July 29, 2022

Short Fiction Fridays #3: Spaceflight

Star tokens, angelships, laminated mouse brains, and more...

It’s Friday again, so that means more short fiction for your inbox! This week Spaceflight is the theme. This theme will probably return in future weeks with a more focused lens, but for now I’ve taken a broad approach and gathered a constellation of favorites from all sorts of subgenres. From sewing to sailing, these stories bring a very human touch to the grand undertaking of rocketry.

“Our Souls to the Moon” by Tamara Jerée

Adal and Bimi work in a telescope factory, assembling devices that allow wealthy patrons to safely view a psychotropic moon. Adal’s moonstone eyes draw the attention of blue-robed cultists, who offer her a tempting bargain. Dizzying, decadent, and aching.

CW: Body horror, death, drug use, suicide

Strange Horizons - Our Souls to the Moon By Tamara Jerée Another moonstruck advisor from last night’s lunar viewing party stumbled onto the factory floor in the middle of our shift. All of us factory girls paused, watched, telescope pieces in hand. strangehorizons.com  •  Share

“This Stitch, This Time” by Anna Martino

A seamstress is hard at work producing space suits for a Mars mission when her machine begins stitching Morse code. The message is always the same: Cara Mia, this mission is doomed. Fierce, stubborn, and just.

CW: Death

This Stitch, This Time by Anna Martino : Clarkesworld Magazine – Science Fiction & Fantasy What do you mean, Why didn’t I warn them before? Are you serious? I did! Answer me this if you are so smart. If you had seen it, what would you have done? clarkesworldmagazine.com  •  Share

“The Destination Star” by Gregory Marlow

While changing the light in the dome star, a crew member on a generation ship reminisces about the three Star Room tokens he has used. Each token granted him one glimpse of space, including the flickering star that is the ship’s destination. Weary, ambiguous, and liminal.

CW: Death of a parent

Strange Horizons - The Destination Star By Gregory Marlow The star flickered. Then, just for an instant, the flicker lasted a bit too long. Had the star disappeared, or had his tears obscured his view? strangehorizons.com  •  Share

“The Heaven That They Never Knew” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

Heaven waits just beyond the solar system, an angelship-filled hive ready to hatch and devour. Ginger has been training all her life for the chance to kill it. Strange, unstoppable, and triumphant.

CW: Death

The Heaven That They Never Knew - Lightspeed Magazine Ginger clings to the skin of Heaven, wrapped in deep, cold vacuum. She’s a speck in the void and her breath trembles inside her helmet. No sound in space. So she breathes. She has to stay grounded, keep her thoughts from shaking and drifting to hostile sensors. Heaven’s skin is a smooth, shimmering membrane enclosing the angelships. Heaven: a bubble the size of a small moon, seeded with egg-like metallic beings that chew and swallow and reap. Locusts with a taste for spirits; nothing holy in those devourers. www.lightspeedmagazine.com  •  Share

“Sailing to Byzantium” by Jennifer R. Donohue

Maggie’s dad is building his ship. All men do, when the time comes, but she hadn’t expected him to die so soon. She helps him construct his rocket across a last few summer evenings. Literary, nostalgic, and heartsick.

CW: Death of a parent

Issue #4 – Fusion Fragment “Sailing to Byzantium” by Jennifer R. Donohue: spaceship construction / grieving / fathers and daughters www.fusionfragment.com  •  Share

“Think Blue, Count Two” by Cordwainer Smith

A girl is chosen for the emergency reserve crew of a sleeper ship because of her natural ability to make people want to protect her. She is paired with a defense mechanism in the form of a laminated mouse brain, which she can trigger by recalling specific memories. Tense, retrofuturistic, and clever.

CW: Sexual assault, torture (threatened)

Think Blue, Count Two In the early days of space travel, when the speed of light was still a limiting factor, interstellar travellers “knew nothing, except for going to sleep on earth and waking up on a strange new world forty, fifty or two hundred years later.” Of course, things could happen during these gigantic voyages… www.fadedpage.com  •  Share

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! Drop me a message and I’ll curate a little collection for your Friday.