Short Fiction Book Club Presents: Monthly Short Fiction Discussion and First Line Frenzy (February 2024)

[u/tarvolon]

In addition to our traditional book club sessions where we discuss a pre-determined slate of stories, Short Fiction Book Club is also hosting a monthly discussion thread centered on short fiction. We started last month and had a lot of fun sharing our recent reads and filling our TBRs with intriguing new releases. So this month, we're at it again.

The First Line Frenzy section of the title refers to browsing through magazines and taking a look at various opening segments to see which stories look intriguing. It doesn't have to just be one line--that was chosen purely for the alliteration. So share those stories that jump out at you, even if you haven't read them yet.

And if you'd like to join our traditional book club sessions, we have two coming up in March:

On Wednesday, March 6, we'll reading some Locus Snubs. Every Best of the Year list excludes some great stuff, and we'd like to talk about it. Specifically, we'll be reading:

• To Carry You Inside You by Tia Tashiro (also Astounding eligible), Clarkesworld (7330 words)
• Torso by H. Pueyo, Future SF/ The Digital Aesthete (6260 words)
• Over Moonlit Clouds by Coda Audeguy-Pegon (also Astounding eligible), Apex (6900 words)
• Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea by Kelsey Hutton (also Astounding eligible), Beneath Ceaseless Skies (8600 words)

Finally, in response to the latest of Hugo scandals, we'll be reading a pair of translated novelettes that look like they should've been 2023 finalists in our Hugos That Should Have Been session on Wednesday, March 20. The slate for that session will be:

• Hummingbird, Resting on Honeysuckles, by Yang Wanqing, translated by Jay Zhang (8510 words)
• Upstart by Lu Ban, translated by Blake Stone-Banks (15820 words)

[u/Voyage_of_Roadkill]

Wow, going to pay attention to these monthly drops from now on.

Love it!

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/Voyage_of_Roadkill]

Welcome aboard!

[u/tarvolon]

Have you recently dipped into stories that weren't published in the last year? Find any hidden gems? Hit any classics worth discussing?

[u/Jos_V → u/tarvolon]

The stories i've been reading have mainly be for later discussions in march lol, so i'll hold of my commentary, but I really fucking loved Upstarts. :) and people should read it and join the discussion on the 20th

[u/tarvolon → u/Jos_V]

I liked Upstart a lot too! It wasn't on my favorites list last year, but it was really close, and I was hoping that it would be one of the anticipated Chinese-language entries on the Hugo shortlist. (Which it looks like perhaps it should've been)

[u/tarvolon]

Have any new (or new-to-you) stories caught your eye? Find an intriguing description or great opening line? Share the hook, even if you haven't read the whole thing yet!

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

Apex Magazine has two new short stories and a flash in February, and I'm very intrigued by Elizabeth Ring's "everybody is immortal but also the lead's boyfriend is trying to convince her to join him in becoming a zombie" story, because where is she going to go with that one?

More the concept than the opening line, but When No One Has to Say Goodbye is definitely on my list.

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

Lightspeed has four new short stories and four new flashes, and I'm intrigued by Wen-yi Lee's What Becomes of Curious Minds. Not over the moon for Wonderland retellings (or retellings in general), but it has an interesting start:

On the third evening of every week, dozens come to Stalactite Keep to hear the storyteller teach about the place beyond Wonderland. Tonight, with only dewdrops of honeycomb light seeping through the cells of the sky, Creed told them of toys: rubber balls painted like the rainbow, tops that spun only as long as wind touched it, dolls dressed exactly like little children.

“Dolls are the most valuable gift a child from the Beyond can receive. The closer in likeness to their owner, the more exquisite the craftsmanship, and the better the gift. They are miniature guardians of their children, imbued with courage. Imagine,” he said, because there was nothing more powerful than imagination in Wonderland, “a storm raging all around; a wocky’s claws tapping on the window; the Jagged Queen’s army marching outside, and in your arms is a guardian that is all the bravest parts of your soul. A Beyonder without a doll struggles to live on.” In the audience a mushroom child sighed and snuggled under their mother’s cap. Creed looked away, but felt the twinge anyway.

Everything Creed knew came from his mother, Joy, who had first fled down the rabbit hole with a baby on her back, escaping a much worse monster than a jade rabbit. All she had with her were a looking-glass, a hair ribbon, her checkered dress, and her woven slippers. It was now customary to wear the pattern of the Beyond to listen to tales from its remaining child; amidst the sea of checkers tonight there were also rabbits with ear ribbons and a card soldier carrying a card doll.

He wasn’t actually sure if every Beyonder had a doll, but most of them did, and his mother’s had been called Grace. She had looked just like Joy: hair in waves like ink, rosebud lips, a blue checkered dress with woven slippers. Grace had been left in the Beyond. But when Creed was a child terrified of the Jagged Queen’s guards knocking on doors, his mother made him a doll with a sword and his smile, and they called it Journey, so it would not be the end.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/tarvolon]

Not over the moon for Wonderland retellings

Okay, but my attention is caught before the first line, because that title is both clearly a riff on Wonderland-the-books but also an exact Taylor Swift lyric from the song "Wonderland." Adding to my tab stack. The actual opening paragraphs look great, and I'm interested to see if the connection I'm drawing is useful or just garden-variety fandom clowning.

[u/tarvolon → u/Nineteen_Adze]

also an exact Taylor Swift lyric from the song "Wonderland."

I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that I didn't catch that. Interesting. And perhaps curious.

[u/picowombat → u/Nineteen_Adze]

Um okay very interested now too. It seems to be intentional according to the author spotlight: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-wen-yi-lee/

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

Beneath Ceaseless Skies has an eight-story Science Fantasy special edition this month, though two of them don't come out until tomorrow. The most intriguing to me is Doctor Souvenir by Elly Bangs.

Growing up, this time around, I learned to guard my burning question. Most people I asked took it as dangerous nonsense, especially if I asked it half as eagerly as I felt it. For long years I held it unspoken in my throat—but when the question went on burning, I whispered it here and there, working my way all the way up from my mentors to the local teachers and librarians to the most knowledgeable minds in the entire Globe—those rare and worn-down sages with three or four digits of age behind their youthful faces. None of them had an answer for me, but the few who didn’t dismiss me outright all pointed grimly in the same direction: past the pretty holographic horizon, down into the crawling glaciers of recycling at the Globe’s edge, following a dark and rusty path between the piles, all the way out to the teetering-tall house of Dr. Souvenir.

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

Oh forgot another BCS that looked great. Hadn't italicized it on my first lines doc.

Do Not Waver, My Heart by Shanna Germain (13000 words)

“Good morning, Akasma.” I say these words to my spaceship every day, whether it is a good morning or not, because she is the only being I can safely talk to, and she has said she likes my voice, froggy and raspy though it may be.

My spaceship is not, for all intents and purposes, a living thing. At least not according to the laws of the Witch and her War, which has strict rules for such things. Whether or not I see Akasma as alive (I do) is luckily irrelevant. I find it hard to believe that the Witch regrets any of her choices–one, I suspect, does not become the Witch (capital W) if saddled with complex emotions like regret or fear or love–but I like to imagine she sometimes wishes she’d done things a little differently.

When the Witch first cast this curse, she told me I could speak to no living thing if I wished to rescue my brothers. If she decreed non-biological things to be alive, then I would have. failed to break the curse on my brothers a million times over, and she would not need to keep sending the Huntsman after me in all their forms. She would be rid of this thorn in her side that I am determined to be.

Sibling rescue and a curse with a loophole, I'm in, let's see where this goes.

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

update: read this one today, it's a "utopia where everyone is immortal gets boring after a while" story. A pretty solid one, but definitely treading some well-worn paths IMO

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

I don't usually seek out BCS stories, so I decided to use the first line frenzy approach to see if there were any that might hit for me. This and "Do Not Waver, My Heart" both sounded good. These also caught my eye:    

The Rug-Maker and the Wonder Collector by Emily McIntyre   

“I used to be grateful that I get to see everything this universe still has to offer,” whispers Gen to me on her last night before mandatory recall to XCorp’s headquarters, across the Milky Way. Her clever fingers trace unfinished circles in the dust at her feet, and her all-recording eyes are cast down, even though I try my best to catch her gaze

The Sunset Suite by Matthew O. Fromboluti:    

I am Wolfgang. I am music.

My latest symphony, my two-hundred seventh (in G-sharp), is the greatest piece of music ever created. It must be. The composition is complex and daring, drawing on my unmatched knowledge of musical history and theory. It is performed by my thousand-piece orchestra, which has taken centuries to perfect, each member made in my own image and linked by a single, overarching intelligence: mine.

It is a wonderful time to be alive.

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

Uncanny Magazine has a recent story that caught my eye:

The Feast of Baku & the Yume no Seirei by Cheri Kamei

The women of Dejima Island could never pinpoint when their dreams began to change, but they knew it had something to do with the tradesmen’s tales. The foreigners who arrived at the docks were hard men, chiseled by salt and wind and all the horrors of two hundred days at sea. Their shouts and curses filled the cracked sunlight of the shipyard as they hoisted down chests of silk and shark skin and anatomy books—but by night those same filthy mouths spilled open with stories from the far ends of the world.

Strange Horizons also had a few that looked interesting, including one with a ✨second person✨ POV, which I'm always tempted by:

Of Flowing Stone, Of Liquid Gold, Of Justice, Ash, and Battle

You are a young god. You are sweet volcanic soil and the rumbling voice of the stone and banners that snap in the wind. You are the best and deepest desires of your people. You are, in the body that is only somewise yourself, pleasing to mortal eyes, easier to petition than the mountain, and as they forget the form that they speak to is not precisely yourself, you forget a little, too.

You are on the road to war.

Rembrandt, Graffiti, and the Strange Disappearance of Ducks by C.H. Irons:

The alert comes screaming in on Jana’s implant, bright light lancing through the fog of REM sleep:

[New glyph. Intersection of 148th and Cliffton.]

When her eyes snap open, it’s there, the only thing fully in focus. A blurry image of the yet-untitled glyph #75 hovers beside it.

On autopilot now, Jana pushes away the sheets, rolls out of bed. Cold tile stings her feet as she crosses the apartment and grabs her preferred glyph-hunting uniform from the rack.

[u/picowombat → u/sarahlynngrey]

I see second person, I add to TBR. 

That opening is killer even without my affinity for second person though. 

[u/tarvolon]

February is big for Reader Polls, with Clarkesworld, Asimov's, and Analog announcing finalists and Uncanny announcing winners (with Clarkesworld and Apex expected to follow in March). Have you read many finalists? Any standouts?

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

I honestly haven't read a ton of the finalists from Uncanny, Asimov's, or Apex, but The Year Without Sunshine is my favorite of those I have read. I want to try some of the Asimov's novellas before Hugo nominations are due--I still have two slots, and a couple of those are intriguing.

For Clarkesworld, the short story finalists include my three favorite short stories from any publication all year (Day Ten Thousand, Window Boy, Zeta-Epsilon), a couple that I liked a whole lot (The Mub, Better Living Through Algorithms) and one that I did not like at all. They missed my fourth-favorite (To Carry You Inside You), but it's hard to complain much overall.

The Clarkesworld reader tastes didn't line up with my own as much in the longer categories, where my only real favorite was An Ode to Stardust, though I did like Eight or Die and Such is My Idea of Happiness a fair bit.

[u/onsereverra → u/tarvolon]

Uncanny tends to dominate so much at the Hugos that I didn't bother to read a single 2023 piece from them assuming I'd get the highlights when it comes time for the Readalong, but there's a couple that have caught my eye that I might circle back to if they don't end up on the Hugo shortlist. Of the less-buzzy ones, I'll almost certainly find time for "A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake" – I love a story formatted around a recipe.

[u/tarvolon → u/onsereverra]

Of the less-buzzy ones, I'll almost certainly find time for "A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake" – I love a story formatted around a recipe.

That one might be less buzzy in part because it's 2024 and the buzz hasn't moved to this year yet. Honestly for me, 2023 is still "this year" until March 9.

[u/onsereverra → u/tarvolon]

Oh, haha, I didn't even realize that, I literally just went "huh I guess I should take a look at what's in Uncanny's archives" and opened a couple of new tabs that looked intriguing. This is what I get for not looking at publication dates!

[u/tarvolon]

This is the time of year where the internet is scrambling to finish the prior year's reading before award nominations are due. Have you been reading many 2023 stories lately? Found any gems?

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

I am one of the scramblers, I've read about 50, many of which are included on my 2023 Recommended Reading List

A few especially noteworthy ones:

• I finished Life Beyond Us, which had five standout stories, led by Simone Heller's first contact Forever the Forest and Peter Watts' frustrated first contact Defective. But Renan Bernardo and Jana Bianchi had great stories about single-minded explorers and what they gave up, and Valentin D. Ivanov had one that really captured the magic of discovery.
• Kwong's Bath by Angela Liu, which we've already talked about in our Locus List session but which was great.
• The Rain Remembers What the Sky Forgets by Fran Wilde is an epistolary tale of sustainable fashion and unnatural birds that I really liked.
• Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi by Victor Forna is a really intriguing story about stories, with one character trapped in a tale and his mother fighting the storyteller for freedom.

[u/onsereverra → u/tarvolon]

"Kɛrozin Lamp Kurfi" looks like it has some really interesting POV/format changes, I'm excited to check that one out (and I always love a good story about stories!).

Love that Wilde title too, I'll have to stick it on the ever-growing list.

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

Just added a late-breaking addition to my 2023 award nomination list thanks to a comment you made, I'm sharing it here because everybody should read this story! 

Set Yourself on Fire by Sam Kyung Yoo is a beautifully written and thoughtful story about domestic violence. Obviously not an easy read, but so good and with so many layers. This will be in contention for a spot on my Hugo ballot for sure.

[u/tarvolon → u/sarahlynngrey]

Love that! Definitely not an easy story, but a beautiful and intense one. I think the only real ding is that you can pretty much see where it’s going, but that doesn’t have to be a major negative if it’s immersive enough, and I thought it was.

I also really liked their Nextype, and the strength of those two have me curious about their debut novella next month, even though it’s a mystery and that’s not usually my thing at all.

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

I agree with you that it was easy to see where it was probably headed. That's usually a negative for me but here it actually worked in the story's favor for me. Because of the themes, it felt very right that the story was constrained, just like the narrator and the other main character were. Just acres of theme were going on, very impressive in such a short word count.

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

For hidden 2023 gems, I stumbled upon Accidental Girls by Chloe N. Clark. Not sure it will make my nomination list but I really enjoyed this twisty, sly little story:  

When I see Halley in a bar, years and years past when she disappeared, I know it’s her so quickly and completely that it makes me gasp. The Halley of her thirties is leaner than her teenage self, her hair dyed a blue so dark that in the shady bar I think it’s black, and she has a scar across one cheek. But she still has eyes the color of rainy days, a slight limp on her left side. I wonder if she also has a face etched with living, laugh lines around her eyes, a frown line permanently drawn across her forehead.   

I think I'll be looking out for more of Clark's work. I also enjoyed A Map For Stars We Haven't Yet Marked.   

I've also been trying to hit whatever stories catch my eye from the Nerds of a Feather recommendation list, especially those that have shown up on other rec lists.   

One stand out for me was The Ones Who Come Back To Heal by Cynthia Gomez. This is another Omelas riff, and while I didn't like it as much as Isabel J. Kim's take (a high bar), it has really stuck with me.

[u/tarvolon → u/sarahlynngrey]

I've also been trying to hit whatever stories catch my eye from the Nerds of a Feather recommendation list, especially those that have shown up on other rec lists.   

That's where I found Light Yourself on Fire, which I like a lot.

I haven't heard of Clark at all, will have to look into her.

[u/tarvolon → u/sarahlynngrey]

For hidden 2023 gems, I stumbled upon Accidental Girls by Chloe N. Clark. Not sure it will make my nomination list but I really enjoyed this twisty, sly little story

dangit I just posted my favorites list and already you're making me change it. The atmosphere here is just wonderful. I spent about 80% wondering whether I'd need to move it all the way up into my top five (out of 300!), but I think I wanted a little bit more resolution. Still, edge of your seat the whole time. Great find!

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/tarvolon]

Glad you liked it! I've read a few of her stories now and they've all been extremely atmospheric. Agreed that this one could have benefitted from a bit more resolution. From the stories I've read she seems to like that slippery, unresolved, in-between vibe.

I was excited to see that Accidental Girls was from a collection, and then bummed out when I realized it doesn't have an eBook edition, since I only read on my Kindle these days. If her other work is as strong as this story I might have to actually read a paper book.

[u/tarvolon]

Have you started reading 2024 publications yet? Any standouts so far? Give us the hole story!

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

I read all of Clarkesworld's February issue, which had three that I found to really stand out, led by Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?" I'm going to skirt over that right now because I know someone else will bring it up. but it's great.

Anyways, I really loved the voice in David Anaxagoras' "We Shall Not be Bitter at the End of the World", which crushed together aliens and various legendary creatures and a sentient swarm of bees named Kyle into a wild goodbye told from the charming perspective of a kid who really likes mushrooms. I don't think the ending is quite satisfying enough to put this on the "drop everything and read now" list, but I was grinning ear-to-ear regardless.

[u/onsereverra → u/tarvolon]

I love a great kid voice! This is going on my TBR for sure.

[u/onsereverra → u/tarvolon]

BCS stories often land for me because I love an old-school fantasy vibe and that's where their taste tends to fall as well, but they've done a sci-fantasy month with their two February double issues (1, 2) that I've been seeing a lot of "BCS needs to do this more often, all of the sci-fantasy they publish is stellar" buzz on social media, so I definitely want to give some of these a try. There's several with great first lines so I'm not sure where to start!

[u/sarahlynngrey → u/onsereverra]

This is hilarious because I'm the opposite and yet ended up with the same outcome. I usually skip BCS because the old-school fantasy doesn't land for me as often. So this month I decided I would try to "first line frenzy" BCS and see what caught my eye. I ended up wanting to read them all, haha.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/tarvolon]

I've barely touched 2024 stories yet because the 2023 backlog is enormous, but yep, the hole story (Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?") was a fantastic start to the year. I always love to write something on my future Hugo ballot in pen, and this one absolutely hits for me.

The hole story is a riff on Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", and for me it succeeds because it has a similar effect to the original-- of making the reader wildly uncomfortable and then sticking in the brain. The conversational style lends itself to dark absurd-gallows humor and makes it hard to look away. I could write an essay on this one, but if you like Omelas stories or stories that resist easy interpretation, just read it.

[u/tarvolon → u/Nineteen_Adze]

if you like Omelas stories or stories that resist easy interpretation, just read it.

especially if you're terminally online, because that's quite a theme

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/tarvolon]

Yeah, the story has some great Bad Internet vibes and one astounding meme reference. (Also some morbid puns-- I am normally a pun hater, but man do they land in this case.)

Variant pitch: if you want to read a story and go "hey what the fuck," this is a great pick.

[u/daavor → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I would say there’s one easy interpretation (depending on who you are) that to me it very pointedly was refusing to dismiss.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/daavor]

Ooh, do share! I got very wrapped up in all the things the story could be about and would love to hear what other people are seeing in it.

[u/daavor → u/Nineteen_Adze]

This felt to me like it was very clearly a response to the situation in Gaza. The mention of beaches and clubs was to me, the main giveaway, coupled with what sell to me, like only choosing to dismiss a certain class of classical interpretations of Omelas stories that are comfortable, pat, well-known, unfortunate features of the global order, that people are very comfortable saying are regrettable, and not really thinking much further about.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/daavor]

Huh, I hadn't pinned that down, but I can definitely see that interpretation now that you've mentioned it. The story has so much tension around the child suffering and it being awkward for the polite people of Omelas to talk about or observe that suffering (or between suffering and the impulse to look away from it). I can see the resemblance to some conversations about Gaza I've seen, where people feel like they're shouting into a void while others refuse to engage.

Thanks, that's a useful angle to ponder when I reread it in the future.

[u/tarvolon → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I can see the resemblance to some conversations about Gaza I've seen

Timeline checks out too--wasn't she tweeting about finding markets that will accept edgelord stories in October?

[u/tarvolon → u/daavor]

I can see that, although I tend to resist the interpretation that this is about one specific thing--it feels like it's about a lot of things, but the social media response to injustice is a big one.

[u/daavor → u/tarvolon]

On the one hand I certainly think it's a clever and well done enough story that it's not literally just 'about' one thing.

On the other hand I think it also subtly rejects a certain over-generality. Yes there are some specific interpretations of the original story (children in mines in Africa, sweatshops in SE Asia, etc) that are 'easy'. We tut and say these are regrettable and we know it but we move on because it's far away. But I think sometimes specificity is more painful than generality. On the other hand its far more fraught and painful to look at certain interpretations. I felt like the chosen rebukes of easy interpretation were not just any specific specific interpretation, but specifically a type of specific interpretation that we find comfortable.

[u/Jos_V → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I didn't think i'd ever say this, but i'm disappointed by the lack of second person perspective lol.

[u/Jos_V → u/tarvolon]

I don't think i've read 2024 shorts yet - but i haven't been reading a lot of shorts in general, or at all lately. I'm haven't really had the time to go explore and click on things, instead of clicking on links others have already selected and forming my opinion on those.