The infinite steppe! This week's paid recommendation...
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
This novelette translated from Japanese is this week's paid recommendation! Sign up to get a longer rec every Friday. :) Pay what you want - $3 recommended.
We get to the weekend! Remember, there won’t be an update on Monday because I accidentally posted two updates on Friday (sorry again!).
This is the second story I’m recommending from the last print issue of Interzone. It’s very different from the first one, which hopefully shows the range of the issue.
Author: Nozaki Mado, translated by Cat Anderson
Title: “The Fifth Horizon”
Venue: Interzone #295, September 2023
Type: Novelette (Unsure of wordcount, I read it in print - I think it's on the longish side of novelette)
Themes: Science fiction, alternate history, physics, imperialism, WTF
Where to read: Buy the issue in print or ebook
This is a hard-SF-space-fantasy-alternate-history-what-did-I-just-read type of story. No, really. Genghis Khan expands his grassland empire into space after the invention of space grass. What follows is a breakneck horseback ride involving superstrings-- excuse me, super-roots, the strangest take on particle acceleration, and more. It makes sense; a really bizarre sense. There are also pictures.
Sometimes I feel like even the bizarre genre fiction is often bizarre in a conventional sense. There has just been so much of everything that even the fringes and oddities are becoming standardized. This, however, is something different, and I loved it for that.
Also, the endless horseback ride on the endless multidimensional steppe just cries out to the Ancient Hungarian well-hidden in me.
All my best,
Bogi.