Short Fiction Fridays #17: 2023 Favorites
Voidwater, oxygen concentrators, the Princess, and more...
Okay, so I know it's not Friday, but here's the thing: I forgot to schedule this for Friday and now there's no more Fridays in February. This issue's theme is 2023 Favorites. It's awards season (just a few more days to nominate for the Nebulas, and the Hugos... currently exist) so I wanted to share some stories from the past year that really touched me and deserve recognition.
For your consideration: Two short stories, two novelettes, one game, and several longer works of fiction. Contents may include voidwater, art galleries, bike-powered generators, the Princess, and more.
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SHORT STORY: “Want Itself Is a Treasure in Heaven” by Theodora Ward
(This was my favorite story published in 2023. If you read only one thing from this newsletter, please make it this one.)
In this short story, the narrator sits in her car in a strip mall parking lot, remembering how it felt to be neurally intertwined with her cis girlfriend and to see through her eyes. She recalls the recursion, the obsession, the boundaries, the desire, the shame, the want. As the last of the dissociative voidwater fades from her system, she thinks about life, and she lives. Stream-of-consciousness, dizzying, and bright as a stripped wire.
CW: drug use/addiction, suicidal ideation, internalized transphobia, an acute mental health crisis
and here in the car the ruins of time are crumbling around me, and I still love you
but I would rather hold with your hand then hold your hand
Read "Want Itself Is a Treasure in Heaven" in Uncanny
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SHORT STORY: “Who The Final Girl Becomes” by Dominique Dickey
Cinda is a final girl, in that she lived when her friends did not. But is she final? She has found a community of peers with similar experiences, and she is changing, distancing herself from the Cinda that hid in a pantry. And… is she a girl? With a new Twitter persona named Nathaniel, cat memes only, and a new friend named Ellie, a trans final girl, the story continues past the end credits. Bloody, tentative, and still heartwarming despite it all.
CW: Violent assault and murder, blood, bodily fluids
She snaps back into being herself, like a rubber band stretched to the point of breaking, but there’s a moment—a sort of halfway moment—where Cinda’s trauma response is buried inside of Nathaniel’s virtual presence, a merging of who she is and who she pretends to be, who she wants to be, and her ribs hurt, and Cinda can’t tell what’s real and what’s fake.
Read "Who The Final Girl Becomes" in Nightmare
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NOVELETTE: “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer
When electricity stops being reliable and ash chokes the sun out of the sky, a community comes together to keep each other alive. Susan, who relies on an oxygen concentrator managed by her husband Clifford, is the focus of the story but is far from the only person helped and/or helping. Pragmatic, hardy, and uncompromisingly compassionate. As a disabled, high-risk person surviving the ongoing pandemic with rapidly shrinking community support, this story made me weep for what could be.
CW: Natural disaster, ableism, medication rationing
“Is she your doctor or something?” Kyle asked. This question was met with baffled silence. “An engineer? What makes her so important?”
“She teaches crochet,” someone from one of the bikes called. “Those little guys up there.” The décor included a shelf of amigurumi.
“No, seriously,” Kyle said, laughing. “I don’t get it.”
Hakeem was one of those teenage boys who was all limbs, and he stepped up to loom over Kyle, who shrank back. “Susan,” Hakeem said, “is a member of our community.”
Read "The Year Without Sunshine" in Uncanny
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NOVELETTE: “The Passing of the Dragon” by Ken Liu
Kay is a painter and a devoted fan of poet F. R. Z. Chilton. What she had thought would be the best moment of her life—showcasing the masterpiece she painted after witnessing a dragon fly overhead—is tarnished irreparably when no one understands her art. Where is the dragon? Why are there mushrooms? What’s the point? Frustrating, ephemeral, and familiar. Kudos also to the illustrator, Mary Haasdyk, for taking on the artwork for this particular story.
CW: None
She wakes up, the seventh day after her return, and attacks the canvas anew. She paints what she saw on that New England winter shore: the preposterous grass, the impossible flowers, the lush, inconceivable trees, already fading. She paints the still-iridescent waves, the nevertheless-glowing sky, the yet-shimmering air, the wisps of clouds all pining after what was no longer there. She tries to paint the world not with the dragon in it, but the second after its passing.
Read “The Passing of the Dragon” in Reactor
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GAME: “Slay the Princess” by Abby Howard and Tony Howard-Arias
A fully voiced and fully illustrated visual novel with a branching story, in which you must slay the Princess. It’s as simple as that. Once you do that one thing, which you can totally do, it will be over. For sure. Definitely. Eldritch, darkly funny, and enthralling. Includes a wide array of accessibility features and Disco Elysium-style voices in your head.
CW: Various, not all encountered in any one playthrough due to the branching narratives of the game. A full list of content warnings is available on the publisher's website.
You’re on a path in the woods. And at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You’re here to slay her. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world.
Play “Slay the Princess" from Black Tabby Games
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LONG FICTION FAVORITES
NOVEL: "The Museum of Human History" by Rebekah Bergman
- Time is memory is life is grief is pain, different but the same, hand in hand like identical twins. When age and pain are "cured", so is life. Maeve, cured at age eight, exists only in an endless sleep. The novel revolves around her through a kaleidoscopic array of perspectives.
NOVEL: "Chain Gang All-Stars" by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- This novel is also best characterized by its vast array of perspectives, but focused on a very different center: for-profit gladiatorial combat, AKA "hard-action-sports", in for-profit prisons. From the book's summary, which summarizes its conflict and depth better than I can: "Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer."
NOVEL: "The Saint of Bright Doors" by Vajra Chandrasekera
- Fetter was raised to commit all five Unforgivables so that he might properly defy his father, the Perfect and Kind. He moved away from all of his family troubles and into the city of Luriat, known as much for its convoluted bureaucracy as for its Bright Doors. He makes a new life for himself, but he can't escape the devils he must not see, and people keep forwarding him emails for his father's cult's crowdfunding campaign.
YA NOVEL: "If Tomorrow Doesn't Come" by Jen St. Jude
- Here's the part of the blurb that made me read this book, which did not disappoint at all: "Avery Byrne has secrets. She's queer; she's in love with her best friend, Cass; and she's suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression. But on the morning Avery plans to jump into the river near her college campus, the world discovers there are only nine days left to an asteroid is headed for Earth, and no one can stop it." I found it very sensitive and painfully real, without falling into any uncomfortable themes like blaming the sufferer or curing depression.
NOVELLA: "Ghosting" by Kelly Lagor
- Lydia keeps ghosting people. It's easy enough to do, because she can simply restore her brain from a backup and move on with her life. That's not true for the people she leaves behind, though, and in the indie art scene of a desert town her past begins to catch up with her.
NOVELLA: "The Mimicking of Known Successes" by Malka Older
- I usually don't like stories described as "cozy", so take that context as you will, because this novella is cozy and I loved it. Ex-girlfriends Mossa and Pleiti investigate a mystery unfolding across the cramped platforms of Jupiter, with plenty of Sherlock Holmes-style flair. The undercurrent is an academic push and pull between always looking back to Earth or moving forward, in various ways. There is also a very charming zoo.
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UP NEXT
The next issue's theme will be Birds because this is my newsletter and I think they're neat.
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THANK YOU FOR READING
If you enjoyed any of these stories, please support their authors and the magazines that published them. I’d also love to hear any suggestions for future list themes! Just reply to this email or contact me elsewhere and I’ll use your theme (within reason) for a future newsletter.