Books by the Lake

If the cover didn't sufficiently warn you, I will make clear: you need to have a stomach for the gory and gruesome to read this book.  I can't say I enjoyed the experience much myself. Every time I set the book down, I found myself reluctant to pick it up and discover how much guts were splattered on the next page.

That apart, it's clever enough.  This book is Malaysian and jumps right in to the setting, leaving the reader to look up local terminology if they need to.  It's narrated by Rupert Wong, a criminal who is paying off his former crimes by acting as chef to anthropophagous Malay gods.  (They like exotic cuisine as much as anyone and thus prefer the taste of Westerners.)  One day the Dragon King of the South summons Rupert to track down whoever killed his daughter: puzzlingly, it seems to have been the Greek Furies.  The penalty for failure is dire, of course; success may pay off his debt and that of his wife, a blood-drinking langsuir.  Thus begins a breathless chase through Kuala Lumpur, hindered by its many very unpleasant supernatural inhabitants.

Rupert's perspective is a thoroughly amoral one; he cares about no one but himself and his wife, and no, he won't be redeemed in this book, nor will he do anything to make the world a better place.  The machinations of the gods are thoroughly cynical too. Rupert is quite aware how corrupt everything is, and talks about it with considerable irony.  The role of Western tourists and entrepreneurs, and the attitude of mingled envy and exploitation that Malaysians take toward them, come in for some sharp digs.  I can't quite grasp the significance of having the supernatural representatives of the West be the Furies.  At any rate, for some reason while Rupert is telling this story he is speaking to someone he addresses as "ang moh" (a somewhat impolite term for a white person); it's never explained who this is or why Rupert's talking to them.  Maybe the reading audience, since the book was published in Britain.  Whovever this person is, they have little reason to feel comfortable or superior.

Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff are YA fantasy authors who have been writing buddies since 2008. In 2012, they decided to demonstrate what it is that their critique group does by publishing The Curiosities, a collection of short pieces that one of them had written and the other two had marked up. Now, with The Anatomy of Curiosity, they again open up their writing process, in the form of a round robin where each in turn comments on all the things that go into a work from first inklings to final revision, and each contributes a novella annotated by the author.

This is not so much “how to write” (though tips can be gathered from it) as “how I write” × 3. Stiefvater says, of how they came to work together, “their reading and writing tastes are similar enough to mine that they enjoy my writing for what it is”; yet placing their reflections next to each other makes clear that they actually work quite differently. It should encourage a beginning writer to find what suits them personally. Yovanoff has a method that everyone including her originally thought was cockeyed: she writes according to a rhythm, leaving blanks for words and paragraphs to be filled in later. And yes, her story flows rhythmically!

In her introduction to her story “Ladylike” Stiefvater describes starting it by thinking of a character interaction, then fleshing out the characters involved and expanding from there. The main character, Petra, is a painfully awkward girl who only loses her self-consciousness when reciting poetry; hired to visit and read to an elderly woman, the elegant and gracious Geraldine, Petra finds someone to admire and be encouraged by, and begins remaking herself into a better version from the seed of confidence she already had. The plot takes a dark turn when we learn that Geraldine has formerly remade herself more radically. A third character is introduced whose development complements the other two thematically. It’s a nice story, well-paced (except, perhaps, some of the large amount of quoting and discussing poetry). I found Geraldine more compelling than Petra, but maybe a teen would disagree.

Gratton’s story “Desert Canticle” takes place in a secondary world; she started with a couple of small worldbuilding details, imagined what sort of cultures might go with them, and brought those cultures to life with her characters. Her very interesting notes point out the ways in which, in the final version, worldbuilding, characters, and themes are inextricably intertwined; she also convincingly shows how she used small details to tie in themes. The story’s main character, Rafel, is a soldier who was once a very effecive killer and now has been assigned to a squad disarming magical mines, working closely with a mage, Aniv, from the people whose insurgency he helped defeat. The two of them fall in love, but over the course of the story it becomes clear how each of them has been shaped (and fettered, particularly in Rafel’s case) by their respective cultures; they may not find a way to join together. The very non-real-world cultures are excellently developed, with interesting gender dynamics (central to the story, but not the only theme); the characters are memorable and the plot is suspenseful. Recommended.

The third story, “Drowning Variations” by Brenna Yovanoff, is different because she decided to describe her writing process in the fictional form itself. The main character is an author (a version of Yovanoff) who has had two formative experiences, once when she nearly drowned as a young chld, and once when a fellow teenager drowned near her house; over the course of many years these experiences work in her head and she tries to write them over and over. We are given three very different stories (with some elements carried over from one to the next), ony the last of which she considers successful. In it, drowning, and the mental forces that sink troubled teens, are embodied as a monstrous green-haired girl. The main character, Jane, is struggling to find what to say to Ethan, the boy she’s attracted to; more so when Ethan’s best friend drowns, possibly suicide, and Ethan is visibly foundering himself. I wasn’t altogether enthused by this story, whose high-school romance seems just a bit generic and whose monster lacks consistency in description. However, the larger story’s depiction of reworking and reunderstanding a thematic idea is interesting.

The hardcover book is beautifully and legibly laid out. Overall, this is a very appealing publication.

Ah, Teddy -- what a warrior for social justice (take that, those of you who use SJW as an insult), fists clenched, wielding time disruption like a bomb in the cause of love and understanding, determined to forever destroy the infinite loop of hate. It takes her a while, in this book, to start fighting, though.

Teddy was born in a future where danger, darkness, and negativity have been abolished, and so has love -- too disruptive. Freedom and knowledge are too dangerous, too. Time travel has been invented; Teddy works for an agency that aims to prevent anyone using time travel to change the future; whenever there is a time disruption something comes into existence, an "anomaly," usually an object. A woman named Tina runs the agency and invented a gadget that erases time anomalies (and has more sinister effects, as we learn) -- it's her creed that the present state of the world is perfect and the future must never alter. Teddy has been obediently agreeing, and living a drab life, although she may be the world's most powerful time-manipulator, but then one anomaly turns out to be a purple-haired woman (dubbed "Ano" short for anomaly), who Teddy falls instantly in love with and will not agree to erase; Teddy wants the two of them to hide in a backwater of time, but Ano has more revolutionary ideas, and so do a multitude of other versions of Teddy....

I can't praise the art and visual storytelling here enough. Making a story this complex comprehensible, with its leaps in time, multiple timelines, multiple versions of the same character, is no mean challenge; Elsa Charretier does it with dazzling brio, establishing visual cues to guide the reader, such as shapes and color schemes, and filling the pages with dynamic motion that tells the story. Plus there are creative ways of representing Teddy's thoughts such as decision trees and conversations with other versions of herself; it's humorous, colorful, and vivid.

Then there's the story; as much a manifesto as a narrative, but what a well-written one. Characters are somewhat caricatured, but they play their parts well enough, and the love story of Teddy and Ano is pretty touching. The plot development is what it takes to shake Teddy out of her pessimistic conviction that human nature never changes, an infinite loop; after all, even in her "safe" time people are hated (time agents call Ano an "abomination"). Given that the struggle for racial civil rights is a recurring theme in this story (a key event in Teddy's career was witnessing an act of Klan violence in 1964 Mississippi), it's with conscious irony that the authors made Tina black. The reason the loop is infinite, after all, is that anyone, no matter what exclusion they or others like them have suffered, can and usually will turn around and find someone else to exclude. So believing that tolerance can keep expanding takes a real leap of faith.

I have only one real complaint, and that's the translation; it would hardly be going too far to call it dreadful. I have only been able to find bits and pieces of the French version on line, but just looking at the English shows a multitude of faults. What exactly is a line like "Passiveness and cowardice are parents of humanity" supposed to mean? There were at least a half dozen times I wished I could check the original to figure out what was really being said. A couple of times Ano apparently cracks a dirty joke, but it's incomprehensible in English. The French version calls people creating time anomalies "forgeurs"; this is simply translated as "forgers", but that is not quite an equivalent word. Anyone with a basic competence in English should know we no longer use "men" to refer to all humankind, even if "les hommes" is still acceptable in French. And on and on.

Well, even if the words get a bit lost, the story and the art are there... and can be thoroughly enjoyed as a funny, exciting, militant experience.

As is her usual method, Nnedi Okorafor mixes fantasy and science fiction here, in a story of mathematical mysticism, strong cultural ties, and intercultural communication. The main character Binti is a Himba, a (genuine) people of the Namib desert who (in this story) have developed mathematics to a high art. They don’t have enough water to spare for washing so they keep clean by rubbing their skin with otjize, red clay mixed with flower oil. Other humans (especially their neighbors the Kush) look down on the Himba, and when Binti is chosen to be the first Himba to attend Oomza University on another planet — because of her mathematical abilities, she is a “master harmonizer”–, her family is dismayed and she feels profoundly dislocated. However it turns out to be a good thing that she decides not to give up her otjize, and her calling as master harmonizer turns out to be crucial when she is a bystander caught up in a war that has a large element of cultural misunderstanding at its basis. Mathematics is used symbolically in this story as representing harmony and clarity. Binti can call on both to think her way out of potential conflicts, and be understanding enough to make a friend out of an initially incomprehensible alien. Her position as cultural outsider makes her a good mediator too.

It is a simple plot, and there are a few too many deus ex machina elements in it. Still, it is well told, with many reflections on belonging and outsiderhood in contexts of cultural conflict. Rating: recommended.

One fine Christmas present! This is one of my favorite pages, depicting Esch from Salvage the Bones by Jesamyn Ward

What makes a mad scientist "mad"? It is not a clinical diagnosis of mental illness; instead, it is working far outside the usual collaborative nature of the scientific process, whether due to obsessiveness, idiosyncratic goals, or an intellectual, social, or moral style that doesn't mesh well with others. Women working in science and engineering are perilously close to being regarded as social outsiders at any time, especially previously; Jess Nevins's introductory essay here provides a history of literary depictions of women in these outsider roles and the various ways they were seen as transgressive. It's good to know that sometimes, at least, they could be taken seriously in their depictions.

Given pop associations of lesbians with both social exclusion and insanity, the theme of this anthology would indeed seem obvious, though it may in fact be the first of its kind. It collects two previously published stories and more have been written or will be; see, for example, "Infinite Skeins" by Naru Dames Sundar. One thing all the stories here (even the comedic ones) do is see their characters as worth taking seriously, in their desires, priorities, and intellectual skills. This goes even for morally negative characters or ones who don't thrive at the end of the story. Being outside community is dangerous, both to survival and morality, but luckily many characters here succeed in forming unconventional social ties. Long may authors continue to write smart women who go their own way.

Having gone on so long about the general theme of the anthology, I wish I had more praise to give the stories themselves. But there is a sense of pioneering here; once more authors realize that women as outsider scientists, queer women at that, is a real and valid theme they could write about, the pool of fine stories will grow. The editor was diligent in gathering the work here, though; I was pleased by how varied it was. 

There is a traditionally Gothic story, "Alraune", in which the main sciences are botany and poisons; here, for once, the lesbian characters are not the scientists, but instead the created woman and her lover play the role of innocence struggling to escape from their twisted family. The protagonist of "The Eggshell Curtain" is also the experimented-on; she watches history rather than participating, only to assure people in a rather disappointing ending that her conclusion is human nature doesn't change.

The rest of the main characters, though, are scientists or technicians (where those fields often include a heavy dose of magic). There are two plying that trade in the Victorian setting of steampunk and its cousins. "The Ice Weasels of Trebizond" is maddeningly narrow-minded in its use of tropes, plunking its English characters down in the Ottoman Empire for no discernible reason but having them carry on as if at home, be surrounded only by other English people, and move through a characterless countryside conveniently cleared of all locals. "Hypatia and Her Sisters" at least is set in England, and has a sense of the social realities facing all its characters; this makes it one of the better stories, and satisfying when high tech enables a happy ending. 

"The Long Trip Home" uses steampunk-like technology but its setting is refreshingly not Victorian-English. That proves to be a problem, though, because the author has imagined a fantastically rich world of crossing African and Asian cultures, great cities, numerous characters, extensive backstories, and tried to cram it all into a short story, which just doesn't work. A similar problem limits "Infusion of Waking Dreams": as a fantasy involving travel between a dreamworld and reality, with healing based on its fantastic botany, and strange dangers, it makes an extremely promising premise for a novel, but the short story just peters out. (And the love story could have been great if developed at more length too.)

Speaking of strange fantasy, "A Shallow Grave of Orange Peels and Eggshells" owes allegiance to the New Weird and builds up a wonderfully sinister world, only to throw away all its effect with a sentimental ending. The Lovecraftian "Eldritch Brown Houses" is more of a premise than a story. It has the beginning of a love story in it, but just the beginning. It's my opinion that it's really hard to do justice to romance at short length; "Shallow Grave", surprisingly enough, may have come closest. "Doubt the Sun" made a serious attempt at developing romance over time, but maybe the author's skills couldn't quite pull it off; not to mention that one of the parties is an android, a difficult sell. "Poor Girl" reforms its isolated, hard-hearted main character through love; I wish it was a bit better written, but it does have the originality of its science being Chinese alchemy.

There are a number of dark and horrifying stories here; I appreciate that there wasn't an absolute requirement for a happy ending. After all what is "mad" science without danger and (often) amorality? "The Moorhead Maze Experiment" is a report on a fictitious successor to the Stanford Prison Experiment reminding us how strange, and sometimes terrible, the early 70s could be. "Love in the Time of Markov Processes" is a gloomy piece of science fiction; as a scientist endlessly investigates her past, what becomes of her present? "The Lady of the House of Mirrors" is cruelly decadent. "Imaginary Beauties: A Lurid Melodrama" owns its amorality with full gusto.

There remain to mention only the story of Rosie the Riveter and Eva Braun; a Scooby Doo parody and a Wodehouse pastiche (not bad actually); and my favorite story, "Bank Job Blues". This one may actually be the least science fictional in the volume, since it is set in the 1930s and involves not-particularly-fanciful technology that would be reality within a couple decades. It is the story of a group of women who became friends because they're all lesbians; they decided to gain independence by robbing banks. There's a sense of the times and especially the characters, who have abilities that work well together (including one who created a souped-up car and a radio-controlled machine that could rip the door off a bank vault); the way they depend on each other is crucial.

I got this book from the library; I guess I wouldn't really advise spending money on it. But you might want to seek out a copy if you're like one of the characters in "Bank Job Blues" eager for stories about "women like us", or just want a diverse, mostly entertaining, and novel collection.

This book's origin is a bit unusual, with a think tank inviting authors to speculate about the nature of future warfare in fictional form. Now, I'm not the kind of person who'd ever read a policy report or position paper. And I don't read weapon specs either. I would say (generalizing a bit broadly) that a story based on a scenario cannot work as a story unless it includes moral or social or emotional or in some other way deep aspects of its subject matter, and these aspects must be anchored by the humans in the story. This generalization will help explain why I think many of the stories in this volume failed: they lacked a credible human element.

The authors are fairly unanimous in imagining a heavy role for computers and connectivity in their stories (though not unanimous on the nature of that role); for that reason, there's rather more data processing than gunfire in these pages, though the latter is not absent. The best story in the collection, Madeleine Ashby's "A Stopped Clock", approaches the depiction of an act of war very obliquely, without showing any technology, using the point of view of its endearing protagonist, a woman selling food on the street in Korea, to draw a picture first of what living in a completely networked city might be like, and then a closeup view of the city's collapse from a cyberattack. The how, who, why of the attack are not stated; its effect is the only subject of interest.

"From a Remove" by Alec Meden is also effective; it centers on a recruit in a destructive fourth world war, a war fought from orbit by remote control, yet with very real human casualties. Her perspective makes the cost visible and allows her to raise questions about what is being prioritized in the battle and the war. "ANTFARM" by August Cole also has a notable, if not likable, main character; he is the crew of a warplane in a conflict where the feedback between war and the images of it produced for the public reaches a new level, with an experiment in crowdsourcing the plane's goals and tactics by feeding info and images to a large group of civilians who, it is hoped, will provide superior processing power; yet perceptions by various parties differ diasastrously. It's a queasy-making story.

The rest of the stories, apart from well-chosen reprints by Linda Nagata and David Brin, are negligible, even one by the usually-reliable Ken Liu. Their characters (if they even have any) are lifeless, and so can't animate the moral dimensions of the story (if any); some simply fail at basic storytelling. Still, I don't complain much if an anthology contains a handful of decent stories.

This is a combined review of The Breaker Queen and The Two Paupers, the first two volumes of the "Dark Breakers" paranormal romance series. First the positive: the fantasy aspects of these novellas are pretty good. Breaker House is rooted in three worlds, Athe (the domain of humans), Valwode (the domain of Gentry, or fairies), and Bana (the domain of goblins); at midnight, passage between worlds can happen. The Gentry are appropriately beautiful, shifty, and careless of the well-being of humans who cross their path; an impressively vicious struggle for the throne of Valwode is going on. But these stories are more dominated by romance than fantasy, and that’s where I had a serious problem with them. Cooney says she was inspired to write them by the works of Sharon Shinn; I have read two books by Shinn, and in both, a woman falls in love with a man and proceeds to stick with him even though he gives her little in return and her life is very negatively impacted, just because she can’t stop loving. That’s definitely the model of romance followed in Cooney’s series. In The Breaker Queen, the title character (Nyx, the Queen of Valwode) falls in love at first sight with a mortal painter and abdicates her throne to marry him and have babies, although she regrets what she’s given up. The Two Paupers is worse: it uses one of my least favorite romance tropes, where a guy (Gideon, a sculptor) is in severe supernatural danger, so he decides to keep the woman he loves (Analise, a writer) “safe” by preventing her from loving him. Naturally he can’t just tell her the truth about the danger and let her make up her own mind what to do! No, he lies, and goes on a campaign of insulting, humiliating, and tormenting her, even once throwing something at her. And all in vain, since she can’t stop loving him no matter how utterly miserable he makes her. It would be horrible even if he didn’t indirectly threaten her with violence at least three times, one of those times after he’s supposedly “reformed”. No, I can’t regard them ending up together as any kind of triumph. Series rating: not recommended.

A steampunk/gaslight fantasy of manners. The setting is a country called Tamarania, where the population is dark-skinned, and its war-torn neighbor Caskentia. It’s too bad that the author chose to populate this potentially original setting with characters bearing English surnames like “Stout” and “Cody” and strictly following English Victorian social rituals down to details like tea. There seems to be no reason for it except that, well, that’s steampunk, right? (Ignoring various authors’ recent attempts to broaden the social world of steampunk.) The most interesting part of the setting is the intersection between tech and magic; there are healers called “medicians” who draw on the aid of a goddess, and they can integrate mechanism and flesh. The main conflict of the story concerns the magi-mechanical creation of intelligent beings called gremlins. A teenage would-be mechanist named Rivka, who is uneasy in Tamaranian social circles because of her harelip and her unrefined upbringing, befriends a much more privileged (and self-centered) girl named Tatiana, and together they go on a crusade to end the mistreatment of gremlins, with the help of Broderick, an apprentice medician who is mistreated by his master. It would hardly be a spoiler to reveal that triumphs are scored, growing up and gaining confidence happens, and everyone except the bad guys gets what they want. One unexpected and welcome deviation from the standard course of such stories is that

Rating: middling.

In preparation for the Hugo nominations, I have been reading short fiction. Here follows a list (continually updated) of stories that struck me as above average; bold indicates award-worthy.

SHORT STORY

“And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea” - Maria Dahvana Headley; Lightspeed, February (link)

“And This Is the Song It Sings” - Megan Arkenberg; Nightmare, Issue 35, August (link)

Our narrator tells us that everyone has a ghost story. She listens to the ones from runaway girls. And she has a secret of her own, “Out there on the side of the highway, somewhere beneath those dying trees and behind those ridges of banded rock, there is a monster.” – Sam Tomaino

“Android Whores Can’t Cry” - Natalia Theodoridou; Clarkesworld, July (link)

“Au Ciel Monte” - Aimee Ogden; The Sockdolager, Winter (link)

“The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary” - Kij Johnson; Clarkesworld, January (link)

“Bank Job Blues” - Melissa Scott; Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists

“Birdwoman” - ’Pemi Aguda; Omenana, Issue 4, September (link)

“Bloodless” - Cory Skerry; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #185, October 29 (link)

“Bluebeard’s Daughter” - Angela Slatter; SQ Mag Edition 20, April 30 (link)

“The Bone War” - Elizabeth Bear; Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct

“Broken-Winged Love” - Naru Dames Sundar; Strange Horizons, October 5 (link)

“Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind” - Erica L. Satifka;Lightspeed Magazine, June (link)

“The Buzzard’s Egg” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Calved” - Sam J. Miller; Asimov’s, September (link)

“Candidate 45, Pensri Suesat” - Pear Nuallak; Unlikely Story #12, October (link)

“Cat Pictures, Please” - Naomi Kritzer; Clarkesworld, January (link)

“The Cellar Dweller” - Maria Dahvana Headley; Nightmare Magazine 33, June (link)

In a town, there are dark things that dwell behind the cellar door. There also dwells the Banisher. She starts out as a nine-year-old, but not a pretty child. She has a thriving business, “advertises her services particularly for the banishment of gremlins, poltergeists, pixies, and nixies. She does a side business in rats, racoons, starlings, and mice. They come with the territory.” She grows up and goes to college, graduating with honors and leaving that business behind. But that is not the end of her story. – Sam Tomaino / Content warning: Child abuse, child death.

“City of Salt” - Arkady Martine; Strange Horizons, March 16 (link)

“The Cold Inequalities” - Yoon Ha Lee; Meeting Infinity [Solaris, December]

“Damage” - David D. Levine; Tor.com, January 21 (link)

In the extremities of war, we may know what we’ve been, but not what we will become. “Damage” is a tale of desperate times, desperate measures, and the inner life of a fighter spacecraft. – Publisher’s note

“Descent” - Carmen Maria Machado; Nightmare Magazine, Issue 29, February (link)

“Dispatches from a Hole in the World” - Sunny Moraine; Nightmare Magazine, Issue 37, October (link)

“Distance” - Jeremy Schliewe; Supernatural Tales, Issue 29

“Dixon’s Road” - Richard Chwedyk; Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August

“Documentary” - Vajra Chandrasekera; Lightspeed, March (link)

“The Dowager of Bees” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Dreaded Outcome” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Egg Island” - Karen Heuler; Clarkesworld, October (link)

“An Element of Blank” - Lynda E. Rucker; Supernatural Tales 30

Three friends attempt to vanquish an evil presence they first encountered together as children. Beginning with a conscious nod to Stephen King, the story goes on to explore the ways in which these three women do or do not fulfill their potential. The central character has remained in the same town, apprehensive and afraid, waiting for a chance at something like redemption. – S. P. Miskowski

“Elephants and Corpses” - Kameron Hurley; Tor.com, May 13 (link)

“Eleusinian Mysteries” - Charlotte Ashley; Luna Station Quarterly #23, September (link)

“eNGAGEMENT” - Richard Oduor Oduku; Jalada 02: Afrofuture(s) (link)

“eyes I dare not meet in dreams” - Sunny Moraine; Cyborgology, June 2, 2015 (link)

“The Farm” - Elana Gomel; The Apex Book of World SF 4

“Fighting Demons” - S. L. Huang; The Book Smugglers, September 22 (link)

“The Fires of Mercy” - Spencer Ellsworth; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #171, April 16 (link)

“Forgiveness” - Leah Cypess; Asimov’s, February

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” - Kelly Link; Strange Horizons, October 17 (link)

Killer robot “handmaids” and vampires open our discovery of Anat, a young girl, and her brother Oscar, who live in a ship, “The bucket,” above a planet “Home,” exploring the warehouses built by the Warehouse Builders and cataloging items to sell for their parents, who have been gone. They left Oscar to look after Anat when it became clear that “Anat was different.” Anat’s “handmaids” explore the surface and protect her from the “vampires” who want nothing more than to feed on the siblings. The “game” of Smash and Recovery was created by the siblings to teach Anat how to safely search and seek and use the resources available to her, allowing her and the handmaids to explore the entire surface, except in the “Stay Out Territory.” But Anat is growing smarter the longer they wait for their parents’ return and she hates to lose their games. A sudden twist radically changes every assumption and turns the entire story 180 degrees from where it started. – Eric Kimminau

“Ghosts of Home” - Sam J. Miller; Lightspeed, August (link)

“Given the Advantage of the Blade” - Genevieve Valentine; Lightspeed, August (link)

“Good Neighbors” - Amanda C. Davis; Not Our Kind: Tales of (Not) Belonging [Alliteration Ink, January]

“Hadley Full of Hate” - Michael Hernshaw; The Sockdolager, Summer (link)

Beowulf, baristas, and post-invasion mop-up of alien forces in the woods of Washington state. – Author’s note

“The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History” - Sam J. Miller; Uncanny Magazine, January/February (link)

“Holding the Ghosts” - Gwendolyn Clare; Asimov’s, March

“Homing Instinct” - Dani McClain; Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“The Horse of War” - Mame Bougouma Diene; Omenana, Issue 2, March (link)

“A House of Anxious Spiders” - JY Yang; The Dark, August (link)

“How My Father Became a God” - Dilman Dila; The Apex Book of World SF 4 (link)

A scifi tale set in an African nation long before colonialism. It features a little girl whose brothers are eager to sell her off into marriage so they can earn cattle to find wives for themselves. She has to rely on her father, an inventor, to fight them off. – Author’s note

“How to Wrap a Roc’s Egg” - Marissa Lingen; author’s website, December 22 (link)

“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” - Alyssa Wong; Nightmare, Issue 37, October (link)

“I Bury Myself” - Carmen Maria Machado; Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 33, July

“Ice” - Rich Larson; Clarkesworld, October (link)

“In Libres” - Elizabeth Bear; Uncanny Magazine, May/June (link)

“In Loco Parentis” - Andrea Phillips; Escape Pod, Episode 476, January 16 (link)

“Kafka’s Last Laugh” - Vagabond; Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (link)

“Kaiju maximus®: ‘So Various, So Beautiful, So New’” - Kai Ashante Wilson; Fantasy Magazine, Issue 59, December (link)

In a world devastated by giant monsters, a superhero’s husband and children, hungry and cold, follow loyally after her as she goes to fight the boss monster. – Vasha

“Katabasis” - Jen R. Albert; Fireside Fiction, Issue 22, April (link)

“Kia and Gio” - Daniel José Older; Tor.com, January 6 (link)

“The King in the Cathedral” - Rich Larson; Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 5 (link)

“La Héron” - Charlotte Ashley; Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

“La Héron” is the story of a duelist who enters an illicit tourney only to find most of her opponents aren’t what they seem and are playing for stakes she didn’t agree to. But she’s a tough old professional with more than a few tricks up her own sleeve, so with a reluctant-nun-cum-brawler as her second, she’s determined to win it all and take the purse anyway. – Author’s description

“The Lady of the Soler Colony” - Rocío Rincón Fernández (trans. James & Marian Womack); The Best of Spanish Steampunk [Cheeky Frawg Books, February]

Set in a Catalan textile colony during an alternate Industrial Revolution. Each factory centers on a goddesslike machine, its Lady. – Vasha

“The Lamps Thereof Are Fire and Flames” - Rosamund Hodge; Uncanny, Issue 3, March/April (link)

“The Language of Knives” - Haralambi Markov; The Apex Book of World SF (link)

“Life-pod” - Vandana Singh; Lightspeed, Issue 63, August (link)

“The Lily and the Horn” - Catherynne M. Valente; Fantasy Magazine, Issue 59, December (link)

“Limestone, Lye, and the Buzzing of Flies” - Kate Heartfield;  Strange Horizons, February 16 (link)

“Little Fox” - Amy Griswold; Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, June (link)

Bella is supposed to go away to college today, but she finds out that her clone, Fox, has drugged her and taken her place. She doesn’t do anything at first and pretends she is the clone. When she tells her mother what has happened, she finds something else out about her family. – Sam Tomaino

“The Log Goblin” - Brian Staveley; Tor.com, December 9 (link)

“Madeleine” - Amal El-Mohtar; Lightspeed, June (link)

“Madness” - ’Pemi Aguda; Kut, August 19th (link)

“Midnight Hour” - Mary Robinette Kowal; Uncanny Magazine, May/June (link)

“The Monkey House” - Tade Thompson; Omenana, Issue 2, March (link)

“Monkey King, Faerie Queen” - Zen Cho; Kaleidotrope, Spring (link)

“A Mount” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Needle on Bone” - Helena Bell;  Strange Horizons, November 2 (link)

“Never Chose This Way” - Shira Lipkin; Apex Magazine, July (link)

“Nine Thousand Hours” - Iona Sharma; Strange Horizons, April 20 (link)

“Of Apricots and Dying” - Amanda Forrest; Asimov’s, December

“On Love and Decay” - John Remy Nakamura; Not Our Kind: Tales of (Not) Belonging [Alliteration Ink, January]

“An Oubliette” - James Machin; Supernatural Tales 29

“Paradise and Trout” - Betsy James; Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August

10-year-old Hally always spent more time roaming the canyon and dreaming beside the stream with the trout than doing the duty his family expected of him. Now he is dead, and his father's last instruction is to follow the spirit road through the canyon without replying to anything that speaks to him till he arrives at paradise where his uncles await. – Vasha

“Planet Lion” - Catherynne M. Valente; Uncanny Magazine, May/June (link)

“The Plausibility of Dragons” - Kenneth Schneyer; Lightspeed, November (link)

“Please Undo This Hurt” - Seth Dickinson; Tor.com, September 16 (link)

Ever feel like you care too much? After a breakup, after the funeral…it feels like the way to win at life is to care the least. That’s not an option for Dominga, an EMT who cares too much, or her drinking buddy Nico, who just lost his poor cat. Life hurts. They drink. They talk: Nico’s tired of hurting people. He wants out. Not suicide, not that — he’d just hurt everyone who loves him. But what if he could erase his whole life? Undo the fact of his birth? Wouldn’t Dominga be having a better night, right now, if she didn’t have to take care of him? And when Dominga finds a way to do just that, when she is gifted or armed with a terrible cosmic mercy, she still cares enough to say: I am not letting him have this. I am not letting Nico go without a fight. – Publisher’s note / Content warning: Mental trauma, suicidal thoughts.

“Please, Momma” - Chesya Burke; Nightmare Magazine, Issue 30, March (link)

“Pocosin” - Ursula Vernon; Apex Magazine, January (link)

[A] folktale... [which] tells the story of a witch named Maggie Grace (always “Maggie,” not even the Lord God can get away with calling her Margaret) and of a last kindness to a small old god who is dying. Maggie stands off both Heaven and Hell in order to give the god his last wish: to die in peace and go wherever it is that gods go when they die. – Jason Harrell

“The Race for Arcadia” - Alex Shvartsman; Mission: Tomorrow [Baen Books, November] (link)

“The Rainbow Flame” - Shveta Thakrar; Uncanny Magazine, Jul/Aug (link)

“Rat Catcher’s Yellows” - Charlie Jane Anders; Press Start to Play [Penguin Random House, August] (link)

A crippling disease has made the body of Grace’s wife a prison for her erratic, reclusive brain. The only hope for their marriage? A video game where she rules over kingdom of cats. – Evan Narcisse

“Request for an Extension on the Clarity” - Sofia Samatar; Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 33, July

“Respawn” - Hiroshi Sakurazaka (trans. Nathan Allan Collins); Press Start to Play [Penguin Random House, August]

“Revolution Shuffle” - Bao Phi; Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

“Rates of Change” - James S. A. Corey; Meeting Infinity [Solaris, December]

“Rules” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Rustsong” - Sean R. Robinson; The Future Fire, Issue 2015.32, March 2015 (link)

“Sang Rimau and the Medicine Woman” - Nin Harris; Lackington’s, Issue 7, Summer (link)

“Sea Change” - Kimberly Unger; Galaxy's Edge, September (link)

Maryanne is a creature designed to defend the shores of the colony planet against The Adversary, which comes from the sea. But while watching, she has become attached to a family fleeing a ruthless Boss. When this Boss endangers the Family, Maryanne’s purpose shifts. – Sam Tomaino

“Select Character” - Hugh Howey; Press Start to Play [Penguin Random House, August]

“Serein” - Cat Hellisen; Shimmer, Issue 26, July (link)

“Service Charge” - Jane Read; Supernatural Tales 29, Spring

“Setting Up Home” - Sabrina Huang; The Apex Book of World SF 4

“Shadows, Mirrors and Flames” - Sanya Noel; Omenana, Issue 2, March (link)

“She Must” - A. J. Fitzwater; Capricious, Issue 1, September

“A Shot of Salt Water” - Lisa L. Hannett; The Dark, May (link)

“Silver Buttons All Down His Back” - A. C. Wise; Apex #71, April (link)

“Six Things We Found During the Autopsy” - Kuzhali Manickavel; The Apex Book of World SF 4 (link)

“Slow” - Lia Swope Mitchell; Apex Magazine, April (link)

“Some Gods of El Paso” - Maria Dahvana Headley; Tor.com, October 28 (link)

“Song of the Krakenmaid” - JY Yang; Lackington’s, Fall (link)

“Soteriology and Stephen Greenwood” - Julia August; Unlikely Story, October (link)

“Sounding the Fall” - Jae D. Marcade; Escape Pod, Episode 499, July 20 (link)

“Soup” - Chikodili Emelumadu; One Throne, Issue 6, Summer (link)

“The Sour Thread of Doubt” - Jamie Lackey; The Sockdolager, Spring 2015 (link)

“A Stopped Clock” – Madeline Ashby; War Stories from the Future [Atlantic Council, November] (link)

“Story, Story: A tale of mothers and daughters” - Chikodili Emelumadu; Omenana, Issue 2, March (link)

“Summer at Grandma’s House” - Hao Jingfang (trans. Carmen Yiling Yan); Clarkesworld, Issue 109, October (link)

Zhanzhan is spending his summer at his grandmother’s house. His college career is in a mess. He has changed his field of study more than once. He forgot to take his English exams. Things at his grandmother’s house are confusing. The door opens at the hinge side. What looks like a refrigerator is actually a stove. Various other things are not what they seem. His grandmother is a retired college professor and is always doing odd experiments. She teaches him something important and changes his outlook on life and his life itself. – Sam Tomaino

“Tear Tracks” - Malka Older; Tor.com, October 21 (link)

“Telling the Bees” - T. Kingfisher; Strange Horizons, December 21 (link)

“Ten Things to Know About the Ten Questions” - Gwendolyn Kiste; Nightmare Magazine 36, September (link)

“Things You Can Buy for a Penny” - Will Kaufman; Lightspeed Magazine, February (link)

“Thirst” - Leanne Olson; Betwixt, Issue 9, Fall (link)

“Those” - Sofia Samatar; Uncanny, Issue 3, March/April (link)

“Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” - Aliette de Bodard; Clarkesworld, January (link)

The author presents us with three characters following the death of Duy Uyen, and we see the accompanying grief and the manner in which each deals with it. Quang Tu, her son, will stew over the loss of both her being and her memories until the bitterness overtakes him. Tuyet Hoa, a fellow researcher and the receiver of Duy Uyen’s memory implants, must come to terms with both the loss and the fact that the woman will live on in her own mind for the remainder of her days. Duy Uyen’s daughter, now the mind ship The Tiger in the Banyan, is no longer human. Her grief is both the least and most human of the three, for in the end she is left only with her own memories of her mother, and is content with those. – Clancy Weeks

“To Die Dancing” - Sam J. Miller; Apex Magazine, Issue 78, November (link)

“To Die Dancing” opens in a world where a new strain of puritanism has taken control of the government and all deviant behavior up to and including dancing is punished. Ostensibly the story deals with a one night pass to dance and relive the forbidden days of freedom. Clive, the protagonist, spends his night in fear that the whole thing is a trap; a way to flush out remaining undesirables. Yet he feels compelled to attend in an attempt to find his missing friend Ummi. – Robert L. Turner III

“To the Knife-Cold Stars” - A. Merc Rustad; Escape Pod, Ep. 480, February 7 (link)

“Tomorrow When We See the Sun” - A. Merc Rustad; Lightspeed, December (link)

“Translatio Corporis” - Kat Howard; Uncanny, Issue 3, March/April (link)

“Traveling Mercies” - Rachel K. Jones; Strange Horizons, February 9 (link)

“Two-Year Man” - Kelly Robson; Asimov’s, August

“Unconventional Advice for the Discerning Reader” - Sophie Wereley; Daily Science Fiction, January 27 (link)

“The Universe, Sung in Stars” - Kat Howard; Lightspeed #59, April (link)

“A User’s Guide to Increments of Time” - Kat Howard; Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

“Variations on an Apple” - Yoon Ha Lee; Tor.com, October 14 (link)

“The Visitor” - Karen Myers; Strange Horizons, July 7 (link)

“The Warriors, the Mothers, the Drowned” - Kay Chronister; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #174, May 28 (link)

“Watching God” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“The Way Home” - Linda Nagata; Operation Arcana [Baen, March] (link)

“The Ways of Walls and Words” - Sabrina Vourvoulias; Tor.com, April 15 (link)

“Wearing the Hat” - Mike Reeves-McMillan; The Sockdolager, Spring (link)

“When the Fall Is All That’s Left” - Arkady Martine; Apex Magazine, October (link)

“When We Were Giants” - Helena Bell; Lightspeed, November (link)

“Who Will Greet You at Home” - Lesley Nneka Arimah; The New Yorker, October 26 (link)

“Wild Honey” - Paul McAuley; Asimov’s, August

“The Will of Parliament” - Charlotte Ashley; The Sockdolager, Winter (link)

“Wooden Feathers” - Ursula Vernon; Uncanny, Issue 7, November/December (link)

NOVELETTE

“Acres of Perhaps” - Will Ludwigsen; Asimov’s, July

“Ambiguity Machines: An Examination” - Vandana Singh; Tor.com, April 29 (link)

“And the Balance in Blood” - Elizabeth Bear; Uncanny, Issue 7, November/December (link)

“Another Word for World” - Ann Leckie; Future Visions

Ashiban is on a diplomatic mission, meeting with the Sovereign of Iss, hoping to avert war between their nations, even though neither one of them speaks the other’s language. Their flyer is shot down, they’re not sure who by. As they flee cross-country, they begin to realize just how misconceived the assumptions they brought to the meeting were. – Vasha

“Ballroom Blitz” - Veronica Schanoes; Tor.com, April 1 (link)

“Bannerless” – Carrie Vaughn; The Apocalypse Triptych: The End Has Come [Broad Reach Publishing, May] (link)

“Black Dog” - Neil Gaiman; Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances [William Morrow, February]

“Blow the Moon Out” - E. Catherine Tobler; GigaNotoSaurus, August (link)

“The Body Pirate” – Van Aaron Hughes; The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August

“The Body Pirate” is set on a world where humanoids and birdlike creatures form (seemingly) symbiotic pairings. The birds dominate the pairings, considering themselves “souls” while the humanoids are merely “bodies.” Our protagonist Adela has co-pioneered technology to allow a single soul to divide its time between two or more bodies. This has unintended consequences, both to the society and in Adela’s personal life. – Author's description

“Bones of Air, Bones of Stone” - Stephen Leigh; Old Venus

“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” - Ian McDonald; Old Venus

Our initial narrator here is Maureen N. Gellard, the grand-niece Ida Granville-Hyde aka Ida Countess Rathangan, whose papercut art is valued beyond all measure. Her prints are anthologized in many books, including fifteen editions of the Botanica Veneris, based on the flora of Venus. Now, her last journal and papercuts, detailing her only trip to Venus (where she disappeared), have come into the possession of her grand-niece, who presents them without further comment. Ida's unique voice adds immeasurably to her journey across Venus, looking for her brother, Arthur, who had absconded with the family jewel (and her dowry) the Blue Empress, on the eve of her marriage to the wastrel Baron Rathanagan. On her journey, she learns of her brother's sins and crimes, (described as a gambler, a thief, a murderer, and a seducer, by someone who likes him). There are more surprises in store. – Sam Tomaino

“By the Numbers” - Lynn Kilmore; Crossed Genres Magazine #31, July (link)

“Coming of the Light” - Chen Qiufan (trans. Ken Liu); Clarkesworld, March (link)

“The Deepest Rift” - Ruthana Emrys; Tor.com, June 24 (link)

“Drinking with the Elfin Knight” - Ginger Weil; GigaNotoSaurus, April (link)

“Ether” - Zhang Ran (trans. Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu); Clarkesworld, January (link)

“An Evolutionary Myth” - Bo-Young Kim (trans. Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park); Clarkesworld, May (link)

Our narrator’s father was king but abdicated his crown to his brother, who is cruel. The land is under a long drought and people and animals metamorphose to adjust to changing conditions. Our narrator undergoes many changes as he runs from the king’s assassins and soldiers. – Sam Tomaino

“Fabulous Beasts” - Priya Sharma; Tor.com, July 27 (link)

“The Falls: A Luna Story” - Ian McDonald; Meeting Infinity

“Folding Beijing” - Hao Jingfang (trans. Ken Liu); Uncanny Magazine, January/February (link)

“The Four Schools” - Naim Kabir; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #183, October 1 (link)

“The Ghost Dragon’s Daughter” - Beth Bernobich; self-published, October 24

“The Great Pan American Airship Mystery, or, Why I Murdered Robert Benchley” - David Gerrold; Asimov’s, July (link)

“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” - Elizabeth Bear; Old Venus

“In Blue Lily’s Wake” - Aliette de Bodard; Meeting Infinity [Solaris, December]

“In the Slopes” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Keep” - China Miéville; Three Moments of an Explosion

“Little Men with Knives” - L. S. Johnson; Crossed Genres Magazine #31, July (link)

The dark story of a divorced school-cafeteria worker whose life is not completely ordinary because every evening she puts a plate of food on her porch for the two-foot-tall dwarfs she’s seen emerging from a hole under her hedge. – Vasha / Content warning: Animal death; physical and mental abuse; gore; suicide of a secondary character.

“Mountain” - Cixin Liu; Apex Magazine 76, September (link)

“No Placeholder for You, My Love” - Nick Wolven; Asimov’s, August

Claire believes she’s finally found her soulmate. But to win his love, she must navigate the rules of a world where all is not as it seems. – Author's description

“The Oiran’s Song” - Isabel Yap; Uncanny, September (link)

“Our Lady of the Open Road” - Sarah Pinsker; Asimov’s, June (link)

Luce and her band are on the road in a future where the road is dying, driving in their restaurant-grease van from one gig to the next as they become fewer and farther between as the venues slowly disappear, along with the few remaining live bands. All entertainment now comes as holos. She does it for the music, for the live music and the few people who still come to see it, but it’s a dying way of life, as they get older and creakier, scrounge in dumpsters for food and sleep in the funk of the van, constantly looking out for cops who’ll harass them on general suspicion. Anything but sell out to the holo corporations. – Lois Tilton

“Outsider” - An Owomoyela; Meeting Infinity

“Planet of Fear” - Paul McAuley; Old Venus

“A Residence for Friendless Ladies” - Alice Sola Kim; Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

Our unnamed narrator is a transgendered boy trapped in a voluptuous girl's body, thrown out of prep school when caught taking male hormones and being in a rage. Now, his grandmother is forcing him to live as a girly girl in The H______ Residence for Friendless Ladies. The Residence is very bizarre with each lady in separate rooms. An important rule for each of them is that she must not answer a persistent knocking at her door at night. There is a very unsettling feel to this story as our narrator finds a way to survive. – Sam Tomaino

“Ruins” - Eleanor Arnason; Old Venus

“Saltwater Railroad” - Andrea Hairston; Lightspeed, July (link)

“Saltwater Railroad” is a novella set in the antebellum South on a small island off the Georgia/Florida coast where misfits and escaped slaves gather. Delia, who talks to the spirits, helps keep them safe. But a new castaway, Rainbow – who also has some witchery about her – joins them and leads to some serious trouble. – Chuck Rothman / Content warning: Rape, slavery, and abuse in the backstory.

“Sinseerly a Friend & Yr Obed’t” - Thomas M. Waldroon; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #171, April 16 (link)

The central character is Mr Stutley Northrup, sometimes called “Old Stuck-Up”, who lives the near Pennsylvania shore of Lake Erie in the mid-nineteenth century. Now comes to him the Justice of the Peace, a former student, wondering about the rumors of a sea serpent in the lake. Northrup isn’t impressed; he already knows all about the sea serpent, seen it himself. But there’s a complication, the real reason the JP has come to Northup about—and against—the monster. A body has washed ashore, and it’s been identified as Amos, Northrup’s hired man, known by him as a fugitive slave... – Lois Tilton

“The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss” - David Brin; Old Venus

“Utrechtenaar” - Paul Evanby; Strange Horizons, June 1 (link)

“We Never Sleep” - Nick Mamatas; The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk [Running Press, July] (link)

NOVELLA

Binti - Nnedi Okorafor [Tor.com, September]

“The Bone Swans of Amandale” - C. S. E. Cooney; Bone Swans [Mythic Delirium Books, July] (link)

“The Bone Swans of Amandale” is a fairy tale mashup of “The Juniper Tree” meets “The Pied Piper” narrated by Maurice, a human/rat shapeshifter who is one of the most hilariously vicious and monstrously charming narrators I've run across in a long while. The swan people of Amandale are being killed by tyrannical mayor Ulia Gol and turned into ghostly musical instruments for her enjoyment (Gol is as unctuous as she is monstrous, a gloriously over-the-top antagonist for this type of collective-unconscious nightmare). Maurice assembles an unlikely band of heroes (including the Pied Piper) to save Dora Rose, the last of the swan people and the woman he loves: even if her hauteur and disdain for him should give him little hope. – Carlos Hernandez

“The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” - Aliette de Bodard; Asimov’s, October/November

“Desert Canticle” - Tessa Gratton; The Anatomy of Curiosity [Carolrhoda Lab, March]

“The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred” - Greg Egan; Asimov’s, December

“Gypsy” - Carter Scholz; Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December

Climate change, politics, capitalism, technology, religion, individual stupidity all contribute to a rapidly worsening situation, and the outlook for humanity is desperate. Against this, one charismatic scientific genius sets up a plan to leave Earth and head for a nearby star. The small crew go into hibernation on the voyage, carrying a small payload to help seed a new start on a distant planet. – Mark Watson

Jacaranda - Cherie Priest [Subterranean Press, January]

“The Last Pantheon” - Tade Thompson and Nick Wood; AfroSFv2 [StoryTime, December]

“The New Mother” - Eugene Fischer; Asimov’s, April/May (link)

“On the Night of the Robo-Bulls and Zombie Dancers” - Nick Wolven; Asimov’s, February (link)

In a time when computers control the economy, a financial wizard sets out on a quest to prevent the ultimate market crash. – Author's description

“Pollen from a Future Harvest” - Derek Künsken; Asimov’s, July

“Quarter Days” - Iona Sharma; GigaNotoSaurus, December (link)

It’s the winter of 1919, and the war is over. Grace, Ned and Thanet have returned to the only world they’ve ever known: the magical courts of the City of London, the Temple gardens, and the river. But while they were gone, it changed. – Author's description

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps - Kai Ashante Wilson [Tor.com, September]

Sunset Mantle - Alter S. Reiss [Tor.com, September]

Three Songs for Roxy - Caren Gussoff [Aqueduct Press, March]

“Waters of Versailles” - Kelly Robson; Tor.com, June 10 (link)

“What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” - Bao Shu (trans. Ken Liu); Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

Witches of Lychford - Paul Cornell [Tor.com, August]

The villagers in the sleepy hamlet of Lychford are divided. A supermarket wants to build a major branch on their border. Some welcome the employment opportunities, while some object to the modernization of the local environment. Judith Mawson (local crank) knows the truth—that Lychford lies on the boundary between two worlds, and that the destruction of the border will open wide the gateways to malevolent beings beyond imagination. But if she is to have her voice heard, she's going to need the assistance of some unlikely allies.... – Publisher's description

Wylding Hall - Elizabeth Hand [Open Road, February]

In the summer of 1971, the manager of the acid folk band Windhollow Faire sent them off to an isolated manor house to prepare their next album. Soon, strange and troubling events began to happen, although their music was better than it had ever been. It all fell apart after Julian Blake, the band's guitarist and songwriter, disappeared. Forty years later, a documentary interviews the remaining band members as they reminisce and puzzle over just what became of Julian. – Vasha

The glossary at the back of Lagoon is useful but rather incomplete. Here are explanations of some more of the Pidgin English, Igbo, and Yoruba expressions in the novel, which I’ve gathered from various internet sources and from guesswork. Babawilly's Dictionary of Pidgin English Words and Phrases was particularly useful. Corrections and additions would be welcomed.

A beg – “please” as a request (p. 102: “A beg, mek everybody relax” = “Everybody please relax”; sarcastically, on p. 186: “A beg mek I ask, o. You dey worship deity too?” = “Let me ask, if you please.”)

Abi - tag question: “isn’t it?” (p. 50: “Abi na film tricks?” = “It isn’t film tricks, is it?”)

Amusu (Igbo) - “witchcraft”

Biko, biko-nu (Igbo) - “please”

Dey - preceding the verb, present tense marker; on its own, copula (“is”)

Don - past tense marker

Eh heh (Igbo) - “yes”

Ewo! (Igbo) - Exclamation of sadness, unpleasant surprise, pity: “Oh no!” [source]

Fit - “can” (p. 50: “I no sabi if she fit do am” = “I don’t know if she can do it”)

For - location preposition: “in, on, at”

Go - future tense marker

Jare (Yoruba) - “please”

Jo - an exclamation used to plead; or, used for emphasis at the end of a sentence [source] (p. 107: “We need comot for here, jo!”)

Kai! - “Yeah!” An exclamation of agreement, enthusiasm, or sympathy

Kukuma - word placed in a sentence for emphasis [source] (p. 103: “Mek you kukuma ask am for him autograph!” = “You really ought to ask him for his autograph!”)

Mek/make - preceding the sentence = 1. “should” (p. 90: “Mek you no waste time” = “You shouldn’t waste time”); 2. mek I = “let me”; mek we = “let’s” (p. 182: “Mek we go my place”)

Nack - “tell”

Olofofo (Yoruba) - “someone who reveals a secret; who lets a secret be known, often inadvertently; gossiper” [source]

Sake of - “because of”

Say - 1. “because” (p. 88: “Mek we first pray say mek checkpoints no dey this road today” = “Let’s pray first because there mustn’t be checkpoints on the way today”); 2. like say = “as if” (p. 115: “You look like say na from de street you come”)

Sef - 1. “even” (p. 103: “But you sef [=even you], you need to lie down for floor, too”) 2. placed at the end of a question when irritated or impatient (p. 184: “Una people fit die, sef?” = “Can you people even die?”) [source]

Since - “before, a while ago”

Wey - relative pronoun: “which, who”

Wor wor - “ugly”

-----------------

On p. 40, Anthony talks about Lagos:

“Lasgidi” you dey call am, right? Eko? Isn’t that what you people call Lagos? Place of belle-sweet, gidi gidi, kata kata, isu, and wahala. Lagos is energy. It never stops. That’s why I like coming here too.

Here’s my attempt to explain that. “Lasgidi” is a name for Lagos that might be derived from the Yoruba word “gidi” meaning “real, really”. “Eko” is an old name for the city which, according to Wikipedia, might perhaps derive from a Yoruba word for “cassava farm”. So Anthony is punning on those names: prosperity, gidi gidi (“extremely”) and isu (literally “yam”, slang for “money” [source]), contrasted with kata kata (glossary: “trouble of the sort that only the poor experience”) and wahala (“trouble”). The extremes make life and energy.

In preparation for the Hugo nominations, I have been reading short fiction. Here follows a list (continually updated) of stories that struck me as award-worthy.

SHORT STORY

“And This Is the Song It Sings” – Megan Arkenberg; Nightmare, Issue 35, August (link)

Our narrator tells us that everyone has a ghost story. She listens to the ones from runaway girls. And she has a secret of her own, “Out there on the side of the highway, somewhere beneath those dying trees and behind those ridges of banded rock, there is a monster.” – Sam Tomaino

“The Cellar Dweller” – Maria Dahvana Headley; Nightmare Magazine 33, June (link)

In a town, there are dark things that dwell behind the cellar door. There also dwells the Banisher. She starts out as a nine-year-old, but not a pretty child. She has a thriving business, “advertises her services particularly for the banishment of gremlins, poltergeists, pixies, and nixies. She does a side business in rats, racoons, starlings, and mice. They come with the territory.” She grows up and goes to college, graduating with honors and leaving that business behind. But that is not the end of her story. – Sam Tomaino / Content warning: Child abuse, child death.

“Damage” – David D. Levine; Tor.com, January 21 (link)

In the extremities of war, we may know what we’ve been, but not what we will become. “Damage” is a tale of desperate times, desperate measures, and the inner life of a fighter spacecraft. – Publisher’s note

“An Element of Blank” – Lynda E. Rucker; Supernatural Tales 30

Three friends attempt to vanquish an evil presence they first encountered together as children. Beginning with a conscious nod to Stephen King, the story goes on to explore the ways in which these three women do or do not fulfill their potential. The central character has remained in the same town, apprehensive and afraid, waiting for a chance at something like redemption. – S. P. Miskowski

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” – Kelly Link; Strange Horizons, October 17 (link)

Killer robot “handmaids” and vampires open our discovery of Anat, a young girl, and her brother Oscar, who live in a ship, “The bucket,” above a planet “Home,” exploring the warehouses built by the Warehouse Builders and cataloging items to sell for their parents, who have been gone. They left Oscar to look after Anat when it became clear that “Anat was different.” Anat’s “handmaids” explore the surface and protect her from the “vampires” who want nothing more than to feed on the siblings. The “game” of Smash and Recovery was created by the siblings to teach Anat how to safely search and seek and use the resources available to her, allowing her and the handmaids to explore the entire surface, except in the “Stay Out Territory.” But Anat is growing smarter the longer they wait for their parents’ return and she hates to lose their games. A sudden twist radically changes every assumption and turns the entire story 180 degrees from where it started. – Eric Kimminau

“Hadley Full of Hate” – Michael Hernshaw; The Sockdolager, Summer (link)

Beowulf, baristas, and post-invasion mop-up of alien forces in the woods of Washington state. – Author’s note

“How My Father Became a God” – Dilman Dila; The Apex Book of World SF 4 (link)

A scifi tale set in an African nation long before colonialism. It features a little girl whose brothers are eager to sell her off into marriage so they can earn cattle to find wives for themselves. She has to rely on her father, an inventor, to fight them off. – Author’s note

“Kaiju maximus®: ‘So Various, So Beautiful, So New’” – Kai Ashante Wilson; Fantasy Magazine, Issue 59, December (link)

In a world devastated by giant monsters, a superhero’s husband and children, hungry and cold, follow loyally after her as she goes to fight the boss monster. – Vasha

“La Héron” – Charlotte Ashley; Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

“La Héron” is the story of a duelist who enters an illicit tourney only to find most of her opponents aren’t what they seem and are playing for stakes she didn’t agree to. But she’s a tough old professional with more than a few tricks up her own sleeve, so with a reluctant-nun-cum-brawler as her second, she’s determined to win it all and take the purse anyway. – Author’s description

“The Lady of the Soler Colony” – Rocío Rincón Fernández (trans. James & Marian Womack); The Apex Book of World SF 4

Set in a Catalan textile colony during an alternate Industrial Revolution. Each factory centers on a goddesslike machine, its Lady. – Vasha

“Little Fox” – Amy Griswold; Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, June (link)

Bella is supposed to go away to college today, but she finds out that her clone, Fox, has drugged her and taken her place. She doesn’t do anything at first and pretends she is the clone. When she tells her mother what has happened, she finds something else out about her family. – Sam Tomaino

“Paradise and Trout” – Betsy James; Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August

10-year-old Hally always spent more time roaming the canyon and dreaming beside the stream with the trout than doing the duty his family expected of him. Now he is dead, and his father's last instruction is to follow the spirit road through the canyon without replying to anything that speaks to him till he arrives at paradise where his uncles await. – Vasha

“Please Undo This Hurt” – Seth Dickinson; Tor.com, September 16 (link)

Ever feel like you care too much? After a breakup, after the funeral…it feels like the way to win at life is to care the least. That’s not an option for Dominga, an EMT who cares too much, or her drinking buddy Nico, who just lost his poor cat. Life hurts. They drink. They talk: Nico’s tired of hurting people. He wants out. Not suicide, not that — he’d just hurt everyone who loves him. But what if he could erase his whole life? Undo the fact of his birth? Wouldn’t Dominga be having a better night, right now, if she didn’t have to take care of him? And when Dominga finds a way to do just that, when she is gifted or armed with a terrible cosmic mercy, she still cares enough to say: I am not letting him have this. I am not letting Nico go without a fight. – Publisher’s note / Content warning: Mental trauma, suicidal thoughts.

“Pocosin” – Ursula Vernon; Apex Magazine, January (link)

[A] folktale... [which] tells the story of a witch named Maggie Grace (always “Maggie,” not even the Lord God can get away with calling her Margaret) and of a last kindness to a small old god who is dying. Maggie stands off both Heaven and Hell in order to give the god his last wish: to die in peace and go wherever it is that gods go when they die. – Jason Harrell

“Rat Catcher’s Yellows” – Charlie Jane Anders; Press Start to Play [Penguin Random House, August] (link)

A crippling disease has made the body of Grace’s wife a prison for her erratic, reclusive brain. The only hope for their marriage? A video game where she rules over kingdom of cats. – Evan Narcisse

“Sea Change” – Kimberly Unger; Galaxy's Edge, September

Maryanne is a creature designed to defend the shores of the colony planet against The Adversary, which comes from the sea. But while watching, she has become attached to a family fleeing a ruthless Boss. When this Boss endangers the Family, Maryanne’s purpose shifts. – Sam Tomaino

“Summer at Grandma’s House” – Hao Jingfang (trans. Carmen Yiling Yan); Clarkesworld, Issue 109, October (link)

Zhanzhan is spending his summer at his grandmother’s house. His college career is in a mess. He has changed his field of study more than once. He forgot to take his English exams. Things at his grandmother’s house are confusing. The door opens at the hinge side. What looks like a refrigerator is actually a stove. Various other things are not what they seem. His grandmother is a retired college professor and is always doing odd experiments. She teaches him something important and changes his outlook on life and his life itself. – Sam Tomaino

“Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight” – Aliette de Bodard; Clarkesworld, January (link)

The author presents us with three characters following the death of Duy Uyen, and we see the accompanying grief and the manner in which each deals with it. Quang Tu, her son, will stew over the loss of both her being and her memories until the bitterness overtakes him. Tuyet Hoa, a fellow researcher and the receiver of Duy Uyen’s memory implants, must come to terms with both the loss and the fact that the woman will live on in her own mind for the remainder of her days. Duy Uyen’s daughter, now the mind ship The Tiger in the Banyan, is no longer human. Her grief is both the least and most human of the three, for in the end she is left only with her own memories of her mother, and is content with those. – Clancy Weeks

“To Die Dancing” – Sam J. Miller; Apex Magazine, Issue 78, November (link)

“To Die Dancing” opens in a world where a new strain of puritanism has taken control of the government and all deviant behavior up to and including dancing is punished. Ostensibly the story deals with a one night pass to dance and relive the forbidden days of freedom. Clive, the protagonist, spends his night in fear that the whole thing is a trap; a way to flush out remaining undesirables. Yet he feels compelled to attend in an attempt to find his missing friend Ummi. – Robert L. Turner III

NOVELETTE

“Another Word for World” – Ann Leckie; Future Visions

Ashiban is on a diplomatic mission, meeting with the Sovereign of Iss, hoping to avert war between their nations, even though neither one of them speaks the other’s language. Their flyer is shot down, they’re not sure who by. As they flee cross-country, they begin to realize just how misconceived the assumptions they brought to the meeting were. – Vasha

“The Body Pirate” – Van Aaron Hughes; The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August

“The Body Pirate” is set on a world where humanoids and birdlike creatures form (seemingly) symbiotic pairings. The birds dominate the pairings, considering themselves “souls” while the humanoids are merely “bodies.” Our protagonist Adela has co-pioneered technology to allow a single soul to divide its time between two or more bodies. This has unintended consequences, both to the society and in Adela’s personal life. – Author's description

“Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” – Ian McDonald; Old Venus

Our initial narrator here is Maureen N. Gellard, the grand-niece Ida Granville-Hyde aka Ida Countess Rathangan, whose papercut art is valued beyond all measure. Her prints are anthologized in many books, including fifteen editions of the Botanica Veneris, based on the flora of Venus. Now, her last journal and papercuts, detailing her only trip to Venus (where she disappeared), have come into the possession of her grand-niece, who presents them without further comment. Ida's unique voice adds immeasurably to her journey across Venus, looking for her brother, Arthur, who had absconded with the family jewel (and her dowry) the Blue Empress, on the eve of her marriage to the wastrel Baron Rathanagan. On her journey, she learns of her brother's sins and crimes, (described as a gambler, a thief, a murderer, and a seducer, by someone who likes him). There are more surprises in store. – Sam Tomaino

“An Evolutionary Myth” – Bo-Young Kim (trans. Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park); Clarkesworld, May (link)

Our narrator’s father was king but abdicated his crown to his brother, who is cruel. The land is under a long drought and people and animals metamorphose to adjust to changing conditions. Our narrator undergoes many changes as he runs from the king’s assassins and soldiers. – Sam Tomaino

“Little Men with Knives” – L. S. Johnson; Crossed Genres Magazine #31, July (link)

The dark story of a divorced school-cafeteria worker whose life is not completely ordinary because every evening she puts a plate of food on her porch for the two-foot-tall dwarfs she’s seen emerging from a hole under her hedge. – Vasha / Content warning: Animal death; physical and mental abuse; gore; suicide of a secondary character.

“No Placeholder for You, My Love” – Nick Wolven; Asimov’s, August

Claire believes she’s finally found her soulmate. But to win his love, she must navigate the rules of a world where all is not as it seems. – Author's description

“A Residence for Friendless Ladies” – Alice Sola Kim; Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April

Our unnamed narrator is a transgendered boy trapped in a voluptuous girl's body, thrown out of prep school when caught taking male hormones and being in a rage. Now, his grandmother is forcing him to live as a girly girl in The H______ Residence for Friendless Ladies. The Residence is very bizarre with each lady in separate rooms. An important rule for each of them is that she must not answer a persistent knocking at her door at night. There is a very unsettling feel to this story as our narrator finds a way to survive. – Sam Tomaino

“Our Lady of the Open Road” – Sarah Pinsker; Asimov’s, June (link)

Luce and her band are on the road in a future where the road is dying, driving in their restaurant-grease van from one gig to the next as they become fewer and farther between as the venues slowly disappear, along with the few remaining live bands. All entertainment now comes as holos. She does it for the music, for the live music and the few people who still come to see it, but it’s a dying way of life, as they get older and creakier, scrounge in dumpsters for food and sleep in the funk of the van, constantly looking out for cops who’ll harass them on general suspicion. Anything but sell out to the holo corporations. – Lois Tilton

“Saltwater Railroad” – Andrea Hairston; Lightspeed, July (link)

“Saltwater Railroad” is a novella set in the antebellum South on a small island off the Georgia/Florida coast where misfits and escaped slaves gather. Delia, who talks to the spirits, helps keep them safe. But a new castaway, Rainbow – who also has some witchery about her – joins them and leads to some serious trouble. – Chuck Rothman / Content warning: Rape, slavery, and abuse in the backstory.

“Sinseerly a Friend & Yr Obed’t” – Thomas M. Waldroon; Beneath Ceaseless Skies #171, April 16 (link)

The central character is Mr Stutley Northrup, sometimes called “Old Stuck-Up”, who lives the near Pennsylvania shore of Lake Erie in the mid-nineteenth century. Now comes to him the Justice of the Peace, a former student, wondering about the rumors of a sea serpent in the lake. Northrup isn’t impressed; he already knows all about the sea serpent, seen it himself. But there’s a complication, the real reason the JP has come to Northup about—and against—the monster. A body has washed ashore, and it’s been identified as Amos, Northrup’s hired man, known by him as a fugitive slave... – Lois Tilton

NOVELLA

“The Bone Swans of Amandale” – C. S. E. Cooney; Bone Swans [Mythic Delirium Books, July] (link)

“The Bone Swans of Amandale” is a fairy tale mashup of “The Juniper Tree” meets “The Pied Piper” narrated by Maurice, a human/rat shapeshifter.... The swan people of Amandale are being killed by tyrannical mayor Ulia Gol and turned into ghostly musical instruments for her enjoyment (Gol is as unctuous as she is monstrous, a gloriously over-the-top antagonist for this type of collective-unconscious nightmare). Maurice assembles an unlikely band of heroes (including the Pied Piper) to save Dora Rose, the last of the swan people and the woman he loves: even if her hauteur and disdain for him should give him little hope. – Carlos Hernandez

“Gypsy” - Carter Scholz; Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December

Climate change, politics, capitalism, technology, religion, individual stupidity all contribute to a rapidly worsening situation, and the outlook for humanity is desperate. Against this, one charismatic scientific genius sets up a plan to leave Earth and head for a nearby star. The small crew go into hibernation on the voyage, carrying a small payload to help seed a new start on a distant planet. – Mark Watson

“On the Night of the Robo-Bulls and Zombie Dancers” – Nick Wolven; Asimov’s, February (link)

In a time when computers control the economy, a financial wizard sets out on a quest to prevent the ultimate market crash. – Author's description

“Quarter Days” – Iona Sharma; GigaNotoSaurus, December (link)

It’s the winter of 1919, and the war is over. Grace, Ned and Thanet have returned to the only world they’ve ever known: the magical courts of the City of London, the Temple gardens, and the river. But while they were gone, it changed. – Author's description

Witches of Lychford – Paul Cornell [Tor.com, August]

The villagers in the sleepy hamlet of Lychford are divided. A supermarket wants to build a major branch on their border. Some welcome the employment opportunities, while some object to the modernization of the local environment. Judith Mawson (local crank) knows the truth—that Lychford lies on the boundary between two worlds, and that the destruction of the border will open wide the gateways to malevolent beings beyond imagination. But if she is to have her voice heard, she's going to need the assistance of some unlikely allies.... – Publisher's description

Wylding Hall – Elizabeth Hand [Open Road, February]

In the summer of 1971, the manager of the acid folk band Windhollow Faire sent them off to an isolated manor house to prepare their next album. Soon, strange and troubling events began to happen, although their music was better than it had ever been. It all fell apart after Julian Blake, the band's guitarist and songwriter, disappeared. Forty years later, a documentary interviews the remaining band members as they reminisce and puzzle over just what became of Julian. – Vasha

The editor Walida Imarisha writes,

Many folks have asked us what science fiction could possibly have to do with social justice organizing. And every time, we have responded, “Everything. Everything.” We want organizers and movement builders to be able to claim the vast space of possibility, to be birthing visionary stories. Using their everyday realities and experiences of changing the world, they can form the foundation for the fantastic and, we hope, build a future where the fantastic liberates the mundane.

That's how this book that often depicts suffering and injustice is not depressing, because of its constant emphasis on the possibilities of change. Some of the stories depict transformed futures, some only seek to open up the way, but they are always keeping the better in mind.

This was something different when coming to it from a perspective within the genre. The great majority of the contributors to this volume are not professional science fiction writers, or even any kind of writers; they are activists and organizers, artists and performers. That's both good and bad.

The good is that the stories are diverse and untraditional; being "activisty" writing rather than "storytellery" writing makes for a nice change of pace. The utopian ideas are mostly daring, the authors all write passionately, and they choose a variety of forms, from biographical to report-like to mythological, from time-travel to alternate reality, from narrative to experimental. (The weirdest is "Sanford and Sun" by Dawolu Jabari Anderson where Sun Ra disrupts a sitcom script.) There were two pieces addressed to their author's descendants, mixing snippets of autobiography with hopes; I wonder if that is some entire subgenre. There were also two novel excerpts, two essays (including a rather interesting appreciation of Octavia Butler by Tananarive Due) and no less than three editorial contributions.

The bad is that, not surprisingly, the authors' writing skills in many cases could not support their ambitions. There were all too many earnestly clunking paragraphs here. Simplistic writing undermined depictions of communities and denunciation of wrongs. Some stories were shorter than they needed to be, and at least one was longer. Luckily there were some genuinely well-made stories too, and I don't think the flaws of the other ones made them unreadable. They were almost all interesting enough for one reading, it was just that I won't often be tempted to re-read.

I would like to highlight three stories that stood out for me (though I wouldn't call any of them truly great).

"Kafka's Last Laugh" by Vagabond. As well as Kafka, this story explicitly references Terry Gilliam, for the almost slapstick absurdity of its extreme dystopia. And yet, as an "if this goes on..." excercise it's fairly on point: laughter is invoked as the only possible response to the cruelties of capitalism; it needs to be funny, then, and it is.

"Revolution Shuffle" by Bao Phi. An intimate tale, depicting two guerilla fighters pausing to talk just before their attempt to liberate the prisoners of an internment camp. What drives them, their adjustments to a terrible world, their fears and their courage are well-drawn.

"Homing Instinct" by Dani McClain. A climate change story with an unusually thoughtful, uncertain examination of how people might approach the need to fundamentally alter their lifestyle.

Some others worth mentioning: "Manhunter" by Kalamu ya Salaam has potential, takes place in a complex future setting and has interesting characters, but it reads like an excerpt from a longer work, with the reader expected to already be familiar with the worldbuilding. "Black Angel" by Walidah Imarisha is blunt in its denunciation of racist beauty standards. "the river" by adrienne maree brown is very nicely written, but its underlying idea (the genius loci of Detroit resists carpetbaggers) might be a bit thin. "Hollow" by Mia Mingus, though awkwardly written, depicts an interesting society built entirely by disabled people.

The editors also included an excerpt from Terry Bisson's 1988 utopian alternate history Fire on the Mountain; Bisson is the only old-white-male writer in the volume, and the only SF professional. That this novel fits as well as it does in this context is a welcome indication that radical writers of color are not doing only a separate thing completely unheard by what passes as the "mainstream" -- though they cast the value of the mainstream in doubt.

I have now read about half of the stories in The Apex Book of World SF 4 and would like to say a few words about them (the last three I will discuss are my favorites). I happen to like fiction on the “literary” side of SFF: stories that suggest more than they say, that make their point obliquely, that contain intertwining themes, that are stylistically subtle or innovative. And the editor of this volume, Mahvesh Murad, is of the same mind; not that there aren’t a few straightforwardly-told entries, too. Many stories here are magical-realist, weird, or surreal rather than pure SFF.

Some of the stories are very challenging to read. “Like a Coin Entrusted in Faith”, by Shimon Adaf, went way over my head. It gets into very esoteric Jewish mysticism, it takes the form of a letter exchange between two scholars, who are interested (among other things) in people who may have returned from the future, entwined with a story about a woman asked to act as midwife to demons, and it’s even more confusing than that sounds. “Pepe” by Tang Fei (trans. John Chu) is also difficult, a somewhat diffuse piece involving mechanical children which can only tell stories instead of ordinary speech; it tries to convey a lot and I’m not sure if it succeeds.

However, there’s an exercise in sheer surrealism called “Six Things We Found During the Autopsy”, by Kuzhali Manickavel, which I’ve read twice and wound up really liking; some schoolgirls recount their “autopsy” of one of their number which, rather than revealing anything much about that girl, paints a picture of their own thoughts and judgments.

Horror stories: “Setting Up Home” by Sabrina Huang (trans. Jeremy Tiang) is brief and quite effective in building from an apparently-harmless opening to an appalling end; I’m not sure if familiarity with its cultural setting would increase or lessen its effect. I personally find that the troubling effect lingers, even increases, in retrospect. “Black Tea” by Samuel Marolla (trans. Andrew Tanzi) brings nothing much noteworthy to a trapped-in-creepy-house-with-monster story.

“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov, on the other hand, is definitely not lacking in originality. What I actually think of this extravagantly gruesome, emotionally laden story, I really don’t know.

Zen Cho’s “The Four Generations of Chang E” transposes a paradigmatic immigration story to the moon; it’s beautifully written. “Djinns Live by the Sea” by Saad Z. Hossain satirically confronts a jaded rich man with djinns even older and more cynical than him. “Colour Me Grey” by Silayi Swabir is a political fable, which might be very pointed to some people (such as in the author’s Kenya) but didn’t connect with me.

From the Caribbean, the short piece “Single Entry” (i.e. a contestant in a carnival parade) by Celeste Rita Baker is wondrous and doesn’t give up its meaning easily. Marigi John’s “The Corpse” is a genuinely disorienting magical-realist story (mostly a character portrait of a coroner), but not one of the best of its kind I’ve read.

“The Good Matter” by Nene Ormes (trans. by the author and Lisa J. Isaksson) is described as urban fantasy and does, I think, fit nicely into that category in the depiction of the characters with paranormal powers in it. The ideology represented in it was bound to displease me, but I suppose it was competently written.

Two traditional science fiction stories: “The Gift of Touch” by Chinelo Onwualu, a disappointingly clunky depiction of a small starship’s crew and their encounter with various religions; and “The Symphony of Ice and Dust” by Julie Novakova — humans and posthumans explore the outer solar system: sense of wonder promised and delivered.

Dilman Dila, from Uganda, wrote “How My Father Became a God”, the most charming of these stories. It is in the style of an oral tale and set in premodern times; the child Akidi tells of her misfit father who is always looking for technological innovations (wonderfully kooky ones), which is one reason he doesn’t get along with his brothers, but the real reason is that his values (shared only by his wife and daughter) don’t fit with the narrow minds of the family squabbling over money and status. I do recommend it, along with the other two that made the strongest impression on me:

“The Lady of the Soler Colony” by Rocío Rincón (trans. James & Marian Womack), set in the author’s hometown Barcelona. Six “colonies” (factories) based around goddesslike machines, the “Ladies”. An industrial society with a pervading wrongness to it, with creepiness gradually revealed, but the real nastiness is the mundane economic exploitation. No tidy resolution, but an impression of layers-upon-layers of unease.

“The Farm” by Elana Gomel. It is set during the Russian Revolution, and the main character is a Jewish man leading a small group of rural Bolsheviks; what is noteworthy is the use of the device of his encounters with strange beings called Eaters to draw a remarkably rich picture of both the character and the times.

The publisher's title is wrong: most of the stories in this volume come from Afghanistan (the author's home country) and other parts of western Asia. They are a nicely diverse lot, and include almost all the genres of oral telling. There are wonder tales with talking birds and jeweled palaces (e.g. "Prince Attila's Journey to the End of the World"), there are comic stories where a villain gets a comeuppance (e.g. "The Princess, the Vizier, and the Ape"), there are domestic comedies (e.g. "The Precious Pearl"), there are wisdom tales (e.g. "The King, the Dog, and the Golden Bowl"), there are instructive stories about divine providence (e.g. "The Princess of Fantasistan"), there are trickster stories (e.g. "The Bully and the Poisoned Fish"), there are hero legends (e.g. "The Tale of Hatim Tai"), there are local legends ("The Treasure Hoard of the Afreet") and local anecdotes ("The Lost Mares"), there are sui generis flights of fancy... All of it is wonderfully well told, with a sense for pacing and a particularly good skill with humorous stories.

Alas, for my taste it is often marred by a deep misogyny; this is less evident in some tales than others, but only very few ("Princess Feroza and the Horse Prince", "The Carpet Merchant's Daughter and the Snake") feature a female character who is both an agent in her own story and depicted positively. By contrast there are many that instruct girls that they should want nothing except to please their husbands, or that portray women as frivolous, foolish, and vain. There is "The Warrior's Daughter and the Four Suitors," a short parable instructing a warrior what husband he should choose for his daughter (The one who'll write her love poems? The one who'll give her a comfortable home? No, the one who'll beget warriors on her). The cultural messages throughout are pretty consistent: women are to serve as wombs and obedient domestic servants, and wanting anything else is sinful vanity, which they must often be punished for.

That said, I enjoyed this collection tremendously, and consider it something of a model for skillful retellings of collected material.