SHORT STORY REX Oct 2025
SOME PODCAST RECS:
1. “Towards Happy Civilization”, Samanta Schweblin
I must confess I slept on Levar Burton Reads kind of hard, because looking back they did some great stories during its nearly seven-year run (2017-2024). Like this episode, for example, which I only learned existed while i was finishing up Schweblin’s latest collection. This odd Kafkaesque take on the old railroads of the American West was always a favorite of mine from Mouthful of Birds, and this time around I got to do something I'd not often previously done, which is re-read the story in the original Spanish while hearing it in the English translation. Very interesting multimedia way of comparing the two versions. Kind of a best-of-both-worlds thing, which is ironic as this story deals with the exact opposite sensation, that of being on the side of the fence where grass is always less green
2. “The Ugly Chickens”, Howard Waldrop
Don’t remember who recommended this one to me, but I love when a character is on a quest for knowledge that is 100% quixotic at first and seems destined to Go Nowhere and then suddenly it Gets Somewhere. And boy does this one go places: Grenada MS, Memphis TN, The Netherlands, Austria, and of course, the island of Mauritius... One caveat, in that the story is from nearly 50 years ago and there’s a bit at the beginning where it seems like it’s really going to put its foot in it, sensitvity-wise, but I feel like it pulls out of that death spiral pretty admirably. An interesting parallel is proposed, a comparison we are subtextually invited to make between the dodo birds on one hand, and on the other, unreconstructed Confederate-sympathizer dumbshits (those are, er, my words, not the story’s, tbc). Unfortunately, as you will notice, only one of those two is extinct in the present day. A funny story, and an exhaustively researched one, the kind you can’t help but learn a thing or two from
3. “The Mub”, Thomas Ha
Like “The Ugly Chickens”, this one was reprinted by venerable fiction-podcast juggernaut The Drabblecast and I already recommended this story when it first came out, but I’m doing it again. Because we love “The Mub”, which is to say, we hate the Mub, because as we know, “they suck shit” lol
MAGAZINE REC: God’s Cruel Joke #5 - “Speculative Erotics”
Powerhouse line-up in this issue of GCJ, featuring among many other heavy hitters:
Joe Koch, “How to Fuck a Genocide”
“Step One: Become the word of God. If you need to stop and question how this is accomplished, stop here, completely and finally, for you are not fit for the task.” There are nine more steps, unspeakably brutal, but no more brutal than the reality it describes. You’ve been forewarned. Now what?
Benjamin Robinson, “Silencers”
Silencers, muzzles, bullets, shell casings, toilet paper rolls, genitalia and orifices, even the letters OO in the word ‘Google’. These are the symbols, superimposed and concentric, which this piece insists upon. The rhythm and the obsessive, almost glossolalic deployment of cliché is fascinating and relentless. “Who’ll start the bidding?”
Theo Hill, “Hammerhead”
What would a special issue dedicated to erotics be without making at least a little space for a nice, sweet story of unrequited love. Well, unrequited something, anyway. In this case between a sadist and a masochist, told in loving(?) detail. (The title should give you a clue…)
COLLECTION REC: A Series of Hauntings, Karlo Yeager Rodríguez
The big homie KYR published this collection on itch.io, subtitled: “Un combo TropiWeird”, and it brings together nine stories set in or around or spiritually-in-the-neighborhood of his native Puerto Rico. Contains several stories I’ve recommended here, and even if you did catch these in places like Strange Horizons, khōréō, or Seize the Press, returning to stories like “Up in the Hills, She Dreams of Her Daughter, Deep in the Ground” or "Vanishing" is always rewarding, and I will never pass up a chance to recommend "How Juan Bobo Got to Los Nueba Yores" because I love it that much. And that’s without mentioning the never-before-published stories you can only get here. Cough up that $9.99, folks! Support good stuff!