My short fiction reviews over the last couple years have been almost entirely limited to two monthly posts: a review of the magazines I read cover-to-cover and a catch-all roundup with an assortment of everything else. But in 2024, I’ve been trying to be a little more consistent in my reading of magazines that aren’t necessarily getting cover-to-cover reads. And so I’m going to add a third short fiction review post, providing a mini-spotlight on some venues that aren’t at the tippy top of my TBR but are still very much worth a read.
These aren’t proper magazine reviews, because Clarkesworld is the only magazine that has impressed me so consistently that I’m reading everything that hits their table of contents. Instead, these are spotlights on some of the other magazines that I regularly browse, chosen in the instances where I’ve read a significant enough portion of one or two issues that it’s worth breaking away from the miscellaneous short fiction roundup into something a little bit more focused. Today, I’ll be looking at a total of ten stories I read across two issues of Lightspeed (August and September 2024) and one issue of Asimov’s (September/October 2024).
Asimov’s
The September/October 2024 issue of Asimov’s features five novelettes and eight short stories, and there were six that really caught my attention, through some combination of positive reviews, author recognition, and strong opening paragraphs.
That started with a pair of ghost stories, including the first short story of the issue, Art Deco Farmhouse, Original Hardwood Floors, Slightly Haunted by Alice Towey, featuring a freshly single protagonist realizing his new(ish) farmhouse is haunted by a ghost who seems increasingly agitated by his newfound lack of direction. It’s not a story that necessarily breaks new ground, as ghosts that are overly invested in the mortal world aren’t even unique in this issue, let alone in genre fiction, but it has a nice hook to start and provides some satisfying moments along the way.
The other ghost who can’t let go of the world features in one of the issue’s shortest stories, An Unplanned Hold by Zohar Jacobs. This one is told from the perspective of the ghost himself, wandering around Houston and checking in on developments in the space program to which he’d dedicated so much of his life. Again, this is not necessarily groundbreaking, but it’s a strong character exploration in a compact space, coming together for a heartwarming finish.
One of the reasons I even bought this issue in the first place was seeing Ray Nayler’s name on the table of contents. Over the past few years, I’ve loved his work more often than not, and A Gray Magic did not disappoint. It’s not a story that will appeal to everyone, lacking both a strong central plot and the kind of twist that tends to grab attention. Instead, it’s the quiet tale of a terminally ill woman examining her life before it ends. That life is unsatisfying in many ways–from a family that never seems to care like they should to a workplace that demands much and supports little–so it’s not a happy story, but it’s a poignant one with enough flashes of hope to prevent it from feeling truly bleak.
R.P. Sand is another author I’ve enjoyed a lot in the past, and Eternity is Moments also includes reflections on often-unsatisfying familiar relationships. From start to finish, the story repeatedly refrains “I met my grandfather today” in a way that almost feels like poetry, cutting quickly from each assertion of meeting to memories of past interactions, slowly unveiling the portrait of a relationship with real love behind it that was nevertheless fraught in many respects. The interpersonal story is expertly done, weaving so many moments together into something truly powerful. The ending comes a little quickly for my tastes, but that hardly undercuts what is easily my favorite of the short stories I read in this issue.
Neither of the two novelettes I read jumped out at me from the first couple lines, but I’ve had enough enjoyment reading Naomi Kritzer that I wasn’t going to miss The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea unless the opening actively pushed me away. And I’m immensely glad that I let my past experience be my guide here, because this one starts with a little bit of slice-of-life scene-setting to establish the setting before growing into the story it would become. And the story it becomes is tremendous. It’s not one that’s there to awe the reader with big twists–it takes a little bit for the reader to understand what kind of story this is, but once the background is established, it’s not hard to see the ending coming–but it’s so skillfully told that it had me on the edge of my seat waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s engaging from start to finish, with the speculative element dovetailing beautifully with some down-to-earth marital conflict to create one of my favorite novelettes of the year.
And to Their Shining Palaces Go by Betsy Aoki is a standalone novelette set in the Many Worlds shared universe pioneered by Cadwell Turnbull. It features an Earth conquered by an alien race that uses a massive virtual reality game to study the human race. The lead has been raised under occupation, and she’s ecstatic to take a prestigious position working for the aliens in game design. But her parents, who remember freedom, aren’t so excited. And life under the shining alien dome is more complicated than she expected, dealing with factions among both their alien overlords and those who serve. It’s a long novelette, but there’s so much going on that I think this story may have warranted a full novella, as there are so many different conflicts, and the plot can at times feel like a whirlwind.
Lightspeed
Let me start by mentioning that Lightspeed is offering three-month free trial subscriptions. If you’re interested, now is a perfect time to check them out!
Each issue of Lightspeed contains four sci-fi and four fantasy stories, half of which are flash fiction. For most people, that’s eight things to read, but as an avowed flash hater, that means that there are effectively four stories for me to explore each month, and there were two that caught my eye in both the August and September issues.
The August issue opens with a classic time travel story, The Darkness Between the Stars by Richard Thomas, featuring a teenager who stumbles upon a time machine and finds himself careening out-of-control from time to time to time, with the various emergences tending more toward horror than wonder. It’s not a new premise, but it’s told in a way that immediately sucked me in and quickly built emotional investment, but time travel stories tend to rely heavily on the ending, and it didn’t feel quite fresh enough to live up to the strong start.
The other sci-fi short story in the August issue is The Quality of Mercy is Not Strain’d by Archita Mittra. This one is also told in moments separated by years, though in this case both objective and subjective years. It features a second-person lead who undergoes more and more body modification to extend life and keep a job that you don’t even like. But a chance meeting with an old bot sets life on a different course, a series of small moments that ultimately turn into big ones. There’s a solid arc here, but despite my usual penchant for second-person narratives, this one kept me a little bit too distant from the emotional impact of the narrative.
In the September issue, I picked out one sci-fi and one fantasy short story. The sci-fi tale I read was Reconstructing “The Goldenrod Conspiracy,” Edina Room, Saturday 2:30-3:30 by Gabriela Santiago, which immediately drew me in with the setup, formatted as a lecture at a convention dedicated to an in-universe sci-fi show. This version of Earth has quite a different political structure, with many real-world nations fragmented into smaller states, many of which seem to have significant authoritarian streaks. One episode of a Canadian TV show is thought to be lost forever until small clips are discovered in the records of censors in various polities. And so they try to piece together a plot, along with plenty of speculation about how it fits in context and more than a bit of musing about the censors. It’s a really interesting setup, but not one that necessarily wows with a moment of convergence. I expect this may have some extra appeal for readers who are deeply involved in fandom discourse.
The fantasy story I read was We the People Excluding I by Osashon Ize-Iyamu, written from the perspective of someone who volunteers for a lifetime exile after a leader identifies it as a way to heal the many dangers plaguing their people. But as time passes, it becomes clear that it’s not quite so simple, and conflict with the man who demanded the exile is inevitable. The result is a solid, compact adventure fantasy with a likable lead character.
September Favorites
- “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer (novelette, Asimov’s)
- “A Gray Magic” by Ray Nayler (short story, Asimov’s)
- “Eternity is Moments” by R.P. Sand (short story, Asimov’s)