1. “The Venus Effect” by Violet Allen

So for 2023 i decided i’d start my short story recommendations with one from 2016, the incredible "The Venus Effect" by Violet Allen, a metafictional meditation on the endlessly recurring nightmare of anti-Black police violence. (In the short span of time between my first tweets about this story and the present Substack post, yet another instance of racist police murder (Tyre Nichols) has come to light, and is at once sickening and unsurprising and all the more sickening for its unsurprisingness. Defund the Police.)

Allen’s story struck me as remarkable in how it manages to do things that so many other stories nowadays try and fail to do. It uses so many elements that have grown tiresome in recent years: Explicit Political Message plus 4th-wall-breaking to Verbalize Said Message✅, jokey "voicey-ness" ✅,self-aware 'Tropey-ness'✅ ...and yet it slaps! It's all in service to a satire both searing and hilarious.

Part of that is down to a plain matter of comic timing, which feels like it's missing in most attempts at 'humorous' sff writing, i.e., the actual Being Funny part.

(I have a recent episode of the Why Is This Good? podcast to thank for hipping me to this story albeit six years late.)

After you’ve read that, Violet Allen's got more stories youll probably wanna check out as well.

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2. “Glass Book” by Ivy Grimes

ive never worked in a bookstore on Documentary Night but i have reshelved VHS tapes in a videoclub and books in a library which is why i want to talk about "Glass Book" by Ivy Grimes in ergot.

these places (bookstores, libraries, videoclubs) are all grand repositories of ideas, language, dreams and that atmosphere is captured here much as we as readers end up captured within the titular Glass Book

less a 'fractured fairy tale' than a pulverized one, the story sprinkles us with the ashes of the protagonist's mother, with names of phantom books and films like The Tempter's Tale or The Hundred-Years' Spaghetti War or Owls: The Sky Is Their Bathroom which all hint at some strange world outside the bookstore which we'll never see and we’re probably the better for it, or are we?

3. “Glass Pet” by Ivy Grimes

at the risk of becoming an Ivy Grimes stan account, i should note the latest issue of Seize the Press has another story of hers, similarly titled to the one i recommended above, called 'Glass Pet'

Whereas 'Glass Book' seems to channel Cinderella, 'Glass Pet' might be understood as a reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood without the Hood, where the Big Bad Wolf is introduced as an unseen spectre haunting the woods outside Grandmother's door, seductively bowing a cello

There's an obsessive, insular domesticity to the setting and a sense of confused straining against the stress and strictures of filial relations which reminds me of the Can Xue story collection Dialogues in Paradise (this is a good thing)

currently only available for suscribers so hit up Seize the Press's Patreon if for some reason you have not yet done so

4. “Squee” by Margaret St. Clair

I tweeted some screenshots of this story the other day so we might as well talk about it.

Let us first put aside any associations we here in 2023 might derive from the title (if you've been paying attention you can probably deduce my stance on that whole matter).

In this story from Margaret St. Clair (originally published in Future Science Fiction, Feb. 1958) the titular character is a tiny robot squirrel who wears a skirt and says things like, "I like nuts. I like nuts."

Clancy picked up a nut and pushed the dish to the extreme end of the table. Everyone was smiling. "Here Squee," he said coaxingly. "Come and get it. Nice nut. Nice nut for Squee."

Also perhaps not coincidentally the 50s-style space scientists spend a lot of time talking about sperm. Like really a lot! So much so one wonders whether those two words were already being used quite as synonymously in mid-century slang as they are today…suffice it to say that this space adventure goes to some "gender-y" places. It's a fascinating 50s-style precursor to some of the stories James Tiptree Jr would go on to write a decade or two later, but I won't spoil it by specifying which one...

I first encountered Margaret St Clair in The Big Book of Science Fiction (Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, eds.) which features her brilliant story "Prott". In the editorial note preceding it, they describe her as a "highly idiosyncratic and original” writer whose stories “contain traps and mazes and hidden doors” and based on what little ive read of hers i have to agree

Read "Squee" for free online and let us know what you think

Not-short story rec: Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams

first book i read in 2023, really setting the bar high. i read the last chapter of this book in bed one morning and it just devastated me for the rest of the day lol

(also you have got to love the cover design of those old Vintage Contemporaries)

Not-a-story rec: Riptime by Megacolossus

Some buds of mine from back home who absolutely slay and any metalhead who says they don’t like the vocals or the lyrics is a fool and you can confidently discard any further opinions they have about music or really anything…theyre coming on tour in late Aug/early Sep and i can’t wait