The time comes "To Eat Your Own Head" by Nkone Chaka
BogiReads brings you the daily speculative reading recommendation of editor Bogi Takács.
Today's recommendation -
(Sorry today's email is a bit late! I mixed up the scheduling and didn't have a chance to manually poke at it because we are having enormous holes dug in our backyard.)
Author: Nkone Chaka
Title: “To Eat Your Own Head”
Venue: Asimov’s, Jan/Feb 2024 (ed. Sheila Williams)
Type: Short story – not sure of the wordcount, read it in print
Themes: Science fiction, science, biology, violence
Where to read: I am actually not sure where to buy back issues individually (I can only find the current issue on the website), can someone help me out? I think this might work?
I already recommended something from this issue in the paid tier, but there’s more :) (and I’m planning on recommending a third one too.) I think so many of the print mags are having production delays right now, not sure why. I just got the January issue of Clarkesworld, and I haven’t gotten the newest Asimov’s or F&SF yet.
This one is about science as an enterprise – and you probably know at least since I edited Rosalind’s Siblings that I am always interested in stories about that –, but also being trapped, and overwhelming emotion. I think often SFF stories show violence, but kind of back down from it. As in, dial it down just one bit. Here, without spoilers, the protagonist snaps and the story doesn’t flinch from that. It makes perfect sense even if one doesn’t necessarily want to endorse it, it is just so understandable (for me personally at least) and it also ties in to the science aspects of the narrative. A great story, I need to read more from them (I actually have something else queued up, but I only do author repeats once every 3 months, so you might need to wait :) ).
Take care,
Bogi.