It’s week 3 for the Short Fiction Roundup here in 2021 and I am so happy that this week I’m kicking off the recommendations with stories from two magazines that have never been featured here before.

Constelación is a brand new bilingual speculative fiction magazine that will publish quarterly and all of it’s content will be published in both Spanish and English. Fusion Fragment started publishing last year and is on its fourth issue. I’m a big fan of the design and overall approach of this magazine. It’s a gorgeous presentation and has wonderful innovations such as key word tags for each story, and book recommendations from each author in the issue.

Stories from Flash Fiction Online, Escape Pod, and Tor.com round out the Round Up.

“The Badger’s Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher” by Malka Older from Constelación Magazine #1

So I can’t lie. When deciding which story from Constelación to read first I looked over it’s content warning page¹A feature I think every magazine should employ. Some do. But all should. and I chose the one that had none. That’s the kind of story I wanted at that particular moment – something to get lost in without thorns to have to be wary of and that is exactly what I got! A lovely, fascinating story with an ending that snuck up and knocked me over with how perfect it was. The theme of this first issue of Constelación is “The bonds that unite us” and this story takes it that to a very literal extreme as it follows a researcher visiting a foreign country to learn more of their legendary Beasts: kaiju-like creatures that are created by a merging of a team of humans. Some of the people of Denesk join together to become large sea serpents to protect and manage it’s harbour, others make giant kestrels to deliver messages and some are huge badgers to meet the digging needs of construction and well-making. Along with the ending, that feels as eye-opening for me as a reader as it does for our protagonist, I particularly enjoyed what the story is getting at about community. I also loved the very real feeling and layered-with-nuance view the story gives of someone exploring and trying to understand a culture not their own, and how often it is the outsider’s own cultural baggage and assumptions that can cause barriers where none would otherwise exist. Altogether, a great story with a home run use of worldbuilding.

“The Ten Thousand Lives of Luciana Kim” by Maria Dong from Fusion Fragment #4

Ok. Unlike the last story I need to preface this recommendation with a content warning for: Suicide and PTSD. This story begins with the protagonist having tried to and possibly/probably succeeded in killing themselves (off screen). Their desire to die and the pain that fueled that desire are both important parts of the beginning of the story and referenced later.

Now, if you are someone who is ok with that content then let me tell you i quite enjoyed this disturbing story of a possibly gamified afterlife (or is it the cruelest sociological experiment imaginable?). It is bleak and dark (though it is also full of dark humour) as Luciana lives life after life trying, at first, to survive, then to understand, and then to simply survive again. But as she embraces the strange existence she has found herself in where the world, and sometimes the people in it, try (and succeed) again, and again, and again to kill her a transformation occurs. It is not so simple or cliche as a healing, no moment of epiphany where ‘everything is going to be ok now’ but there is a change of purpose and a power that Luciana finds in living in the world she is in, whatever it may be.

“Warlord” by Steve DuBois from Flash Fiction Online

I always like to read some flash, it being the form I’ve personally written more of than anything else, and this is a fun piece. Kobi has a legacy. He’s the heir of an abolished royal line of mythological proportions and with that comes minions. Some folks get talking goats, some bald eagles, some can talk to trees. Kobi, on the other hand, gets a horde of cockroaches desperate to be led to war and conquest. And he’d rather, you know, watch TV or play some video games? Like I said it’s a fun story. The roaches aren’t even that bad, really.

“The Unrepentant” by Derrick Boden from Escape Pod #766

I utterly love a story with an ending that sends your head spinning. When you get to the end of this grim sci-fi tale of falling in love on a space elevator I suspect you’re going to want to go back and read it again. It’s that kind of ending: one that recontextualizes everything that came before, but, in my opinion, fairly. Along with the wow ending the story has a great setting that takes plenty of dark sci-fi tropes and puts them together in a manner I haven’t seen used in quite this way before. The entire story takes place on the journey of a space elevator taking “refugees”, which are more properly thought of as newly indentured corporate serfs slash prisoners, from war torn Earth to a processing station in orbit where they will be shipped off to their new corporate masters. It’s a ugly universe, for the lowest classes anyway, and it asks, what would you do when something other than survival actually comes along for you to care about?

“#Selfcare” by Annalee Newitz from Tor.Com

This story made me so happy. Take a very recognizable world. Very near future; about 20 years. Technology is a bit more advanced but Social Media is still a thing, corporate branding everywhere is still a thing, the gig economy is still a thing, shitty bosses and shitty customers are very much still things. Throw in the possibility that fae are real and just as involved with and beholden to all those things too. Now add in a protagonist who is just trying to keep her job and save up for grad school when a pissed off possible fae starts targeting the shop she works at. The mix ends up being delightful and, what is really key here, far more hopeful and happy than most stories you’re likely to read about the crappy world of workplace productivity apps and bad bosses and entitled social media mommy-influencers. Here we get to focus on and enjoy the support of friendship (both of the established and burgeoning variety) and the fact that workers can be the ones who win, and plain old fun. Highly recommended for a read that’ll probably put a smile on your face (even if you kinda want someone to punch that mommy-influencer at one point).

That’s it for this week and as always if you’d like to see the full list of previous Roundups and the authors included in each you can find that here. I hope to be back in a week with another roundup. If you find something you enjoy reading in my recommendations I hope you’ll shout that story out to people you know.