psocoptera

Sisters of the Vast Black, Lina Rather. Nuns... in... spaaaaace! I really liked this - I liked the nuance of the different reasons the nuns have for joining the order, and the ways their problems are both science fictional (living ship!) and very Catholic (obedience to the Church vs conscience) and the ways those intersected (if you're a celibate order, is it okay for your living ship to mate and make babies?). As with everything I ever read that ever makes me cry, I inevitably ended up reading the crying part at karate (okay, that's not true, occasionally I get a crying part on the playground instead). Recommended, to the extent that I think I'm going to use one of my remaining novella slots on it. Oh, and, F/F. Oh, also and, it turns out Lina Rather wrote "Seven Permutations of my Daughter", a 2017 Lightspeed story I remember liking.

Art! Someday we will reform the art categories but until then we suffer!

Some years I make note of covers and illustrations I liked but this year the only note I had was "look into Sam Hogg for artist" but did not note where I saw his name. So, I don't know what work of his I particularly wanted to acknowledge, or even whether he had a qualifying pro work, so I'm thinking maybe I'll nominate him as a Fan Artist?? Here's Sam Hogg's webpage anyways.

Rocketstackrank does a lightbox of covers of the major magazines and some book covers - you can go through it here if you're willing to use an RSR resource. I still like Julie Dillon and Donato Giancola better than basically anybody but I'm trying not to nominate previous winners, and also eliminated Stephan Martinière on that basis.

Leaving me to narrow this list down to five:
Galen Dara (do I even need a link? after four recent ballot appearances?)
Godwin Akpan (who I think does not make my final five but I did really like these two pieces)
Alyssa Winans
Jasu Hu
Rovina Cai (made the long list last year, in 12th place)
Tommy Arnold (notably, did the Gideon the Ninth cover, also just barely missed the ballot last year)
Kuri Huang

I suppose if I was really dedicated to getting new names onto the ballot, I could stop nominating Galen Dara... hm.

Also, the Current Futures anthology had gorgeous art, particularly: Nancy Liang, Jing Jing Tsong, Cornelia Li, Jazmen Richardson, Kaela Graham, Tracy J. Lee, Alyssa Winans (hey!)

Here's all of my recs from this year that I have labeled as novelettes! Please note that it is quite likely that another one or two may have slipped through somewhere; not every magazine publishes wordcounts and I don't always check if I think I know.


The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye, Sarah Pinsker. A writer, a remote cabin, a complication. NOVELETTE.

Dave's Head, Suzanne Palmer. There's a lot going on here! Recommended. NOVELETTE.

Sand Castles, Adam-Troy Castro. I'm not reccing this one exactly so much as listing it; this is disturbing and memorable and I'm really curious how much it's in dialogue with Sandkings. NOVELETTE.

One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit, Dominica Phetteplace. When the robots become the mysterious employers. NOVELETTE.

Sacrid's Pod, Adam-Troy Castro. A prisoner in an unusual prison. NOVELETTE.

Windrose in Scarlet, Isabel Yap. People who liked El-Mohtar's "Seasons of Glass and Iron" will probably like this story, in which Little Red Riding Hood gets together with Beauty while the Beast is away. NOVELETTE. F/F.

Circus Girl, The Hunter, and Mirror Boy, JY Yang. An interesting haunting. NOVELETTE.

Deriving Life, Elizabeth Bear. Terminal illness, loss, and unusual parasites. NOVELETTE.

Zeitgeber, Greg Egan. Circadian rhythm plague! NOVELETTE.

Dislocation Space, Garth Nix. A contortionist is recruited for a mysterious mission. This is terrific. NOVELETTE.

The Star Plague, Rich Larson. A Viking, some monks, and a problem. NOVELETTE.

Across the Bough Bridge, Mackenzie Kincaid. Shopping in fairyland. NOVELETTE. F/F.

A Handful of Sky, Elly Bangs. A tailor, magical fabric, and class struggle. NOVELETTE. F/F.

Silver Springs, T.R. North. Sin-eating mermaids and a sticky-fingered young woman. NOVELETTE. F/F.

I Am Destiny, Emily McIntyre. Well, this gets my "and THEN what happened??" award. This is totally the intriguing opening to something longer. Content note for rape. NOVELETTE.

Blood, Bone, Seed, Spark, Aimee Ogden. An alchemist researches the creation of life. Intense and brutal. NOVELETTE.

Now Wait for This Week, Alice Sola Kim. MeToo and time loop stories. NOVELETTE.

The Ocean Between the Leaves, Ray Nayler. NOVELETTE.

The Etiquette of Mythique Fine Dining, Carolyn Rahaman. A new chef at a restaurant that serves magical food, enduring the culture of the kitchen. NOVELETTE.

On a first pass, I know I want to nominate the Palmer and the Nix stories, and some others I know I don't want to nominate, leaving me to pick three out of Bear, Egan, Bangs, Ogden, Kim, and Rahaman. The Bangs, Ogden, and Kim stories are on the Locus list, the other three aren't. I'm thinking maybe Bangs, Ogden, and Rahaman, which is sort of interesting as all three are about women who are passionate about their work, working hard in their chosen career, facing some sort of make-or-break turning point. (Although you could maybe describe the Palmer and Nix stories that way too; maybe that's too broad a description. Although it doesn't fit *every* story on this list.)

Fireside publishes a lot of flash (probably the premier market for flash, at this point?) so these are all quite short.

What Cannot Follow, Eugenia Triantafyllou. Living with ghosts.

Radio Static, Carolin Jansen. Another ghost story.

Shelter, Sustenance, Self, Aimee Ogden. An early transhuman.

Amanda Draws Crows, José Pablo Iriarte. An oracular kid.

Advice for Your First Time at the Faerie Market, Nibedita Sen. A mother, a daughter, faerie food.

Five Stories in the Monsoon Night, Nghi Vo. A traveler, some noodles, a child. I want this to be the first chapter of something.

How to Say I Love You with Wikipedia, Beth Goder. Awww, what a good AI.

The Blanched Bones, the Tyrant Wind, Karen Osborne. Sacrificed to a dragon.

Due By the End of the Week, Brandon O'Brien. The difficult life of a magical girl.

Ten Utterances of the Vampire Word, George Lockett. This is sort of like The Ring in a very small space.

Beyond Comprehension, Russell Nichols. A dad with dyslexia and a son with an instant-reading implant.

Nameless in the Winged Court, Rowenna Miller. Thumbelina post-canon.

The Star Plague, Rich Larson. A Viking, some monks, and a problem. NOVELETTE.

The Edges of the World, Grace Seybold. An alchemist and turtles.

The Silent Flowers of the Magician's Garden, Eleanna Castroianni. A potential apprenticeship, or not.

Across the Bough Bridge, Mackenzie Kincaid. Shopping in fairyland. NOVELETTE. F/F.

Finder, Suzanne Palmer. I have really enjoyed her short fiction ("Secret Life of Bots", "Thirty-Three Percent Joe", "Dave's Head") and this is her first novel. It was a lot of fun - hyper-competent repo man, part con man part MacGyver, in a nifty space setting (asteroids and habitats linked by a giant web of cables) with a wild-west feeling. Sort of Heinlein-ish if you stripped out all the sexism and sexuality (this is a very asexual novel, there is one mentioned het relationship between minor characters but otherwise that's just not what anyone here is thinking about, which I enjoyed (I mean, I like romance, but it doesn't have to be in every story)), or maybe Stainless-Steel-Rattish, or possibly we're getting tired of me calling things Vorkosigan-esque but I was definitely reminded of some of Miles' less Vor adventures off-Barrayar. The Scalzi niche of highly readable entertaining scifi. I look forward to reading the sequel (although this one is a complete story and wraps up nicely.)

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky, Mackenzi Lee. A shippy coda novella to The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - I've read this fic before and I'll read it again :). In all sorts of fandoms, I mean, not about these characters specifically. But this time it was these particular dudes and also canon and it was fun; some nice sensual descriptions with swimming at a beach and whatnot, some angst, some comedy, yay romance.

The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling. I was really excited to read this from the description but it was a slog. :( Some good stuff but I think I only wanted about a novella's worth of it. :( [ETA: if any locals want to read it after this encouraging review, I have a copy that was handed off to me by someone else, otherwise I think it's heading for the library sale shelf]

Sand Castles, Adam-Troy Castro. I'm not reccing this one exactly so much as listing it; this is disturbing and memorable and I'm really curious how much it's in dialogue with Sandkings. NOVELETTE.

One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit, Dominica Phetteplace. When the robots become the mysterious employers. NOVELETTE.

No Matter, Kendra Fortmeyer. Small and personal and inconclusive and mysterious.

A Bird, a Song, a Revolution, Brooke Bolander. Great sense of deep time and the long human story in this. F/F.

Sacrid's Pod, Adam-Troy Castro. A prisoner in an unusual prison. NOVELETTE.

Windrose in Scarlet, Isabel Yap. People who liked El-Mohtar's "Seasons of Glass and Iron" will probably like this story, in which Little Red Riding Hood gets together with Beauty while the Beast is away. NOVELETTE. F/F.

The Death of Fire Station 10, Ray Nayler. Sentient buildings, and the inadequacies of sentience as a measure.

Her Appetite, His Heart, Dominica Phetteplace. If you liked 1000 Beetles In A Jumpsuit this is what happens next.

The Locus List came out a few days ago - you can take a look at it here.

Omissions I care about: No Afterward (Johnston) or Spin the Dawn (Lim) in the YAs, which is a bad sign for either making the Lodestar ballot. Of my favorite short stories so far, none of "Tower" (Waldman), "Visible Frontier" (Seybold), "Shattered Sidewalks" (Miller), or "Such Thoughts Are Unproductive" (Campbell), or the novelette "Dave's Head" (Palmer).

They did pick the same three stories I did from New Suns, so that was funny.

I hope to get through Lightspeed, Tordotcom, and BCS in time to take another look at the Locus list and check out short fiction on it from magazines I don't read that is online, but it's already early Feb, so who knows. If anyone has thoughts about omissions (or stuff that you're excited to see made it!) I'd be interested to hear it.

(Oh, one thing I noted, there seems to be some confusion over whether Desdemona and the Deep (which I still haven't read but want to) is a novel (as listed here, Tordotcom's own list of 2019 publications) or a novella, as Locus has sorted it. Aha, the author has posted about that here with an actual wordcount and everything. I love an author who's on top of this stuff.)

ETA: Locus recced 13 novellas last year and 32 this year. I had read 8 of them last year and have read 9 of them this year (so far) and may manage 1-3 more; probably means more of the nominees will be unfamiliar to me?

Second half of Clarkesworld had a good novelette and my three favorite short stories so far:

The Visible Frontier, Grace Seybold. A young man on a trading voyage. The slow reveal of the situation is excellent.

Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart, Sam J. Miller. So, if you remember "Things with Beards", which took The Thing and made it about AIDS and it was amazing, this is a similar concept, only a different pair of things.

Entangled, Beston Barnett. An alien citizen of Earth, looking for connection.

The Yorkshire Mammoth, Harry Turtledove. A James Herriot story from a slightly different world.

Your Face, Rachel Swirsky. An interesting counterpoint to the other Swirsky story I recommended earlier.

Dave's Head, Suzanne Palmer. There's a lot going on here! Recommended. NOVELETTE.

Such Thoughts Are Unproductive, Rebecca Campbell. Life in the surveillance state, the disinformation state.

Annotated Setlist of the Mikaela Cole Jazz Quintet, Catherine George. Generation ship story that managed to hit a couple of beats I don't think I'd seen before.

I spent much of my day at my mechanic (yay new brake pads) which was perfect for paper reading! New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction By People Of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl. 17 stories, of which 10 of the authors sounded at least vaguely familiar and like I had liked something else they had written (and some much more specifically so). (Ok I am totally bragging but the forward was like "you may not be familiar with some" and happened to pick three that I *was* and I was like, ha! all that time I spend reading online short fiction really is accomplishing some familiarity with the field!) I often prefer anthologies that are organized around a theme like fairy tales or djinn or whatever, and there was not really a unifying theme here other than "writers of color that Nisi Shawl knows personally", but it was well-edited, a good mix of lengths and tones and styles and stuff.

Particular standouts: "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex", Tobias S. Buckell, about a cab driver who's seen some shit; "The Shadow We Cast Through Time", Indrapramit Das, about human colonists becoming intertwined with the ecosystem of their new planet, and "The Robots of Eden", Anil Menon, about posthuman emotions. Oh, and maybe "One Easy Trick", Hiromi Goto, about the complexity of body acceptance, except I didn't get the ending. :/