Well it’s Halloween (or All Hallow’s Eve, or Samhain, or even All Saint’s Eve for some) and it’s the climax of spooky season so I figured what better way to celebrate than an all horror round up of some short speculative fiction I’ve been reading and enjoying lately. I don’t recommend too much horror usually (though I do some, and do recommend a fair bit of dark stories), though I do enjoy it quite a lot. I simply feel that horror is hard to recommend broadly because by it’s very nature it is likely to be upsetting or uncomfortable to some, if not many, and require a fair bit of caveats. Tis the spooky season though, so it is the perfect time to go all in on the genre. I will try to call out specific content warnings for each story, and not all are equally disturbing or disturbing in the same ways (and that of course is a completely subjective opinion – the problem with horror!), but please consider this fair warning. Otherwise, if you’d like to cap off the season of celebrating ghosts and goblins and the macabre I have some great suggestions for you (with apologies to any authors who don’t consider their recommended stories to be horror, I feel that all the below are at the least horror-adjacent enough to fit a Halloween themed round up):
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2022 Short Fiction Round Up 4
Welcome back it’s time for more great short fiction! This week I’ve got another 5 stories I enjoyed, and think are great and worthy of your time! No single theme happening this week though we do have two stories of revenge, and there is definitely a lot of significant death and tragedy to be had here. It’s not all Doom and Gloom, but there is at least some of that to be sure. I promise though that there are also a lot of moments of human kindness and beauty and helping each other survive the things life can throw at us here too.
One thing I’ve don this week that I’ve never done before is feature two stories from the same magazine. It wasn’t on purpose at first, I was just going through my notes and realized I’d picked out two stories from Strange Horizons. I normally deliberately avoid doing this as I like to spread the recommendations around, but if there was ever a time to highlight two great stories from Strange Horizons now is the time as they are currently in the midst of their annual fund drive. Strange Horizons is a wonderful magazine that provides not only great international short speculative fiction, but poetry, reviews, and critical essays as well. They’re always pushing the envelope and are near-unique in the field. Well worth your support if you’re able.
But now, let’s get to the stories!
Continue reading2022 Short Fiction Round Up 3
And we’re back! Time again for another round up of stories I’ve read recently and liked so much I just had to share them with you all and shout them out to the best of my ability. There’s no real theme this week other than my genuinely enjoying all of these stories and wanting to encourage others to give them a try too and I’m afraid I find myself without the mental energy to say much more than that in this intro. I’ve been up since 4am as I right this because I had to get my kid to his school for his grade 8 grad trip by 5. So the brain is not at it’s best! There’s plenty more capable thought below though talking about the actual stories. Please, read on, check them out, see if something grabs your attention.
Continue reading2022 Short Fiction Round Up 1
It’s been awhile (again) but I have returned to share recommendations for some short speculative fiction (SF/F/H) that I’ve recently read and enjoyed. I’ve got a notepad and spreadsheet and everything. I’ve got a proper desk and, most importantly, a proper office chair for a person of my size and these things have helped immensely with getting back to writing and now these roundups (and maybe some other blogging).
All that? That’s great and it’s the how of what I’m doing back here, but it’s not really the why, and you’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve been gone to long and I have a lot of thoughts swirling around to get out.
Continue reading2021 Short Fiction Round Up 7
Well, the streak was broken. After six straight weeks of roundups I missed getting one done last week. I’m back now though with the 7th installment of the round up for the year and another five stories I read and enjoyed this past week. We’ve got all sorts of stories here. Selections from a travel guide, a horror story with a monster, a more adventure style storry with a monster hunter, a story of a new romance, and a story of trying to put an end to an unsuccessful one. Hopefully that range should mean everyone can find something here to like for themselves.
“Destinations of Beauty” by Alexander Weinstein from Lightspeed #129
This was an interesting piece that is the latest in a series of travel guide style entries “From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide” written by author Alexander Weinstein that have been published in Lightspeed since January of 2020. This was my first time reading part of this series but I’ll definitely be reading through the previous entries. This one focuses on, as the name says, destinations exemplifying beauty in some way, but not necessarily happiness by any means. In fact, there is much in these entries that feel filled with the bittersweet, the melancholy, the nostalgic. Many entries feel written by a very weary traveler finding glimpses of very weary people. Despite all that though, I also find myself feeling a bit of longing reading these. The longing for travel we currently can’t partake in, and the unique memories of finding a special place at the end of a too long and tiring day of exploration that will stay with you for the rest of your life. These stories are written by someone who has traveled and explored and they will resonate a bit more for that with readers who have as well.
Continue reading2021 Short Fiction Round Up 6
A couple days later than I originally planned but the 6th Round Up of Short SFF Fiction of the year is here! Quite a bit of darkness in these stories this week but also a lot of hope. There is also a lot of gorgeous writing and striking imagery and I think there are plenty of little pieces of these stories that will haunt you in the best way. A lot of stories on the longer side than much of what I’ve been featuring here lately, including the longest story of the year for the round up so far: our first novelette of the year!
“A Remembered Kind of Dream” by Rei Rosenquist from GigaNotoSaurus
Take a Mad Max post-apocalypse vibe and mix in your favorite mind-and-or-memory bending story (Inception, Vanilla Sky, or Memento for example) and you’ll have a pretty good comparable for this intriguing novelette. The setting is a really good (and terrifyingly creative) take on a nearish-to-medium future post-apocalypse, one where the world has been largely abandoned to being an ecological horror wasteland and those who remain scrounge and scavenge to get by as best they can. The story starts in a way that feels pretty familiar for such a style – with the go-it-alone nomad finding themselves throwing in with a small group of survivors against their better judgement. As it goes on though, author Rei Rosenquist adds layer after layer of complexity and intrigue (or perhaps I should say they reveal those layers) until we are left with a great blending of genres and something more hopeful than I expected.
(Note: while the story does not have a lot of the nastier things that post-apocalypse stories can go in for, there is a scene of gruesomeness and eventual death that is not malicious, but definitely potentially stomach churning and disturbing all the same.)
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