Welcome again to a Short Fiction Roundup of some stories I’ve enjoyed reading in the last week or so and hope you might too. If you do enjoy any of these stories consider sharing them and giving them a shout out yourself. It’s a great way to support short fiction. We’ve been in a short speculative fiction golden age for awhile now let’s keep it going.

“When Hope is Lost, Touch Remains” by Nin Harris from PodCastle 620

A story I would call lovely, though perhaps that might put me in a strange light to some. Maria moves through her life trying to grapple with a strange discovery she makes about herself: the fact that she can literally draw out men’s souls, a feat usually performed, unnoticed by the men, during sex. She can, thankfully, also return them and this power becomes a central fact of her life as she moves through it trying to figure out who she is and wants to be while unraveling a complicated family heritage. Serious bonus points for this being a story of a middle-aged woman, it feels both rare and nice to have a story acknowledging that figuring out who you are isn’t exclusively the realm of the young.

”Getaway” by Nicole Kornher-Stace from Uncanny 33

God but do I love everything time-wimey. This story takes the very familiar Goundhog Day time loop trope and does three things with it that are quite brilliant and perfect for a short story rendition of the idea. The first is that the story starts well into the loop. On iteration 86. The second is that the length of the loop is quite short: only about 15 mins. The third, well, I don’t like to give spoilers that give the whole game away in these recommendations and telling you the third unique spin Nicole Kornher-Stace applies to the familiar trope would be a giant spoiler. I will say that one more thing this story does that always appeals to me is plays with the actually physical form and format of the story. Each iteration is numbered and presented to us in various lengths, some as short as a single word. The effect this has on the rhythm and visual appeal of the story helps push it from good to great for me.

”The Touch Pool” by Lisa Nan Joo from Strange Horizons March 16th Issue

This is a bittersweet story, heavy on the ‘bitter’, of loss with a glimpse of healing possible on the horizon. The protagonist faces several deeply personal loses, living in a house and property that itself is being slowly eroded and lost to the sea. There is a return as well, but who or what is returning is a part of the story that unfolds for us slowly, and without surety. If you’d lIke a read with a literary and melancholy feel that comes together like a painting, added to a bit at a time, first here and then there, to create a whole image to take in and reflect on then I think this is good one for you.

“The Old Ones, Great and Small” by Rajiv Moté from Diabolical Plots #61B

The opening line of this story, “School’s out, and everybody wants to see the Great Old Ones: the line into the Miskatonic Zoo doubles back and winds out the gates.”, left me unprepared for what comes next, as, I suspect, it was intended to. I was expecting a tale going for a funny/quirky Lovecraftian horror parody OR a “real” horror story where the humans would end up learning that you don’t mess with terrors from the deep. What unfolds instead is something far different, though it is, in my opinion, as unsettling as any cosmological horror tale.¹A bit of a content warning though. The word “half-breed” is used a few times in the story and though it does not refer to biracial people it is still not a comfortable word and one some might want to avoid seeing at all. I found myself quite impressed by what Rajiv Moté crafted here and I feel this is a story that will stick with me.

“The Moon Room” by Maria Romasco Moore from Kaleidotrope Spring 2020

There is a bit of a tradition for me when I do these roundups where I seem to stumble across unintended themes. If this week has one I might call it the slow-burn. Many of the stories this week are the sort where information is added in subtle little bits building up to a complex finished piece layer by layer. This is one of those kinds of stories and it is also one where we have to reassess what we’ve already read as we go along and award a mental tip of the hat to the author for having been honestly telling us everything from the beginning, but in a way we probably didn’t notice. I also have to give this story credit for having an unexpected²And wonderful ending moment and the perfect character to deliver it.

“A Hitchhiking Robot’s Guide to Canada” by Marie Vibbert from Flash Fiction Online April 2020

And now for something completely different. The final piece I want to share this week is a fun little piece of flash describing a pretty dark kind of capitalist future, because a little fun laughing at the dark feels like just about the best combination to me right now. And hey, I’m generally always down for a detour into story where the humans are incidental to some quirky robots.

And that is all for the second short fiction rec roundup of 2020. If you’d like to see the full list of previous Roundups and the authors included in each you can find that here.