Tag Archives: Fireside Magazine

2021 Short Fiction Round Up 1

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Welcome to the first Round Up of short fiction recommendations for 2021. And it’s happening in the first week of 2021 even! Happy New Year. Welcome. I hope it’s a great year for everyone.

Now, a bit of a strange thing happened when I put this round up together. In attempt to be proactive and organized I started diving into some of the magazines I subscribe to that had new issues available for stories to read this week. Start the new year off ahead of the game for once, right? Well I ended up very ahead of the game as none of the stories I read and recommend below are currently available for free. Most magazines release their full issue to subscribers first and then release the content online slowly over the course of the month. That is one of the perks of subscribing. So, four of these five stories will be available for free eventually. But if you want to read them right now you’ll have to buy the relevant issue or subscribe (assuming you don’t already).

I felt a little worried about that when I realized what I’d done, but, on the other hand magazines need support to survive and I don’t feel it’s wrong to point that out sometimes. So, for now each link takes you to the website for each magazine where you can purchase a copy of the issue. As the stories are released online I will update my links to take readers directly to each story.

“Delete Your First Memory For Free” by Kel Coleman from FIYAH Magazine #17

There many different ways a story can surprise you. Some are great, like cleverly subverting and playing with tropes. Some are not great at all, like the “shocking twist” ending that is only a surprise because it was completely unearned.1These can work, especially in flash fiction, but often just feel lazy at best. This story surprised me by simply not going where I thought it would. In a story about a character dealing with anxiety and the technology for deleting memories (such as an embarrassingly bad joke told the first time you met your crush) I expected something in the sci-fi horror realm to develop. In some, perhaps many, writers’ hands I think it would have. Instead we get something sweeter. Something kinder. With more understanding of just how awful and very real it can be to kick yourself months or even years later for that awkward thing you said when you were trying to be anything but. It is also a wonderfully real take on just how things probably would play out if a nascent memory deletion technology were to become available.

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2020 Short Fiction Round Up 4

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Hello and welcome back to another round up of short SFF speculative fiction I’ve enjoyed recently. And wow did I really enjoy these. I think we’ve got some lighter stuff than we’ve had in recent roundups, though not everything here falls into that category. We also have a return of a couple authors I’ve featured in previous roundups. Octavia Cade, whose short fiction is a must try for me, becomes the third author I’ve recommended at least three stories of and Charles Payseur, who is, in my opinion, the premiere short spec fiction reviewer out there, has his second appearance in my roundup. And now for the actual stories:

“When We Were Patched” by Deji Bryce Olukotun from Escape Pod 730

This is a fun story and one that has left me pondering many little pieces of it. It seems pretty straightforward: it is a story about a futuristic kind of extreme tennis match as told by the AI assistant to the referee for the match. What shakes things up is that as an AI with it’s own thoughts and opinions Theodophilus finds itself as much in conflict with the referee Malik as the two fierce competitors of the match do with each other. What I find myself pondering still is how trustworthy of a narrator Theodophilus is and how much our own feelings about sport and the right and wrong way for athletes to behave might influence how much we want to trust the AI. I also really appreciated all the generally subtle but very effective worldbuilding that happens in this story.1Though I don’t think I’d particularly like the highly corporate world it hints at. Finally, though the sports match is the secondary conflict in this story it still paints a picture of a great championship match that the sports fan in me can’t help but appreciate, especially in this sports-less time we find ourselves in.

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2020 Short Fiction Roundup 1

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It was time. Time to try and get back on the blogging horse. Specifically time to get back to rounding up a collection of short speculative fiction I enjoyed and hope you will too. The Short Fiction Rec Roundup. Most stories this week are not of the happy variety. Seems fitting enough with the general mood going on these days. Still, there is some fun here, some cool, some spooky and tragic beauty. Hopefully there is something for you.

“Men in Cars” by Lisa M. Bradley from Anathema Magazine #9

This is the sort of horror story that’s hard to say too much about, because you don’t want to give anything away. I will say it was delightful for me to try and figure out which classic trope it was playing with only to realize at the end that perhaps I had limited the scope of my imagination a little too much. At one point I thought it might make a good Supernatural episode. But later I figured early seasons X-files might be better. CW: Story references sexual abuse and violence.

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Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 12

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I swear I don’t set out to find themes for these roundups. I guess it’s no surprise they happen though.

My process for making these lists is pretty simple: I pick a story and read it, if I like it enough to share it goes on the list. I try and get a story every day, but I’m most often hitting 5 a week.

Reading though, is, of course, a very subjective experience. Stories are not the static things we so often think of them as, but are more like conversations between the author and reader1Or creator and audience if we want to be inclusive of all kinds of stories.. Sure, only one person (the author) gets to do the talking in this conversation, but as readers we bring our own thoughts, feelings, current mood and other baggage to the experience. It’s why one person can love something another hates and why we can have evolving2Or devolving in some cases. relationships with stories we engage with years after our first experience of them: I rewatched the Matrix the other day and was able, for the first time, to see some of what it was saying, what it had always been saying, but I never understood when I watched it3Many, many times. years ago, about the trans experience. I rewatched some Seinfeld episodes today and cringed at the explicit rape culture jokes.

So, yes, it should come as no surprise that in a week that has had me4And, many, many others. wondering about how we live in a society, and indeed world, that seems doomed, possibly within our children’s lifetimes, that I might “click” most often with a certain kind of story. This is…a dark place to find oneself, a dark conversation to be having, but I feel like most of these stories fit in this conversation and while I won’t say they have answers5I’m not sure there are definite answers to the questions these conversations raise, only ideas and choices. I do think they’re good conversational partners for the week6Oh if only it were really just this week though, eh? so many are having. Continue reading →