Category: short fiction

Short Story Club: “Thieves of Silence”

This week’s story is by Holly Phillips, and can be found at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, here. Rich Horton liked it:

Holly Phillips goes from strength to strength. “Thieves of Silence”, at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is the lovely tale of Zel, a thief who, as the story opens, invades a rich man’s house to steal enough to keep ehr and her lover from ruin. But the rich man’s daughters are witches, and Zel is captured — in more ways than one. Zel’s lover Gannet, meanwhile, schemes to land a rich husband, and so we have a rich net of betrayal and maneuvering, shifting loyalties, unexpected emotional responses.

Lois Tilton, also likes it:

A tale of some complexity. While the witches suggests it was their spell that changed everything, the real driver of this story is Gannet’s selfishness–which is a lot more clear than the working of the spell. Readers should find themselves in sympathy with Zel.

RECOMMENDED

It’s not James’ cup of tea, however:

The story is about a thief who stumbles upon some witches. The writing is nice with some evocative description, but I just don’t get on with this style of Fantasy story. It does nothing for me. I’m reminded of one-off bespoke RPGs that I played many (many) years ago, with thieves and masters and servants. Nothing ever seems to surprise me in this style of story, nothing ever keeps me hooked. I miss the ideas and invention and provocation that a great SF story can deliver.

Did it work for you?

Short Story Club: “From The Lost Diary of TreeFrog7”

The story, and the comment, starting with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro at The Fix (link to Google cache, since the site seems to be down):

“From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7” by Nnedi Okorafor is an inventive tale of exploration in which the pregnant TreeFrog7 and her husband Morituri36 compile entries to upload to the Greeny Jungle Field Guide. Their quest is a fabled mature CPU plant, in pursuit of which TreeFrog7’s friend BushBaby42 mysteriously disappeared. The story takes the form of the field guide entries themselves, a neat structure that provides firsthand perspective on the field guide’s scope and the author’s travails in obtaining their knowledge. Also, it allows first-person narration by both main characters, a useful point-of-view flexibility. The hyperlinking to entries on mentioned creatures is a nice added touch.

Okorafor’s displayed strengths are her imaginative detail and the immersive quality of her world. The plot, though, doesn’t generate as much suspense as I might have wished, and leads to an almost foregone conclusion. This isn’t helped by some of the expository repetition, perhaps resulting from the notion of each entry as self-contained. This story isn’t quite at the level of last year’s other guide, “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antartica” by Catherynne M. Valente, but it is more accessible and more immediately rewarding.

Lois Tilton at IROSF:

There is much here to delight readers: TreeFrog7’s narrative voice, the jungle setting described in evocative prose.
[…]
The journey in this case is the reward, more so than the destination. But I have to wonder, if the wingless hawkmoth is guarding the CPU plant, why it has gone so far away to follow the explorers. I wonder also at Morituri36’s name, if it was meant to telegraph the ending, and why. There seem to be hyperlinks in the text to entries in the Field Guide, but they did not work on my computer—as in fact none of this site’s links ever do.

James is less keen:

The language is evocative of the jungle and eventually reveals the characters. However the plot didn’t do enough for me, it was more or less the standard alien exploration story. And I’m not really a big fan of zoological or botanical style stories, I think it might be because I gave up Biology at school as soon as I could and did Physics instead, so the descriptions of the creatures didn’t really do anything for me.

In the end, I kept waiting for the story to go somewhere else, somewhere promised by hints in the story. Instead all we got was a tantalising glimpse of that.

And a lengthier discussion by Charles Tan:

That digression aside, it’s all too easy to admire the widgets and forget the actual story. Okorafor goes for a character-centric piece and her conceit–that her protagonists are explorers who are keeping records–gives the perfect excuse to tackle the setting and its unique ecosystem. If you don’t like the world-building aspect, one will likely drop the story early on but if you’re like me, discovering the nuances of Okorafor’s fabricated world is a pleasure albeit one that can get tedious due to the length. There’s several points of tension in the story but because of the format, only one is truly explored. The interaction between the characters feel human and fleshed out, but the danger of a stalking predator loses much of its effectiveness because of the epistolary form. There’s clearly a build-up in the story but somehow, it lacked the impact I was hoping for. Overall not a bad piece, but it lacks that compelling voice as there’s still a certain sense of detachment despite the first person point of view.

So: what did you think?

Short Story Club: “A Tulip for Lucretius”

Not much discussion about this story out in the wilds of the internet, or at least, not that I could find; just James:

As I can’t, as yet, put down my thought in a coherent sense, I’ll resort to lists. Please forgive me.

The downsides of the story in my opinion are:

— Large chunks of infodumpy-ness. It’s a short show, with a lot of tell.
— Complicated religious arguments. For someone not versed in religion, or even used to thinking about religion, it can be difficult to follow.

The upsides:

— It made me think!
— Some great ideas.

And Maureen:

So, is there too much crowding into this story? Is it actually going anywhere? Or is it suggesting that it all comes round again, no matter how far into the future you go? Human/post-human impulses being what they are, we/they inevitably pursue certain ideas, certain tracks, same thing, different version? Or is he suggesting that no matter how much you try to strip life of meaning in order to survive, in the end you need meaning in order to survive.

And I think that means I like this story, because it engages me intellectually in a way that most of the others so far haven’t. It is making me think about what I believe in. I’m not sure if that is something I actively demand of fiction, or rather, I’ve not been aware in the past that I demand that of fiction (and sometimes, shock, horror, I really do just want to be entertained) but this story seems to be inviting me to take up a discussion.

But I still think it has some structural problems.

Responses?

Short Story Club: “Trembling Blue Stars”

… which can be found here. On with the comment. James over at Big Dumb Object says:

It’s probably a story which is divides readers depending on their taste for the style, but it was my kind of thing. Stylish, cool and with a surprising upward lurch of emotion at the end.

Cory Doctorow also liked it, as did someone at the Asimov’s forum, and it gets a positive mention from Thomas Eaves here. Lois Tilton described it as “a sad story“. Martin is less keen:

There is an overpowering whiff of girl cooties to the story. Arkadi has fled his relationship for space and it turns out space is no place for girls. “You can’t blame me for that. There are basic biological incompatibilities between female neurochemistry and the guests.” This, as Valentina points out, is very convenient. She does get her shots in but she on the whole she is portrayed as desperate, pathetic and unable to define herself except against Arkadi. The final section of story is a race to see just how much she will debase herself to try and win him back: “Take me with you. I don’t need much. I’ll be your rabbit. Give me lettuce and water and rub my ears every now and then.” Arkadi, augmented by the emotional detachment of his guest (a “meat puppet run by a space monster”), spurns her again and considers this an act of kindness.

And Maureen is ambivalent:

Is it a good story? I’m not sure. If it were a typeface, it would be sensible, solid, readable Helvetica, as set against last week’s story, which would be some half-illegible, fancy display font. The prose seems clean and spare by comparison, but the story seems empty, devoid, but not performatively devoid, as if reflecting Arkadi’s emptiness. Lack, then, rather than emptiness. It feels at times as though it’s reaching for effect, and for a nostalgic effect at that. Aviator sunglasses, Gauloises, espresso, delivering supplies in the Oort Cloud; the whole thing reeks of the past, in terms of sf and film imagery. All very noirish. And indeed the story itself seems to belong to a past era of short stories. I read a lot of material like this in the late 1980s but now it seems anachronistic. Beyond that, Kadrey seems to be setting up the discussion points, but the story ends before anything happens, and one isn’t left in a position to imagine what might happen. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t love it either, and this week I am extremely keen to see what others make of it.

So: what did you make of it?

Short Story Club: “Oh He Is”

We start the discussion of this week’s story with Lois Tilton’s comments:

Strangely unsettling tale of enchantment and jealousy. The tone is sufficiently surreal that it doesn’t seem too strange to see the enchanted children kept in storefronts, that they seem to have no parents, that there seem to be no other adults in the town but Walter, Fleur and Nina. But it’s not quite enough to keep me from wondering why the piper abandoned the children in the first place, which leads to a whole lot of wondering about other matters. Are there other flocks of children on the hilltops outside other towns?

Commenters on the story liked it:

R.J. Isle Burroughs said: Brilliant. Haunting. Beautifully told.

Liz Catalano said: Mesmerizing. I was impressed with how the tone of the story mimicked the theme… drawing you on and in (although not, I have to say, against my will!!). Well done, Karen.

Martin didn’t care for it:

When, at the conclusion of the story, the piper is strangled, “his face flew from scorn to pity to lust.” Even in a fable I find this an unlikely series of facial emotions for someone being murdered. His murderer then “built a cottage next to him and planted herbs and spices at the head and foot of his coffin, starting with lavender, thyme, anise, lemon and rue.” Leaving aside the fact lemon is not a herb (lemon balm is), Heuler is again relying not on the precision of her prose but on an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach.

‘Oh He Is’ is one of those stories which requires its world to be unpopulated. The three characters who live in the town appear to be the only residents and they are allowed to play out their little drama in isolation. This betrays a lack of interest in the world Heuler has created; how it fits together, how it came to be, how it might really smell. Into this void she simply throws anything she thinks might stick.

Neither did Maureen:

The ending, with Piers’ body incarcerated in a glass-lidded coffin, reminds one of Snow White, and the cottage built next to the coffin, heads off into fairytale realms, but to what purpose? And that is the problem I have with this story. What is its purpose? I don’t want to be grimly utilitarian about the uses of fiction, but I see no developing argument in this story at all. There are nice images, images that don’t work, there are fragments of story that sometimes vaguely link up, but I do not believe this is a postmodern fairytale so much as someone striving for effect, it not being entirely clear what that effect is. Of all of the stories so far, this is, I think, the one I like least, because it tries so hard and delivers so comparatively little.

And green_knight in the comments there:

This is a writer who fails at the very basic level of _writing coherent sentences_. And she’s overfond of ‘there was.’ Considering how often we writers are told that there’s a fierce competition for very few publishing slots out there, I’m kind of completely baffled at the thought that this made anyone want to acquire it. Reading her biography, I see that she’s doing reasonably well, which puzzles me, because for me there are fundamental things missing from this story; it fails in ways that I cannot get past.

See also Heuler’s own comments on her story in this interview.