Next SFF Author: Gena Showalter

Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker

Series: Short Fiction

Down Among the Sticks and Bones: Inventive, enthralling, heartbreaking

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway (2016) introduces the reader to a reality in which some children get swept away to other worlds. These worlds of whimsy or darkness (and everything in between) become home to the children so much so that they are devastated if they are forced to leave. If they do come back to our world, a fortunate few may find kindred spirits at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, the setting of that first novella.

The Jewel and Her Lapidary: A Nebula and Hugo-nominated novelette

The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde

Fran Wilde’s novelette The Jewel and Her Lapidary was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards this year. I listened to the 1.75 hour long audiobook version produced by Macmillan Audio and narrated by Mahvesh Murad.

I loved the setting of this story — a kingdom that is protected by powerful gems which can be heard and gently manipulated by lapidaries, people who have a genetic predisposition for connecting with the gems.

SHORTS: Wahls, Jemisin, Gaiman, Coen, Pi

“The Evaluators: To Trade with Aliens, You Must Adapt” by N.K. Jemisin (2016, free on Wired)

About two hundred years in our future, humanity is engaged in exploring other planets and worlds and meeting alien civilizations. Wei Aiuha is part of a team that is engaging in discussions with a newly discovered alien race, the Manka, to see if humans can develop a relationship with the Manka and engage in some profitable trade with them. Back on earth, Thandiwe Solomon is trying to decipher Aiuha’s personal logs from her meetings with the Manka two years earlier.

In Search of Lost Time: A Robin Hood character steals life and memories rather than gold

In Search of Lost Time by Karen Heuler

Hildy, who’s been experiencing odd gaps in her awareness, is hit with the news that she has cancer of the Tempora, a (made-up) part of the brain where the body experiences time. Her chemotherapy has an odd side effect: Hildy can now see auras around people in the form of colorful mists and vapors. What’s more, she finds that she can pull away bits of aura from other people and inhale it. It gives her the feelings and memories from the person she took the bit of aura from.

Black Dog Short Stories: Events in the lives of key Black Dog characters

Black Dog Short Stories by Rachel Neumeier

This set of four short stories is an interlude in Rachel Neumeier’s BLACK DOG universe, where werewolves ― more properly known in this world as black dogs ― are adjusting to a world where humans are now aware of them, after an interspecies war that wiped out the world’s vampires and decimated many of the black dog packs. To the black dogs’ dismay, destroying the vampires also destroyed a type of mental mist or miasma produced by the vampires that kept humans from recognizing the magical creatures around them.

SHORTS: Zelazny, Reisman, Stufflebeam, Silverberg, Moraine

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.

“A Rose for Ecclesiastes” by Roger Zelazny (1963, text and audio free on EscapePod, originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). 1964 Hugo nominee (short fiction)

In this classic and much-anthologized tale of life on Mars, Gallinger, a brilliant linguist and poet with an antagonistic personality, is part of an Earth mission to study the humanoid Martian natives.

SHORTS: de Bodard, Smith, Buckell, Steele, Pinsker, Barnett

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.

The Waiting Stars by Aliette de Bodard (2013, free to read online or download on author’s website). 2013 Nebula award winner and 2014 Hugo award nominee (novelette)

In this 2013 Nebula award-winning story, set in the 22nd century, Aliette de Bodard weaves together two narratives that at first seem unconnected but in the end, of course, are. The first concerns a woman’s exploration of a derelict spaceship in a graveyard of spaceships in an isolated corner of space controlled by the Outsiders.

SHORTS: Wong, Shehadeh, Buckell & Schroeder, Sieberg, Anderson, Honeywell, Taylor, Rustad

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.

You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay, Alyssa Wong (2016, free at Uncanny, $3.99 Kindle magazine issue) 2017 Nebula and 2016 Hugo award nominee (novelette)

Alyssa Wong sets her novelette You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay in a Western mining town, focusing this second-person tale on Ellis,

SHORTS: Buckell, Krasnoff, Miller, Herbert

Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about, including some nominees for the 2016 Nebula award.

“A Militant Peace” by Tobias Buckell (2014, $2.62 at Audible)

“No nation has ever seen an invasion force like this.”Tobias Buckell’s short story “A Militant Peace” was published in Mitigated Futures, a collection of tales dealing with “the future of war,

River of Teeth: Bear in mind, please, that this isn’t a caper

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

River of Teeth (2017) is Sarah Gailey’s first novella-length work, and if the idea of a gonzo queer alt-history hippo extravaganza doesn’t immediately set your imagination aflame, then perhaps rich character work and a thoroughly convincing atmosphere will do the trick. Beyond that, there’s a caper (which Mr. Winslow Remington Houndstooth would like everyone to know is an operation) and a whole lot of revenge to be had.

Let’s travel back in time,

Next SFF Author: Gena Showalter

Previous SFF Author: Martin L. Shoemaker

We have reviewed 8470 fantasy, science fiction, and horror books, audiobooks, magazines, comics, and films.

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Series: Short Fiction

Down Among the Sticks and Bones: Inventive, enthralling, heartbreaking

The Jewel and Her Lapidary: A Nebula and Hugo-nominated novelette

SHORTS: Wahls, Jemisin, Gaiman, Coen, Pi

In Search of Lost Time: A Robin Hood character steals life and memories rather than gold

Black Dog Short Stories: Events in the lives of key Black Dog characters

SHORTS: Zelazny, Reisman, Stufflebeam, Silverberg, Moraine

SHORTS: de Bodard, Smith, Buckell, Steele, Pinsker, Barnett

SHORTS: Wong, Shehadeh, Buckell & Schroeder, Sieberg, Anderson, Honeywell, Taylor, Rustad

SHORTS: Buckell, Krasnoff, Miller, Herbert

River of Teeth: Bear in mind, please, that this isn’t a caper

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