Since I started university, I often haven't had the time or brainpower to sit down and finish a novel. I've therefore got much more into short stories - my dad gave me a copy of Borges' Fictions just before I went to university and I fell in love utterly and completely. Since then I've read some fantastic collections - including the one I'm reading at the minute, Diving Belles by Lucy Wood - but I've also got into reading short story magazines. Partly this is, ahem, market research; I've started writing short stories myself, since I realised that I enjoy writing fiction but can't sustain a novel-length plot for shit. But short story magazines, especially those with a SFF/speculative fiction focus, are having a bit of a renaissance.
I was very excited when I found out that you can submit your short stories to these magazines and get paid! And pretty well - the "pro" rate is 6 US cents a word or more. It's also common practice for these magazines to release their short stories online, where I've been devouring them. I love short stories about magic and ghosts much more than short stories about divorce and middle-aged problems. ;)
So, here's the short stories that I've really enjoyed! I hope you do too - they're easy to consume in a single sitting, perfect for busy people like me who've been promising themselves they'll get to reading War and Peace for, oh, two years now...
An Index of How Our Family Was Killed, Matt Bell
This is a strange and rather heartbreaking story, using the alphabetical format to tell you all the details in the wrong order. You slowly piece together the story, and although the writing itself is beautifully bleak and evocative, the greatest satisfaction comes when everything you've read comes together and you realise "how our family was killed".
Dustbaby, Alix E Harrow
The descriptions in this story are just - I'm open-mouthed. They're vivid and almost hallucinatory in the picture they build up of this alien, dustbowl landscape. This story is an apocalyptic tale set during the Depression in the US South (I think? My American geography is not great). There are tons of specificities which make this story come alive - the pamphlets issued by the federal government about how to stop the red dust that's rising everywhere, the preacher, the nosy neighbours that are an inevitablity of rural life, and of course the dustbaby herself.
The Earth and Everything Under, K. M. Ferebee
This is one of the first online short stories from the "establishment" of US-based SFF magazines I wrote, and it remains one of my favourites. It's a beautiful narrative of death and grief, with a dual POV between the man who's dead and wandering around the underworld in confusion, and the woman who's left alive, grief-stricken, and avoided by her neighbours because they think she's a witch. I still think about the images from this story sometimes.
Help Me Follow My Sister Into the Land of the Dead, Carmen Maria Machado
I adore Carmen Maria Machado! I still haven't read the stories she's most famous for ("Descent" and "The Husband Stitch"), but I've read a lot of others, and I think this is one of the more accessible and also maybe a little fun? It's in the form of a Kickstarter campaign, with the story taking place in updates from Ursula, whose sister has gone to the land of the dead for a laugh. It's funny and wry and a little heartbreaking.
Pocosin, Ursula Vernon
A possum god, a Pratchett-esque witch (so other people have told me), and the Devil and Death and it's so lovely. It has a very strong sense of place, of the land and what it feels like and represents, and I love that in, well, anything really, but especially short stories. It is very sad, but the witch is fantastic and no-nonsense and she's an utter delight.
Cat Pictures Please, Naomi Kritzer
After all these rather depressing stories, I'll end with a fun, light-hearted one. This is about a benevolent AI (they explicitly dismiss all the sci-fi examples of AIs going evil) who just wants to help people, by finding them different jobs, making them meet potential partners; all of which sounds very nice until you realise that, as an AI, they don't have a great grasp on appropriateness, and sometimes their well-intentions don't turn out so well. However, there is a happy ending! And cat pictures.
I hope you enjoy at least some of these; let me know what you think of them!
