About a week there was a discussion happening on Twitter about the importance of Twitter. Actually, there were many such conversations happening and many probably are still happening. One of these discussions was of specific interest to me, however, as it was focused on the importance (or not) of Twitter to the current era of short speculative fiction consider by many to be a golden age¹I would consider myself one of these many people., at least in content if not in its contributions to writers’, editors’ or publishers’ bank accounts. In response to that discussion I wrote a long thread about the very important ways I had personally seen Twitter contribute as an important tool to the creation of this golden age. The rest of this post is a cleaned up adaption of that thread posted here so that it will continue to exist if Twitter doesn’t and for anyone else interested in this history.

Here is the quick and dirty version: do I think Twitter has been important to the development of the current golden age of short speculative fiction? Yes, absolutely. Not question. More importantly, I think it’s important to consider WHO it has been most important for.

I haven’t done this in awhile, but we have been gifted with my new favorite TV show, Severance, and I have felt compelled to talk about the character and storycraft of my favorite episode of the season. If you haven’t watched Severance yet, or haven’t watched up to at least the focus of this discussion, episode 7, “Defiant Jazz”, you should be warned that this will be spoilerific. I don’t think I’ll be spoiling anything of the final two episodes of the season, but these things can bleed together a bit so I can’t make any promises.

Now, if you aren’t concerned with spoilers or have watched the first 7 or more episodes of the show then, please, read on. Last warning though, from here on: there be spoilers.

One of my favorite speculative fiction magazines, FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, got a lot of deserved and overdue attention this past weekend and has acquired enough new subscribers to move into paying their writers SFWA pro rates. This has really brightened my day!

Along with the impromptu subscription drive efforts I noticed many people asking about back issues. You can buy back issues of FIYAH and they’ve also put together back issue bundles for each of their previous years of operation. That being the case I thought a little roundup of the FIYAH stories I’ve included in past roundups would be in order.

Please note: EVERY issue of FIYAH is excellent and I am not issuing these as any kind of authoritative “best of” of the magazine. That’s not how my roundups work. I read widely and I put a selection of things I personally particularly enjoy into my roundups in the weeks I do them. I don’t usually read issues of any magazine back to front in order all in one go so stories I choose to include in round ups are never a commentary on the other stories in any particular issue of any particular magazine that I don’t, that’s just not how my process works.

That said, if you’re looking for some back issues of FIYAH here are some stories I enjoyed in the past and what I said about them then. I’ve edited out some commentary that’s irrelevant to the actual stories for here and it should be noted that over time how verbose I’ve been when discussing stories in my roundups has generally grown and also waxed and waned. The amount of words I spilled over any story has no bearing on my views of it’s quality. If I included it in a roundup it’s because I like it and think it’s well worth people’s time.