Archive for category Saturday Shorts
Saturday Shorts: The 2012 Hugo Nominees
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on April 7, 2012
With the announcement of the 2012 Hugo Nominees this afternoon, I have a lot of short story reading to catch up on, and so do you. So here’s a collection of the short fiction nominees, with links where I can find them:
Best Novella
- Countdown, Mira Grant (Orbit)
- “The Ice Owl”, Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction)
- “Kiss Me Twice”, Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s)
- “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s)
- “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”, Ken Liu (Panverse 3)
- Silently and Very Fast, Catherynne M. Valente (WSFA)
Note: 6 nominees due to tie for final position.
Best Novelette
- “The Copenhagen Interpretation”, Paul Cornell (Asimov’s)
- “Fields of Gold”, Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)
- “Ray of Light”, Brad R. Torgersen (Analog)
- “Six Months, Three Days”, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)
- “What We Found”, Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
Best Short Story
- “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld)
- “The Homecoming”, Mike Resnick (Asimov’s)
- “Movement”, Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s)
- “The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
- “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”, John Scalzi (Tor.com)
Saturday Short – “An Inside Job” by Neil C. Miller
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on March 24, 2012
Saturday Shorts: “The Mezzotint” by M.R. James
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on February 4, 2012
Today I went to see The Woman in Black, so you get a ghost story. Isn’t it nice how this works out?
For the first time I feature a story I haven’t actually read yet, but that a friend of mine insists is much creepier than it should be. Like The Woman in Black (the movie at least, I can’t speak for the book), it isn’t necessarily the originality of the story but the way it’s told that makes it scary. Of course, M.R. James is one of the early horror writers, and clichés weren’t necessarily cliché yet when he wrote “The Mezzotint.”
To say too much more about it would be to give it all away – it’s quite a short story – or possibly there’s nothing to give away, because it’s all in the atmosphere. Still, if you’re in the mood for a quick creepy thrill, you could do much worse.
Saturday Shorts: Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on January 21, 2012
It’s been a while since I did one of these, hasn’t it? But the book I finished over lunch today - The Brief History of the Dead – reminded me of this story, and I knew it was available online, so it seemed perfect.
If you haven’t read Ted Chiang’s stories, you are in for an amazing treat. If you have – well, you’re probably appreciating a chance to read it again, aren’t you? This is a story to savor; make yourself a cup of tea and settle in. Don’t expect it to be over too quickly. It isn’t that long, but it’s very full.
“Exhalation” is the story of a very small world. At least, it seems small by our standards; I suppose if you lived in it it would seem the size of the world. And it’s a story about the end of the world, too. It’s almost a classic Golden Age science fiction story, since the whole point of it is for the reader to explore this world run entirely on air pressure in much the same way that ours is run on sunlight. But Golden Age sf stories always seem a little dry to me, mostly because they don’t have any real people in them. The narrator of “Exhalation” is most definitely a real person, and it is a joy to meet him.
Saturday Shorts: A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel by Yoon Ha Lee
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on December 10, 2011
Science fiction is a huge genre – it covers everything from military adventures to small, introspective pieces, future history, alternate history, space travel, telepathy, cyberpunk… A little bit of everything. But one of the things that holds it together is the exploration of the alien, whether that means literal aliens or just things that do not exist in our current daily lives.
In this wonderful, poetic short story, Yoon Ha Lee explores the truly alien – literal aliens this time, but some of the most non-human aliens I’ve ever had the pleasure to read about.After all, humans are not at all consistent in their reasons for doing things – it stands to reason that not all aliens would invent interstellar travel for the same reasons.
On this chilly winter weekend, enjoy “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel” by Yoon Ha Lee.
Saturday Short: Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on November 26, 2011
While I’m still limping along, trying to put my online life back together after nearly a month disconnected (sob!), one of my favorite short stories for you this fine, rainy Saturday evening.
It’s really not news to any horror fan to say that H.P. Lovecraft was kind of very racist. I mean, he was a product of the late nineteenth century, of course he was racist. In “Shoggoths in Bloom,” Elizabeth Bear takes the Cthulu mythos and applies a modern point of view to it – which is not to say that Professor Harding is a modern character, but that he is a character that H.P. Lovecraft would never have considered using as the point of view.
Professor Harding is a veteran of the Great War, a naturalist, and the grandson of an African-born slave. He’s researching the shoggoths, and what he finds, and what he does with that knowledge – well. It’s not a long story, do go find out. It is quite wonderful.
Saturday Shorts: The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on October 29, 2011
Hey, you didn’t think I could get all the way through October without a single Poe story, did you?
“The Fall of the House of Usher” has always been my favorite Edgar Allen Poe story, despite the rather awkward “analytical” readings of it we had to do in high school English classes. Yes, yes, the house symbolizes the family, the downfall of the aristocracy, blah blah blah. What I love about it is the house itself. I’ve always wanted to live in a haunted house. I grew up in a Victorian-era house that had been disappointingly remodeled until all the interesting bits were gone, and I always longed for a proper house full of secret passages and mysterious corners.
Of course, there is also the family Usher, never really explained but obscurely hinted at. The joy of stories like that is that it’s just as disturbing as whatever you bring to it (and believe me, I can make these stories pretty damn disturbing).
Enjoy this horror classic as we head into Hallowe’en weekend – some of my favorite books are coming up!
Saturday Shorts: The Colour Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on October 22, 2011
I have something rather embarrassing to admit. I’ve never actually read any Lovecraft before reading this story for today. I’ve read lots of Lovecraftian stories, and I’m relatively familiar with the mythos, but this is the first time I’ve read something by the man himself. Lovecraft stories have a reputation for being overwritten, but I didn’t find “The Colour Out of Space” any more overdone than any other fiction of the period, and much less than some.
The plot is simple – a meteor falls from the sky, wreaks havoc, and leaves. Or does it? The story itself is told, like all the best urban legends, at a couple of removes – the nameless narrator is relating to us the story of a local family that he heard from a local farmer. After hearing the horrible tale of how the family went mad, turned into horrific things, and then died (yes, in that order), the narrator promptly announces that he will not be staying in Arkham and will certainly never be drinking the water out of the reservoir that is being built over the old, dead farm.
To be perfectly honest, I didn’t find this story nearly as scary as the Machen or Blackwood I wrote about earlier this month. A bit unnerving, perhaps, but nothing that’s going to keep me looking over my shoulder for too long. Still, it was good to finally get a sense of where all this is coming from. I will certainly be reading more Lovecraft in the future.
(And you, dear reader? You will be getting a barrage of Lovecraft mythos in the next few days. Enjoy!)
Saturday Shorts: The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on October 15, 2011
Time for one of my absolute favorite horror stories of all time, Arthur Machen’s “Novel of the Black Seal”. Machen was a Welsh writer of the same period as Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft – and, more to the point, Aleistair Crowley, who was a great fan of Machen’s. (Machen did not return the favor, which honestly says something rather flattering about him.)
Despite the title, “The Novel of the Black Seal” is actually a short story, a part of Machen’s larger collection entitled The Three Impostors. In The Three Impostors, a group of men, all members of a secret society, search for “the young man with the spectacles” (for what purpose it is probably better not to know) and in the course of their searches acquire and share a number of short, horrifying tales, of which “Black Seal” is one.
“The Novel of the Black Seal” is another horror story in the same vein as “The Willows,” which I used to kick off my October Extravaganza series. Unlike “The Willows,” though, the threat in “Black Seal” is is much more present, and undeniably real – no falling back on psychological explanations this time. It’s just as mysterious, though, and just as inexplicable. And to me, that makes it even more awful – it’s real, but no one will ever believe you if you try to tell them about it, and you’ll never be able to stop it. *shivers*
Enjoy this delightful little slice of terror for your weekend, folks.
Saturday Shorts: The Ballad of Tam Lin
Posted by Jen in Saturday Shorts on October 8, 2011
Welcome to your Saturday Short (which you will probably see on Sunday, but that’s okay), kicking off a week of October Extravaganza stories about the Good Folk, the Good Neighbors, the Kindly Ones. Some people call them faeries, but wise people know that this only infuriates them; you must be as polite as possible, because you really, really do not want the Good Folk to be unhappy with you. It isn’t that they’re cruel, you see. It’s just that they aren’t human. Some people believe that they are the reincarnated souls of unbaptized infants. Others call them merely demons. The only thing that is sure is that they anger very easily – and inventively.
The Ballad of Tam Lin is an old Scottish story about Tam Lin, who is a prisoner of the Queen of Faerie, and Janet, the woman who rescues him. It’s a very old story and it has been updated many, many times – the modern classic is Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, which is also an excellent college novel. For the texts of various versions of the ballad and some discussion of its history, there is the wonderful Tam-Lin.org, or you may enjoy one of my favorite renditions of the ballad, performed by Steeleye Span.
(Protip: Janet makes a great last-minute Hallowe’en costume. Since it is well known that ballads are updated to fit the current time, you can use whatever style of dress you like, from medieval to modern. All you need is a green cloak or coat, jewels in your hair, and a single rose. I can’t guarantee that everyone will recognize you, but it’s a great story to tell at a Hallowe’en party anyway.)
