reader as it is for the characters, which is quite a trick.

9. The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change by Kij Johnson
Read by Heather Lindsley

The premise of this story is very interesting, with domesticated animals suddenly gaining the ability to speak, and it focuses on the interaction between dogs and their former masters. As the dogs develop a lingual culture, they develop (as the title states) trickster stories, which are interspersed with the narrative itself. I actually liked the trickster stories better than the main narrative, despite their short disconnected nature. I wish the world had been fleshed out a bit more, animals gaining the ability to speak didn’t have nearly the effect that I would’ve expected, but there’s still a lot to love about this story, and the trickster stories themselves made them worth the listen.

10. Castor on Troubled Waters by Rhys Hughes
Read by Alasdair Stuart

This is a ridiculous tale told by a character who has quite a story to tell in the time honored tradition of making stuff up to get out of paying people money. This is clear from the very beginning, which just makes his tale all the more funny.

Honorable Mentions

It was hard to pick out just ten, so here’s a few that were strong contenders to make the list.

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
Read by Cheyenne Wright

I know, it’s nearly a crime for Poe to be on the honorable mentions and not on the actual list. I’ve loved Poe’s writing since I first read them in English class, and this is one of my favorite authors. I love Cheyenne’s voice, and he narrated this quite well, except for one detail. The word “Amontillado” is mispronounced throughout, which drove me to distraction. One mispronunciation isn’t the end of the world, but since the word is used many times within the story, is in the title itself, and is in fact the central motivation for one of the characters, I found it hard to ignore. Even if it had been pronounced phonetically, it would have been better. In any case, Poe is one of my favorite authors of all time, I still wanted his story to be mentioned.

In Ashes by Helen Keeble
Read by Marie Brennan

The Twa Corbies by Marie Brennan
Read by Elie Hirschman

In Order to Conserve by Cat Rambo
Read by Mur Lafferty