Rachel Swirsky's Blog, page 31

More on My Reaction to Jason Williams and Resurrection House

Originally published at Rachel Swirsky. You can comment here or there.

I wanted to explain a little more about my reaction to Jason Williams and Resurrection House. This is partially adapted from a post I made on the private SFWA forums, but also changed significantly.

A fair chunk of this is also restatement and expansion of my previous post on the subject, so don’t expect anything too new.

First off, as someone who was on the board during the Night Shade mess, I had the opportunity to hear from a lot of people about their experiences with Night Shade and with Jason Williams. Of course, I wouldn’t talk about what I heard as an officer. However, since people knew I was studying the situation, some talked to me not member-to-officer, but colleague-to-colleague. Sometimes in confidence, sometimes not. I won’t tell their stories without permission because that’s their business, but I did hear a lot.

Based on what I heard, I will probably never work with Jason Williams. I say probably–time is long, and people can radically change their behavior. However, we’re not far distanced in time from when all this went down.

Another thing that would make me feel more comfortable would be to hear a mea culpa from Jason personally, and his intentions going forward. I have worked with other people who have harassed authors in the past. My requirement for that was that they describe to me what happened, what they did, and importantly, how they have changed their behavior to make sure that it never happens again. I felt that the situation was resolved in a way I could deal with, but I would never tell anyone else they needed to work with this person; sometimes one’s prior actions just mean that you lose future opportunities, such as some authors forever refusing to work with you.

In general, I think these discussions should happen publicly when possible. I think that for a few reasons:

1) When the discussions are all whispered from person to person, new writers don’t have a chance to learn about the situation.

There have been a number of situations in my career when I’ve known from other people’s personal reports that someone had a tendency to do X (like get really drunk and start insulting authors and anyone else nearby), and so when I published with that person, I knew what I was getting into. Then later when they got really drunk and insulted everyone nearby, I wasn’t taken by surprise. I already knew how to react. I thought that everyone knew this person had a tendency to do those things, but in fact, they didn’t. I did because I was under the wing of more experienced authors. Other writers who came into the industry at the same time as I did were caught flat-footed by the phenomenon. Some of them had invested parts of their careers with this person, and suddenly things went quite wrong for them.

This is effectively the same phenomenon that happens with sexual harassment at cons. People (often women) maintain a background network — “don’t get into the elevator alone with that person” — but the new person who doesn’t know anyone also doesn’t know not to get into that elevator.

2) People complain that rumor mills can ruin someone’s reputation, but actually, I think this is much more likely to happen with things that get passed whisper to whisper. An event can be easily distorted out of true when the evidence is hidden. A joke or speculation could be misconstrued as testimony more easily than if the words are out there to be double-checked.

2) When things are kept behind closed doors, it’s hard for individuals to realize that what’s happening to them is part of a pattern. For instance, I noted in my last post that Jason Williams had sent me (and a number of other authors) a bizarre, aggressive email. That’s only one data point. It doesn’t have a lot of meaning until other data points are highlighted.

A pattern can also help corroborate things. One person’s first-hand report that an editor has a tendency to get drunk and yell at everyone could be a grudge; two could be coincidence; ten is a heavy thumb on the scales.

This isn’t going to get rid of the whisper-to-whisper. There are lots of reasons why information has to be passed that way. People fear retaliation or further harassment if they speak out about their experiences. Again, this is parallel to what happens with sexual harassment where victims can be questioned, blamed, impugned, and so they keep their own counsel. There are other reasons, too, like not wanting to harm one’s career, or to burn bridges with mutual acquaintances.

I don’t want to tell people how they have to handle their bad experiences with publishers. No one’s obligated to go public. Sometimes warning your friends is the best you can do. But these are some of the reasons why I think going public can be helpful.

So, back to Resurrection House specifically. (This is the bit that’s adapted from my forum comment. It shouldn’t reveal anyone else’s private comments, but if someone feels it does, please let me know.)

1) It doesn’t seem likely to me that Resurrection House is going to terminate its relationship with Jason Williams no matter what happens from here. Whether or not I think that’s an ideal situation, it’s the one that exists on the ground.

2) There would have been a potential reason to keep stories private if there were a strong possibility that Jason wouldn’t be working with the press. Since there doesn’t seem to be, there are good reasons for people to be public. Writers who are going to sign up for a working relationship with Jason deserve to have as much information as possible so that they can make decisions about what to do.

I don’t know what information will become public. Maybe not much more, for all the reasons I’ve previously listed. Maybe a chunk more if there are fora provided for people to speak anonymously. I don’t blame people for deciding not to share stories publicly, but I think there are good reasons for those who decide they can.

3) I will therefore help support and publicize people who want to speak.

4) However, there are also actions Resurrection House could take that I would be happy to support and publicize as well.

Resurrection House has enough information now to go forward with the types of actions that would make me more comfortable with its existence and with its association with Jason Williams. If there were a question of terminating Jason’s employment, it would probably be necessary to have iron-clad proof, and to make sure to settle important questions about prior incidents. If employment isn’t on the line, then all that doesn’t matter. It’s clear: there’s a personnel problem. That’s obvious from the number of reports. One person could be a grudge, two a coincidence, but… well, it probably depends on your personal network how many reports you’ve seen, but the number isn’t small. It doesn’t matter who is essentially in the right; the facts at hand indicate that Jason is perceived by writers to have been abusive toward them.

So, I’d like to see Resurrection Press set up a plan. I’ve made suggestions on what that plan might be, and I’m sure there are lots of people who are smarter than me who could clarify or revise that plan. It should probably include some form of training on how to prevent harassment, both for Williams and other employees.

If Resurrection House makes such a plan and makes it public? I will totally link to that. That’s the first step in me being able to trust that this house won’t perpetuate previous problems.

If Resurrection House had come out with a plan to start with, I know that I personally would have been a lot less wary. It would have been a big step. I’d have known they were aware and on the ball to start with. “Hey, we know this is a thing that happened, but it won’t again, and here’s how.”

4) I probably won’t work with Jason Williams, as I said at the beginning of this post. But you know what I’d love? Never to hear another horror story. I’d love that a lot. I bet we all would.

Writer Beware and Other Posts on Resurrection House

Originally published at Rachel Swirsky. You can comment here or there.

From Writer Beware:

A brand new publisher has hung out a web shingle: Resurrection House. As of this writing, its website is pretty bare: a single page with a mission statement, a call for submissions, and a link to a cryptic YouTube video. As yet, no books have been published; there’s also no information about staff. You can’t even tell what genres Resurrection House is interested in…

What Google won’t tell you is that Resurrection House has another staff member: Night Shade Books founder and publisher Jason Williams. (Though Williams’ involvement with Resurrection House isn’t publicly disclosed, Writer Beware has seen a message posted by Teppo to a mailing list for Night Shade Books authors.) If that name doesn’t ring a bell, here’s a bit of background…

Mark Teppo has stated that Jason Williams will be working with Resurrection House only as an employee, with the title of Acquisitions Editor, and won’t have a hand in running the company. By all accounts, Williams is a talented editor. Still, even as an employee, his association with Resurrection House is a data point that writers should have the opportunity to factor in to their decision to submit.

More from Jeff VanderMeer:

Recently Mark Teppo created Resurrection House, a new publishing company aimed at recruiting new, up-and-coming authors. What isn’t as clear from the website, although it is in a private post that Teppo put on the Night Shade message boards, is that Jason Williams, one of the founders and operators of Night Shade has been hired as an editor there…

So let’s talk about Night Shade a bit…Depending on which Night Shade author you talk to, NS was guilty of lesser or greater sins. Some didn’t get paid. Some didn’t get paid and suffered a lot of passive-aggressive behavior. Some didn’t get paid and had to threaten lawsuits and received crappy, unprofessional behavior. And yet others got paid, didn’t suffer any or hardly any unprofessional behavior…

Ann and I, for example, decided never again to deal with Night Shade after doing our pirate anthology with them—despite getting paid. Ann was treated at best rudely by Night Shade and at worst in a sexist way—that project became a living hell for her…

Many of my personal experiences working with Night Shade were fine. I had and have quite a bit of respect for a number of their former staff members. I was very excited to see them picking up exciting titles that other publishers would not such as Will McIntosh’s brilliant SOFT APOCALYPSE.

My only personal negative experiences with Night Shade came from Jason Williams. In reply to a request for payment, Williams wrote a very nasty letter to myself and the other writers in an anthology, implying that we were unreasonable and ungrateful to demand payment on schedule. For me, payment on schedule for something minor like a short story isn’t a big deal. For others involved, it could mean making rent, buying medicine, paying bills. This is our labor and we deserve to be paid on time and according to our contracts.

It was a very small incident, but the letter was so stunningly bizarre and unprofessional… that I was not surprised to hear that he was acting unprofessionally with other writers and in situations in which there was much more on the line.

I don’t know if other people will come out with their stories about his actions. There are lots of reasons to keep one’s head down and try not to think about bad situations from the past. People fear retaliation, and they fear being hounded for telling their stories.

What I can say is that after what I’ve heard about Jason Williams’ behavior, I would never work with him.

I strongly urge Resurrection House to reconsider their involvement with someone whose recent, pervasive pattern of behavior has been damaging to so many authors. However, since this is unlikely, I hope they will do the following:

*Put Jason Williams through training courses on harassment

*Put the rest of their staff through the same

*Make sure that Jason Williams is subject to clear and regular oversight

*Make sure there are clear lines of communication through which authors can report problems, and make sure that they are well-treated and respected should they chose to use them

I would also like to see Resurrection House be publicly accountable for failures in this arena. One way that harassers get away with the same patterns again and again is that each incident is resolved privately — or never even named, due to wariness or fear of retaliation — and no one ever understands that their experience doesn’t just stand alone, it’s part of a web of experiences.

A Brief Survey of the Accomplishments of Chappie Writers and Editors

Originally published at Rachel Swirsky. You can comment here or there.

On my twitter feed, I wondered, what was the proper equivalent to lady editor? So I tried out a few.

With apologies to the authors, agents, and editors herein described, who I hope will find the joke fun:

Gentleman writer Ken Liu made a name for himself as much with his dapper dress as with his articulate storytelling.

Laddie editor Michael rose to prominence thanks to the help of his wife, Lynne Thomas, whose brilliant editing won her a Hugo.

Dude novelist Lavie Tidhar wrote stories with strong, active male protagonists, who worked alongside their female counterparts.

Chappie editor Niall Harrison persevered at Strange Horizons as a trail-blazing male among a staff of gender-fluid fiction editors.

Fella writer Chris East attracted novelist Jenn Reese with his willowy, nerdish charm.

Manly writer Kip charmed his wife, graphic artist Jenn Manley-Lee, into marrying him and helping to launch his career.

Bloke author Keffy Kehrli never neglected his appearance at signings: rakish hats and bright ties always accompanied his outfits.

Boy writer John Scalzi wrote charming space adventures that supplemented serious work by writers like Bujold and Bear.

Sonny boy agent Joe Monti made an effort to search out sonny boy authors who could join his stable alongside greats like Leicht and Howard.

Jonnie editor Nick Mamatas offended many readers with his shrill, testerical rantings.

And one last, for Mur Laffterty: Cock writer Dick Pricklington sported such a prodigious bulge that one editor suggested he sign his books in a swimsuit by the pool!

Late additions:

Prettyboy C. C. Finlay relied on a gender ambiguous pseudonym to lure readers into unknowingly picking up a book by a man.

Gent writer Paul Cornell was a master of work-life balance, continuing to write even after the birth of his baby.

Dudebro publisher Jason Sizemore proved males can stomach working in horror, though he acquired psychological stories, not splattergore.

Guy editor Jeff was often forgotten when he worked with his wife Ann Vandermeer who was always presumed the primary (or sole) editor.

Boyo cartoonist Barry Deutsch, though talented, didn’t do it alone; his acknowledgments admit script advice from writer Rachel Swirsky.

Stud editor John Klima is reputed to have slapped competing stud editor Jonathan Strahan; congoers gawked at the resulting “cock fight.”

Website Redesign

Originally published at Rachel Swirsky. You can comment here or there.

Thanks to my very excellent friend Nicole Thayer, I am gaining a new website made of wordpress instead of made by my HTML.

It’s not fully complete yet, but she has set up a blog for me, so I will have a fancy blog with a professional address that will also send duplicate entries to my livejournal where my friends are.

In order to make this post not a total bore, I will now add an amusing note:

*We took in our two fluffiest cats to the vet today and had the groomers give them lion cuts. They came home looking a bit like someone had glued the heads of our cats onto weird, gremlin bodies. I expected them to look more ridiculous and less pathetic.

I can’t tell if they miss their fur or not. I think they may miss looking like they are about twice as huge as they actually are.

Pictures will occur, I promise.

My new collection, HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET: MYTHS OF THE PAST PRESENT AND FUTURE

My new collection has a cover and a release date!

HOW THE WORLD BECAME QUIET: MYTHS OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE is forthcoming on September 30th from Subterranean Press. And it has a cover! By Shaun Tan!



From the very generous text written by Subterranean in their announcement:

Rachel Swirsky is one of the finest young sf/fantasy writers we've encountered in the past decade. Later this summer, we'll be releasing her first full-length short story collection, How the World Became Quiet. For just one stunning sample of her fiction, try "Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind".

About the Book:

After a powerful sorceress is murdered, she’s summoned over the centuries to witness devastating changes to the land where she was born. A woman who lives by scavenging corpses in the Japanese suicide forest is haunted by her dead lover. A man searches for the memory that will overwrite his childhood abuse. Helios is left at the altar. The world is made quiet by a series of apocalypses.

From the riveting emotion and politics of “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window” (Nebula winner) to the melancholy family saga of “Eros, Philia, Agape” (Hugo and Theodore Sturgeon finalist), Rachel Swirsky’s critically acclaimed stories have quickly made her one of the field’s rising stars. Her work is, by turns, clever and engaging, unflinching and quietly devastating—often in the space of the same story.

How the World Became Quiet: Myths of the Past, Present, and Future collects the body of Swirsky’s short fiction to date for the first time. While these stories envision pasts, presents, and futures that never existed, they offer revealing examinations of humanity that readers will find undeniably true.

Limited: 750 signed numbered hardcover copies: $40

Table of Contents:

The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window
Monstrous Embrace
The Adventues of Captain Blackheart Wentworth: A Nautical Tale
Heartstrung
Marrying the Sun
A Monkey Will Never Be Rid of Its Black Hands
The Sea of Trees
Fields of Gold
Eros, Philia, Agape
The Monster’s Million Faces
Again and Again and Again
Diving After the Moon
Scenes from a Dystopia
The Taste of Promises
With Singleness of Heart
Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind
How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth
Speech Strata

You can preorder the limited edition here.

The book is also available from amazon and Barnes and Noble. Probably other places, too, if you've got a link I should add, tell me!

Criticism alone is not an Assault, Witch Hunt, Lynch Mob, or Crucifixion

I try to draw a line between criticism and violence.

I do, actually, get online threats of actual violence. This isn't unusual for bloggers, especially ones who belong to oppressed groups. I tend to get mine because I'm a woman, a feminist and a Jew. If someone receives rape and/or death threats -- and people do, far too often, especially if they belong to marginalized groups -- I find that horrifying.

However, I also find it clearly distinct from criticism.

Criticism (especially in a social justice context) is often described as assault, a witch hunt, a lynch mob, or a crucifixion. (There are a couple other go-to metaphors, but those are the major ones.) Of these, "witch hunt" and "lynch mob" are the most upsetting. However, they are all attempts to silence criticism by comparing it to a violent, unacceptable act. It is unacceptable to assault someone, ever; therefore, it's implied, that the criticism is likewise by its very nature unacceptable.

The use of the terms witch hunts and lynch mobs (or mobs in general) also implies that the criticism is not being offered in good faith, and certainly not with thoughtfulness, deliberation or sincerity. Instead, it implies that the criticism is the result of a mass delusion. It implies that there is nothing to criticize at all--that the very nature of what is being criticized is superstition--since witches don't exist and lynched victims are innocent. It implies that the only goal of criticism is bloodletting, that it will only be satisfied by burning stakes, pressing stones, or hung corpses.

Now, I do not mean to imply that no one who offers criticism is ever an asshole. People are totally assholes. You can easily show me examples of someone criticizing someone else, even taking a position I broadly agree with, and acting like a flaming asshole. And I will look at that and say, "Wow, that person is acting like a flaming asshole." This happens--it is, in fact, inevitable. Groups of people contain assholes.

I'm down with criticizing assholes for being assholes. But the terms "witch hunt" etc assume that the grounds for criticism are vaporous. When applied to groups, it also implies that no one (or almost no one) in the group is offering good faith or meritorious arguments.

It is sometimes true that a person is, in fact, offering a critique that stems from delusional, bad faith bloodthirstiness. It is sometimes true that groups are doing the same. When a group of people bullies a trans person until they commit suicide, I am comfortable saying that this is the result of delusion (transphobia is based on delusional principles), bad faith (transphobia itself may be something an individual feels in good faith; bullying is not an activity pursued in good faith), and bloodthirstiness (as it ends in death). Bullying exists at an intersection where words can become assault. That intersection *does* exist.

But people are very free with the comparisons of criticism to violence. And I would counsel being, instead, very strict with them.

Be aware of (among other things):

*The stakes. Is physical safety actually on the line? With a bullied gay teenager, it may be. With an adult blogger being criticized by anti-racist bloggers, it's probably not.

*Whose history you are invoking. Are you defending a person who is (in this argument) privileged by comparing their situation to violence or death that was explicitly directed toward people who were (in the salient situations) oppressed? Are you comparing a person whose speech is being criticized for being racist to someone who was killed by a lynch mob?

*(As a complicating factor to the above, are you using the history of the oppressed group against them? Are you using the real, historical deaths of people of color to suggest that criticism from people of color is like murder?)

*Are you legitimately comfortable saying that the people you're accusing of participating in a witch hunt would like to see their victims subjected to physical violence? Or, instead, when you fill in the abstraction of "people criticizing this person I'd like to defend" with "Blogger X," does the metaphor start to make you uncomfortable? When you fill in the actual implications of the metaphor by defamiliarizing the language (instead of "this person is engaged in a witch hunt," something like "this person experiencing a mass delusion that makes them want to see people die"), does that make the comparison seem apt or appalling?

Just because speech is being criticized doesn't mean that the criticism is legitimate. People can offer good faith criticisms, even criticisms that are theoretically rooted in correct ideas such as anti-racism, that are still totally wrong. People can be unreasonable assholes, and groups can pursue unreasonable, assholish arguments. As noted, sometimes speech does actually rise to the level of actual assault when violence is involved, either directly (as in threats) or implicitly (as in bullying). But most of the time, even the people who are being unreasonable jerks aren't actually arguing in bad faith or lusting for blood. They are arguing stupid points and doing it stupidly. Rather than attempting to shut them down by calling their criticism assault (unacceptable in any circumstances) as if it's the fact of *criticism itself* that is the problem, the best response is usually to explain why their *particular* criticism sucks. Unless their criticism *really is* assault, in which case, please do call it out. Explain why. Be savvy and aware. But don't just use these terms as short-hand or rhetorical flourish when they're not really what you mean. They're silencing, inacccurate, and in some cases offensive.

Real people really died as a result of lynch mobs. It's particularly insensitive for white Americans to use that as a metaphor for someone being criticized. As a Jew who lost a lot of relatives in the Holocaust, I would be upset if the go-to metaphor was to imply that criticism was like pushing people onto trains that would take them to gas chambers. That's taking the deaths of my relatives experienced and making them something trivial.

If you find yourself wanting to argue that I'm taking metaphorical language too seriously, then I ask you to really stop and think about the things you care most about, the ones that pinch and hurt, and imagine them being used this way. Try to take it out of the abstract for yourself. Find the places where you are tender. Now really, and in good faith, imagine that everyone presses on those tender places all the time, that they see them as fodder for winning internet arguments, and not actual, painful things. If you've done that and you still feel that you want to argue abstractions about language, then all right. I won't agree with you, but I'll believe you've tried to take my position into account. But please, first go to the place that hurts, and then imagine that being used against you as a way to stop you from arguing the positions you are passionate about.

Rachel Swirsky's 2012 Novella Recommendations

As noted in my previous entries, I read approximately 540 pieces of short fiction this year. I read all of: Asimovs, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Eclipse Online, Giganotosaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Subterranean and Tor, as well as several anthologies. (I will probably continue reading during the next few weeks, and if I find anything remarkable, I will post about it.)

To begin the entry, I'm going to list, without reviews, the novellas that are on my ballot, followed by those I recommend. Below, I will post the reviews.

Ballot
"After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall" by Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
"African Sunrise" by Nnedi Okorafor (Subterranean)
"Katabasis" by Robert Reed (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
"Murder Born" (excerpt) by Robert Reed (Asimovs)
"The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)

Recomended
"All the Flavors" by Ken Liu (Giganotosaurus)
"A Seed in the Wind" by Cat Rambo (ebook)

REVIEWS:

Ballot

"After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall" by Nancy Kress (Tachyon) - The earth is destroyed by an apocalype--the fall. This novella follows two timelines simultaneously: one after the fall and the other before. They intersect during the fall, as one might expect from the title. The story follows two perspectives. The first is a boy born after the fall to one of the few survivors, his body severely impaired from radiation damage. The aliens who saved the few survivors from the disaster (it's unclear whether or not they caused it) have provided a time travel portal for him and the other members of his generation to go back in time to before the fall for short periods of time so that they can bring back resources and babies that they will be able to raise to strengthen their population. The other main character, who is a professor who lives in the before, notices a mathematical pattern to kidnappings and store robberies, the footprint of the time travel. The two characters finally meet when the boy travels back in time to a moment during the apocalypse, to where the professor is waiting for him. I really, really liked this novella, especially the bits set after the apocalypse. Kress is always a fine writer, but she's pulled out some extremely good characterization here. Many of the characters are sharply characterized, but especially two in the after--one, the boy's mentor who he is in unrequited love with, and two, the boy himself, who is a vivid portrait of an adolescent in troubled circumstances, his emotions volatile, his desires unquenchable, his beliefs and needs and wants shaped by his post-apocalyptic childhood. The thing I disliked about this novella is that there's a strong hint at the end that the story is meant to be read as an "the earth will get you" magic environmentalism thing, and that really doesn't work for me, because it's just sort of random and it's such an obvious fantasy element in a story that's otherwise science fiction... meh. But "hard" SF writers sometimes pull that sort of weirdness, and I just kind of have a "ignoring that bit; it's fairly minor anyway" receptacle in my brain, and the story is absolutely worth it for its many sterling elements.

"African Sunrise" by Nnedi Okorafor (Subterranean) - This novella expands on Nnedi Okorafor's short story "The Book of Phoenix" that appeared in Clarkesworld in 2011. A genetically altered girl has been confined to a corporate building for all of her life, along with others who have been experimented on. After one of her friends dies, she decides to escape and discovers that she possesses phoenix-like powers of fire and regeneration. The life-giving energy that radiates from her body produces a fantastic growth of plantlife that crumbles the building where she was raised and reaches out to sprawl across the city center. The main character flies away, following her instincts, knowing that she has the ability to greatly improve the world if she can find her way. As always, it's nice to see smart and well-written Africa-centered fantasy/science fiction of the sort that Okorafor so ably writes. There's a sense of magic and hope in this story that doesn't feel sentimental, but instead seems to suggest a radical re-imagining of the world. The detail of the character's life and her interactions were more interesting to me than the fantasy plot itself; in particular, there was a lovely scene in an Ethiopian restaurant early on that's stuck with me.

"Katabasis" by Robert Reed (Fantasy & Science Fiction) - This is one of Robert Reed's Great Ship stories which I admit to being a total sucker for. They take place on an enormous ship that's on an interminable mission through space. Passage is expensive; its inhabitants are nearly immortal. Humans run the place, but it's full of life that is variously alien and artificially intelligent. Basically, this story has all the "ooooooo, awesome" of space opera without the boring bits; Reed successfully portrays an immersive setting that feels alien and unknown. In this story, there is a small planet-like habitat deep in the great ship, built by long-gone aliens to simulate their world. It has immensely high gravity, and it's become a challenge for humans (and others who are not adapted to the high gravity) to take on trying to hike the "planet" without enhancements, as a test of mettle. They take along a single high-gravity-adapted porter. The story is about one such porter and the contingent that she ends up traveling with. The story of their journey is interwoven with the story of how she came to the ship. Alien weirdness abounds--if you like that sort of thing, it'll probably scratch all the right itches, or at least it does mine.

"Murder Born" (excerpt) by Robert Reed (Asimovs) -- Yes, Reed again. This is an Idea story of his which are hit-or-miss for me. I like this one less than his great ship stories, but it still worked for me. A new technique for execution is invented and, to everyone's surprise including the inventor's, it does something totally bizarre (and totally not actually science fiction at all, but rather a thought experiment in the vein of It Just Works, Shut Up And Let's Go With It, which is fine with me, really)--when the murderer disappears into it, it brings back all the people he's killed. The conceit isn't totally logically consistent about what counts as killed and some other science things, but whatever, it's a Thought Experiment, Just Go With It. The thought experiment bit is interesting. There's also a kind of stitched on adventure plot that was readable but ordinary. It's now been a year since I read the story so my memory of it has faded significantly; it's marked with a quite high rating in my database, but mostly what I remember now is talking about its flaws with people, so that's what's stuck in my mind. I think what I liked about it was the way in which it examined a number of different situations within the thought experiment. I'm happy to engage with thought experiments on a purely intellectual level from time to time; it's a long tradition; you don't read Candide for the characters.

"The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon) - In a world where it is illegal to do so, a woman wields the magic of forgery, able to produce soulstamps that will change the substance and history of an object, allowing it to become something other than what it is. An ordinary urn can be stamped with the essence of an ancient vase and become one, although the stamp will remain and, if it is removed, the urn will become ordinary again. After committing a series of forgeries of important artifacts, the main character is jailed, and offered her freedom and her life only if she will help the emperor's advisers to achieve a dangerous, illegal, and excruciatingly difficult task -- to endow the braindead emperor with a soulstamp that so closely approximates his own mind that his personality will be indistinguishable from the original. This is a fun and clever, straightforward fantasy, with all the pleasures of a rougish main character who is constantly trying to stay one step ahead of people who will kill her. The process of the magic is described in reasonable detail which I grooved on; it's a fun magic system. It's even better when Sanderson describes the process of simulating the emperor's soul, merging the described magic with ruminations on memory and personality. Several of the main characters take on good dimensionality, including the emperor, who is only marginally on the page.

Recomended

"All the Flavors" by Ken Liu (Giganotosaurus)


"A Seed in the Wind" by Cat Rambo (ebook) - As I mentioned when reviewing one of her short stories for my 2012 recommendations, one of my favorite things about Cat as a writer is that she is able to paint really vivid, original world-building imagery with just a few well-chosen details. This novella is another excellent example of that talent. It's set in a world that's shaped like a tube, with all of its civilization built on outcroppings that protrude from the walls, and in tunnels that burrow into them. The main character, a boy who grows up next to the edge of the abyss, finds himself drawn into the lure of its unknown. As a small child, he watches an unusual natural event, in which the top of the tube opens to allow seed drifts to fall past their town and into the depths. The event moves him deeply and he becomes obsessed with watching things fall, and often throws objects that are dear to him into the darkness. The rest of his dissatisfied life is much like that of those seeds: he drifts, uncertainly, moving ever downward into a shadowed unknown. He leaves his home town to go and meet his grandparents, but is equally dissatisfied there, and then becomes addicted to various substances, spiraling further downward. The world-building detail is often exquisite, especially at its most disjunctive and surprising. There were also times when the story seemed to lose its impetus and become repetitive. I also felt unsatisfied by the ending; after following the main character's life for so long, I wasn't satisfied by leaving him abruptly, even on a strong image, especially when it didn't seem to have either a clear implication for what would happen next, or create (as would work equally well) a poignant thematic resonance with the main character's arc. My analysis of this may simply be too shallow, however. It's a lovely piece that I strongly recommend reading.

Notable
"To Be Read Upon Your Waking" by Robert Jackson Bennett (Subterranean)
"The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future" by Jay Lake (Subterranean)
"Let Maps to Others" by K. J. Parker (Subterranean)
"Sudden, Broken, Unexpected" (excerpt) by Stephen Popkes (Asimovs)

Rachel Swirsky's Novelette Recommendations, 2012

As noted in my entry on short stories, I read approximately 540 pieces of short fiction this year. I read all of: Asimovs, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Eclipse Online, Giganotosaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Subterranean and Tor, as well as several anthologies. (I will probably continue reading during the next few weeks, and if I find anything remarkable, I will post about it.)

To begin the entry, I'm going to list, without reviews, the novelettes that are definitely on my ballot, those which I'm considering for my ballot, and those which I highly recommend. Reviews will follow, along with shorter reviews of recommended novelettes. At the end of the post, I'll list other novelettes I found notable.

As always, there are many more novelettes that I read and enjoyed, and that deserve recognition, than I can list.

Definitely on Ballot
"Mating Habits of the Late Cretaceous" (excerpt) by Dale Bailey (Asimovs)
"Fade to White" by Cathrynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld)

Possibly on Ballot
"Swift, Brutal Retalliation" by Meghan McCarron (Tor.com)
"The Finite Canvas" by Brit Mandelo (Tor.com)
"Aftermath" by Joy Kennedy O'Neill (Strange Horizons)
"Hold a Candle to the Devil" by Nicole M. Taylor (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

Highly Recommended
"The Ghosts of Christmas" by Paul Cornell (Tor.com)
"Firebugs" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Eclipse Online)
"The Indifference Engine" by Project Itoh (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE)
"Tattooed Love Boys" by Alex Jeffers (Giganotosaurus)
"Unsilenced" by Karalynn Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"The Waves" by Ken Liu (Asimovs)
"Golden Bread" by Issui Ogawa (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE)
"Scry" by Anne Ivy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"Small Towns" by Felicity Shoulders (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
"Static, and Sometimes Music" by David Schwartz (Unstuck #2)
"Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Giganotosaurus)
"Astrophilia" by Carrie Vaughn (Clarkesworld)

REVIEWS:

Definitely on Ballot

"Mating Habits of the Late Cretaceous" (excerpt) by Dale Bailey (Asimovs) - I hadn't heard of Dale Bailey before reading this story; when I was finished, I immediately looked him up and wrote him a fan letter. I read this very late at night when I had insomnia and it took me in completely and was unexpectedly intense and wrenching. In this story, a couple with a troubled marriage spend more money than they can afford to go to a resort in the Cretaceous. They are supposed to see the dinosaurs together, but the husband displays little interest, and the wife disconnects from him, finding more passion in the ancient sights. I found the characters and emotional journey extremely vivid and well-wrought. The science fictional backdrop intensified the emotional story. It's not an original emotional journey--especially in lit-fic--but it was a very good treatment. This story doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of review love, perhaps because reviewers weren't interested in the kind of emotional journey that is classically the domain of literary fiction. But I loved it. (Tolbert's "The Yeti Behind You" which I published in PodCastle explores a similar thematic link between extinction and emotion, although from a less character-intense space.)

"Fade to White" by Cathrynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld) - Like Valentine, I think Valente is having an amazing year. This story just dropped me flat. It was probably my favorite piece of fiction published this year. Read it. Read it. Read it. In this novelette, Valente creates a dystopian world that might have occurred if the world had ended in the 1950s. Its retro feel--enhanced not only by the character development and setting, but by cleverly placed interludes that contain scripts from commercials--allows Valente to comment on the cultural heritage of the 1950s, both in our everyday lives and, particularly, in science fiction. By looking at the breakdown of that world--as so much classic SF does--from a modern perspective, she deconstructs the assumptions of the era and of its stories in an intelligent, striking way. The story isn't easily reducible to its politics, though; Valente clearly establishes the characters within her world and follows their unsettling stories with a relentlessly clear eye.

Possibly on Ballot

"Swift, Brutal Retalliation" by Meghan McCarron (Tor.com) - This exquisitely well-written story is about two little girls whose brother has just died of cancer. His ghost appears when they play pranks on each other. Like many of the other novelettes I'm passionate about this year, this story thrives on its intricate characterization and the way in which its speculative content highlights the characters and emotions. The family in this story is described intensely and unflinchingly with finely woven POV shifts and sharply observed family dynamics. It's a chilling, bitter story in many ways, and reminds me of the work by an MFA classmate of mine, Jenny Zhang, who created obsessive, clear-eyed family portraits through fragmented POVs. It also has shades of Klages's clear, non-nostalgic eye for the good and bad of childhood, as well as shades of Kelly Link's use of mystery in the voice.

"The Finite Canvas" by Brit Mandelo (Tor.com) - A woman who was exiled from her home in space has ended up on earth where resources are scarce and people live without modern conveniences. She works as the local doctor, barely able to scrape together enough money for medicines, let alone to cure her worsening breast cancer. Her circumstances worsen when another refugee comes to earth, an assassin who is being chased by the government, and who recently killed her partner. The assassin promises money to the doctor if the doctor will scarify her arm in memorial of her last kill. "Finite Canvas" weaves both women's stories with the present as they're falling in love. Mandelo is a writer to watch, I think. Her stories are incisive and her characters have an unusual edge. She's exploring themes of gender, but also themes of passion--its tangles, its brightness, its viciousness. Of writers I enjoy, I think her writing most reminds me of Nicola Griffith's.

"Aftermath" by Joy Kennedy O'Neill (Strange Horizons) - O'Neill is another writer who's new to me, and this is one of the few zombie stories that I've really liked. It's about the process of reconciliation that occurs after the zombies recover and how they reintegrate into society. The novelette intelligently references and builds on real-world situations like the post-apartheid recovery in South Africa. Mending the sociological rifts left by genocide or other atrocities requires a sort of willful social blindness, a denial of what has happened. In the novelette's case, the zombies did not have control over their actions, so the story necessarily removes the question of responsibility for the atrocities, which does make the reonciliation process less intense than it is in real life. Nevertheless, I think O'Neil intelligently explores the ways in which people act to protect themselves psychologically: denying what has happened, denying what they did, the ways in which the socially mandated silence creaks and cracks. There is a sentimental element here, but it didn't overwhelm the story for me.

"Hold a Candle to the Devil" by Nicole M. Taylor (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - Another writer who is new to me. This is a story woven through multiple POVs of a woman who is inheriting the bawdhouse where she works from the woman who took her in as a young child. She is learning the craft of protecting her workers with magic, which she must use when one of them is attacked by a client. The story doesn't tread any new conceptual ground, but I quite liked the voice, and particularly the way that the unusual but careful structure allowed it to develop with a vivid emotional tone, which has now (months after I read the story) distilled for me into a mix of melancholy and dread.

Highly Recommended

"The Ghosts of Christmas" by Paul Cornell (Tor.com) - A woman develops the technology to project herself mentally backward into the past or forward into the future, but only to watch from her own perspective what has happened. On the day when she is about to give birth, she is the first person to test the new technology, and she witnesses a string of her past Christmases, and another string going into the future as she divorces her husband and uncovers her uneasy relationship with her daughter. This story felt deeply endowed with personal emotion (which makes sense since Cornell recently became a father) and I was particularly struck by the kinds of details that Cornell employed in establishing the characters' relationships.

"Firebugs" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (Eclipse Online) - A future in which clone groups are raised with established personality patterns, e.g. a group of six Chloes who are all raised with the same personality profile, and in which the clones are kept together as closely as possible so that they will develop as few diverging experiences (and thus traits) as possible. The main character is part of an experimental clone group that would establish a new personality. Consequently, they're under close supervision to see whether they will be approved. The main character turns out to have a propensity toward arson that would scuttle her group's chance and so she has to figure out how she can proceed without endangering her sister/twins. I usually find Hoffman's work charming, and this was no exception. It's a fun plot to follow and an interesting world/question posed.

"The Indifference Engine" by Project Itoh (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE) - After a truce is declared in a war-torn African country, the two factions from the civil war are unable to reconcile. Child soldiers who have never known anything but the conflict are unwilling to stop fighting. An American NGO experimentally treats many of them so that they can no longer visually tell the difference between their tribe and the other, but this solution proves simplistic and inadequate. I thought this was an interesting and politically intriguing way of engaging with contemporary political situations that are often ignored in western literature (although I have no idea how they're treated in Japanese literature).

"Tattooed Love Boys" by Alex Jeffers (Giganotosaurus) - A tattoo artist is able to change a person's sex, desires, and life story by engraving them with different tattoos. The main character, who starts out as a discontented girl who is attracted to gay men, eventually is turned into a man, and her whole relationship with her brother changes. Really smart and weird play with gender. Fun, strange experiments, written lightly, with tongue a bit in cheek, the kind of thing you want to watch because you want to see where the author is going to dart next.

"Unsilenced" by Karalynn Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - This is a strangely beautiful story wherein an empress whose father has just died makes a deal with a mage so that she can take over her father's power along with his throne. In order to accomplish this, the mage steals the voice of another magic-worker for her, and with the voice comes the gift of prophecy. The story's not entirely coherent which is a point against it, but it's particularly lovely, and has the sense of being longer than it is, not in terms of feeling boring or overdone, but in terms of feeling as if you're experiencing so much that it must be longer. Imagistic loveliness reminds me of Tanith Lee.

"The Waves" by Ken Liu (Asimovs) - Humanity reaches a post-human state--but it's not without complications. On a generation ship where the stores are calibrated carefully to support only a certain number of people, is it moral to choose immortality when you know that means your kids can never grow up? When the generation ship lands, they find that uploading is possible, and enhanced consciousness, and traveling through space in waves. The story documents the different choices that people make. Mostly an idea story, but I was willing to let the ideas and the images wash past.

"Golden Bread" by Issui Ogawa (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE) - A soldier from a colonial empire lands on an asteroid where people attempt to live without significant expansion or consumption. He is convinced that the differences between their cultures is caused by genetics, but eventually, they demonstrate that it is not. There's some (a lot of?) heavy-handedness in the theme here, but I really enjoyed it a lot, partially because of the description of the asteroid, and the characters who people the story. While the writer tilts his hand to force the theme, the characters' reaction to living in that world seems true to me, and the main character's reaction to the epiphany seems emotionally real.

"Scry" by Anne Ivy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - A wife has always scried for her husband and served him well, but nevertheless, when he is sieged, he abandons her to the enemy because he has no way to hide her acid-burned face. Rather than committing suicide as her husband no doubt wants, she goes to the alien enemy and offers to serve him in return for a stay of execution. The character and world here are nice and it's a fast-paced, well-rendered epic fantasy that, like "Unsilenced," feels fuller than its word count would seem to allow. However, it didn't quite transcend its well-worn territory for me. A fully enjoyable, well-done story.

"Small Towns" by Felicity Shoulders (Fantasy & Science Fiction) - A miniature girl (a Thumbelina analog) is born to a seamstress during a war. After the seamstress dies, the miniature girl is sent to the mother's hometown; however it was recently destroyed by a natural disaster that killed her grandparents. The girl discovers a miniature town that was built by a toymaker to look like the one that was destroyed. She moves into the model houses and eventually meets him. I just thought this was charming, imagistically, and I really enjoyed the voice that Shoulders used to tell the story.

"Static, and Sometimes Music" by David Schwartz (Unstuck #2) - Schwartz is another writer I'm starting to watch. This surrealist novelette places a corporate building under a literal siege by its creditors. The story wanders between genres, swinging from contemporary satire to surrealism to epic fantasy. Schwartz has a disarming ability to establish the reader on what seems like solid ground and then break it down, changing the rules completely, and building up another seemingly stable space which he then also breaks down. The rules are constantly changing and yet the disorientation is never unpleasant; there's always a sense of being tossed about by a confident, playful hand. There are shades of Vandermeer here ("Secret Life") but as I write this review, I realize that what it really reminds me of is absurdism as it manifests in playwriting, e.g. Ionesco's The Chairs.

"Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Giganotosaurus) - In this piece, Sriduangkaew rewrites a story from Chinese mythology, casting the hero Houyi as a woman. I really grooved on this retelling, both because of the way that it developed as a story, and also because of the interesting gender plays.

"Astrophilia" by Carrie Vaughn (Clarkesworld) - Set in the same world as Vaughn's Hugo nominated "Amaryllis," this is the story of a love affair between a weaver who has been adopted into a new house after her old one has dissolved, and a would-be astrologer. Vaughn is very good at these peaceful, almost pastoral science fiction stories, and I like their quietness and character development.

Recommended

"After Compline, Silence Falls" by M. Bernardo (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - A colony of ascetic monks confronts hunger as their supplies drain. Each sins by eating more than his share, but only nettles himself with his sins, rather than trying to resolve them communally. The story is complicated when a wraith made from hunger begins attacking the monks' stores. This is well-written and well-structured. The monster story doesn't do anything surprising for me in itself, but I liked this for the voice, setting, and the emotion behind the conclusion.

"The Stone Witch" by Isobelle Carmody (UNDER MY HAT) - A woman who hates kids is seated next to a young girl on an airplane. When the plane crashes, she's pulled into an alternate universe where, in order to save the girl's life, she takes her as a familiar. Honestly, I read this story near the beginning of last year, and I have strikingly little recollection of it. My notes suggest I really liked it a lot at the time. I think it was one of those fun, let-it-all-go adventure stories.

"Join the High Flyers" by Ian Creasey (Asimovs) - A former runner is genetically modified so that he has wings and can fly. He joins a clan of other bird-men and ascends into the sky, revealing the competitive culture of the bird-people. This was really just intense and strange, and it was a lot of fun to discover the unusual imagery and world-building. I also like stories about flying people; sue me. But seriously, it was pretty and fun.

"Close Encounters" by Andy Duncan (Pottowatomie Giant) - One of the original "alien abductees" has been trying to hide from reporters ever since the moon landing has made his story seem like a joke. He still believes it is real, though, and is forced to interact with the outside world again when a reporter coaxes him into talking about the old days. The character is interesting, with Duncan's wonderful skill for voice, and I was mostly happy to go along with an interesting read. I didn't like the way that it resolved--which I've seen several times before and which seems indulgent to me--but I'm not sure what ending would have managed to avoid cliche of some sort.

"Hive Mind Man" by Eileen Gunn and Rudy Rucker (Asimovs) - The funny story of a woman who takes in a deadbeat boyfriend who has endless projects that he wants to accomplish with new technologies. This is another story about the anxiety produced by changing technology (there were a number of these in Asimovs this year, and generally speaking, they don't speak to me), but it's also just charming and very amusing and full of fun eyeball kicks. The story feels light and energetic and just sort of runs along at a jovial speed, grinning.

"Old Paint" (excerpt) by Megan Lindholme (Asimovs) - The story of a family and its sentient car. After a virus gives independence to the AIs in cars, a woman lives vicariously through her old station wagon. Good detail and characterization; the whimsy of the premise ameliorates the serious tone. I enjoyed it despite being divided about the story: on the one hand, the "what if cars could be sentient" motif felt stale... but on the other hand, I liked the way that it created an effect of nostalgia for the past, and I also liked the relationships between the characters.

"Possible Monsters" (excerpt) by Will McIntosh (Asimovs) - A failed minor league baseball player returns home after his father's death and discovers that an alien monster has taken up residence in his childhood home. He makes an uneasy home with the creature, only to discover that it has given him an unwanted gift--the ability to see his possible future selves walking, like ghosts, through the town. Nothing profoundly new here, but McIntosh is a very talented writer, and it's interesting to watch his take on this unfold.

"The Contrary Gardener" by Christopher Rowe (Eclipse Online) - In a world that has reacted to environmental devastation by enacting strict rules limiting consumption, a woman has broken all the social rules by figuring out ways to increase her yield above the government-mandated subsistence level. Her father who is part of a group that hates the current government--and its artificial intelligences--tries to recruit her and her gardening skills to their cause. The main character's acerbic personality and love for gardening come through in the story, and the world itself is interesting.

"Mirror Blink" by Jason Sanford (Interzone) - Sanford writes science fictional worlds that have really striking, unusual imagery, so that there's a sense of combining surrealism with hard science fiction with metaphor that I really love. This story--about a post-apocalyptic world wherein humanity is ruled by capricious alien beings that limit their knowledge and periodically burn whole towns--had many of the signature Sanford elements; my favorite was that one could look into the sky with a telescope and discern moments from history, strung up like stars. For some reason, it didn't transcend itself for me; I did like it a lot, but I felt something was missing.

Notable Novelettes
"Juggernaut" by Megan Arkenberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"The Sweet Spot" by A. M. Dellamonica (Lightspeed)
"Fake Plastic Trees" by Caitlin Kiernan (AFTER)
"In the Library of Souls" by Jennifer Mason-Black (Strange Horizons)
"Golva's Ascent" (excerpt) by Tom Purdom (Asimovs)
"Missionaries" by Mercurio D. Rivera (Asimovs)

Rachel Swirsky's Short Story Recommendations, 2012

I read approximately 540 pieces of short fiction this year. I didn't separate those into short story, novelette, and novella until after I had selected which pieces I wanted to recommend. I used some of my normal techniques for finding stories, including recommendations and picking up stories by specific authors. I didn't spend as much time looking for reccs this year, though, because I decided to spend my time reading whole magazines. I read all of: Asimovs, Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Eclipse Online, Giganotosaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Subterranean and Tor, as well as several anthologies. I would have liked to have read more anthologies, and I was also hoping to read Electric Velocipede and Interzone, but alas did not end up being able to incorporate them.

I may continue to do some reading, especially of anthologies, for the next few weeks. If I find anything remarkable, I will post about it then.

I'm trying to find the best format for these posts. I'm going to try listing, without reviews, my favorite fourteen stories of the year, for easy reference (these will include stories that are on my ballot, stories I'm considering for my ballot, and highly recommended stories). Reviews will be below, along with shorter reviews of recommended stories. At the end of the post, I will list some of the other stories I found notable this year.

As always, there are many more stories that I read and enjoyed, and that deserve recognition, than I will actually be listing. This year, since I did my reading spread out over a large chunk of time, I'm also contending with my fading memory--stories that I read early on may be less likely to make the list because I've forgotten their emotional impact. While the overall quality of stories that I read this year was lower than in previous years (because in previous years, I relied on recommendations to sift out the best stories for me), as always I enjoyed doing the reading, and I look forward to talking about stories and authors.

Definitely on my ballot
"Immersion" by Aliette deBodard (Clarkesworld)
"Mono no Aware" by Ken Liu (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE, Haikasoru)

Possibly on my ballot
"Mantis Wives" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld)
"Education of a Witch" by Ellen Klages (UNDER MY HAT)
"Searching for Slave Leia" by Sandra McDonald (Lightspeed)
"The Great Loneliness" by Maria Romasco-Moore (Unstuck #2)
"The Segment" by Genevieve Valentine (AFTER)

Highly Recommended
"Wild Things" by Alyx Dellamonica (Tor.com)
"Beautiful Boys" by Theodora Goss (Asimovs)
"Valedictorian" by N. K. Jemisin (AFTER)
"Afterlife" by Sarah Langan (Nightmare)
"One Breath, One Stroke" by Cat Valente (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE)
"Armless Maidens of the American West" by Genevieve Valentine (Apex)

REVIEWS:

Definitely on my ballot

"Immersion" by Aliette deBodard (Clarkesworld) - Somewhere on social media, Aliette described this as a story that happened because she was angry. Apparently, Aliette being angry is a beautiful thing. Not only is this story intense and interesting and all that other good fiction stuff, but it's one of the smartest political pieces I've read in a while, a savvy and complex investigation of dual consciousness and the way that colonialism occupies minds as well as external spaces. I'm really glad this one is on Clarkesworld so that everyone can access it. I'd love to see it incorporated into curricula.

"Mono no Aware" by Ken Liu (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE, Haikasoru) - I really love the concept of the anthology in which this appeared; there are both stories by Japanese authors and stories by non-Japanese authors about Japan. Full disclosure--I am in the anthology--but my work aside, it still featured some of the best work of the year. I highly recommend picking it up, not least for this story by Ken Liu of the last Japanese man's experiences on a generation ship after the earth is destroyed. If you'll forgive me for turning to Wikipedia, it defines mono no aware as "an awareness of the transience of things, and a gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing" which is one of those beautiful concepts that has no direct English equivalent. Liu evokes the emotion beautifully in this piece.

Possibly on my ballot

"Mantis Wives" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld) - Kij is one of my favorite short story writers, and I admit that for me, none of her work has transcended "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park after the Change." (I also admit that I will link to that story at every opportunity.) In the last few years, Kij has been writing very intense, emotionally charged, brief punch-in-the-jaw stories that operate as metaphors for human relationships. Spar, about the ways in which sex is adversarial; Ponies, about the pruning of self that's required of girls in adolescence; and "Story Kit" (Eclipse 4) which, alas, is not available online. These stories are almost like poetry in their condensed ability to evoke emotion through metaphor in a very, very small space. All of them are brilliant in their own ways ("Ponies" made me sick with recognition as I read it), but "Mantis Wives" is my favorite so far, about the viciousness of love gone wrong, described intensely and evocatively through a metaphor about the imagined culture of praying mantises.


"Education of a Witch" by Ellen Klages (UNDER MY HAT) - Ellen Klages has told me that she thinks this is possibly her best story so far, and she may be right, although I admit to an enduring affection for "In the House of the Seven Librarians" (audio link). Klages often conceals really bitter, sharp-edged narratives beneath stories that project a veneer of sweetness (see last year's "Goodnight Moons" in LIFE ON MARS). She's also one of the best writers I've ever read at really evoking childhood from the perspective of children, nailing the ambiguous balance of sensory pleasure and learning about the world with the actual nastiness that children experience--the lack of power, and the way that casual cruelty can play in their minds. Her children are never idealized. This story is perhaps the best mix of a sweet veneer over a bitter story, with an excruciatingly well-defined child who exists in a likewise excruciatingly well-defined world. When Lizzie sees Sleeping Beauty, she identifies with the evil witch Malificent instead of the beautiful but passive Aurora. She wants to become like the witch; she want to possess the ability to affect a world in which she too often finds herself powerless.

"Searching for Slave Leia" by Sandra McDonald (Lightspeed) - In the past few years, Sandra MacDonald has written several stories about outre sexual politics in a science fictional setting. This year, she's turned her mastery of wry meta-fiction toward other subjects--sometimes political such as in her recent Asimovs story, "The Black Feminist's Guide to Science Fiction Film Editing" (which I honestly did not know what to make of), but often moving into an exploration of regret and lives not well-enough-lived. "Searching for Slave Leia" is one of the latter, a story that makes use of meta-fiction and humor to poke at the bitterness of a mid-life crisis. A writer who's worked on several science fiction TV series has a heart attack and finds herself wandering through the wilds of a bottle episode about the losses, wrong-turns, and once-loves of her life. The story's humor and willingness to look frankly at unpleasant detail allows it to avoid the maudlin, and even the TV-happy ending fits well with the narrative.

"The Great Loneliness" by Maria Romasco-Moore (Unstuck #2) - This is one of the last stories I read this year, and I almost skipped it, but a recommendation from Meghan McCarron (one of the editors of Unstuck Magazine, and an excellent writer in her own right) weighs heavily with me. Unstuck is a magazine that aims to occupy the boundary where literary and science fictional aesthetics spill into each other. One thing I like about it is that while it includes slipstream, strange and undefinable pieces, it also includes some straight-up science fictional work that evinces a literary aesthetic, such as this piece which could easily be at home in Clarkesworld or Asimovs but is also affecting for literary readers. In a future where much of humanity has died off and those people who remain are near-immortal, the new battles for humans are loneliness and apathy. I'm not sure how much that concept persuades me, but it provides the underpinning for an unusually well-told story about a woman who was genetically engineered as a scientist but found herself more of an artist, who fulfills her artistic goals by creating children who merge the DNA of plants and animals and humans, in an attempt to creatures who will transcend loneliness and apathy. There are some neat science fictional conceits in the background, including some interesting notions about cloning, and a lonely suggestion of alien life.

"The Segment" by Genevieve Valentine (AFTER) - Genevieve is always a talented writer, but I think this year's short stories have packed a particular punch. This one was my favorite. It was published in Ellen Datlow's AFTER, an anthology of stories about dystopian futures for YA audiences. Of course, just because stories are pleasing to young adults doesn't mean that they're not also pleasing to broader audiences as well. This one is a simply structured but compellingly voices story about an orphan (in a dystopian future, obviously) who's been adopted by a production company that creates fake news clips. The main character comes across as sharp and interesting which is the reason why the story works; what could be a ridiculous concept, Genevieve pulls off with sharp, persuasive, confident detail and voice.

Highly Recommended

"Wild Things" by Alyx Dellamonica (Tor.com) - The luxuriously detailed, sensory story of a romance between a woman and a scientist who was merged into the swamp by a surge of magic. Intriguing setting, characters create an immersive sauna of a story and enhances the relationship between the characters whose palpable emotions are what make the piece work.

"Beautiful Boys" by Theodora Goss (Asimovs) - In a surreal, unsettling story, Goss describes the compelling pull of "alien" beautiful boys. This is the kind of slipstream story that deliberately denies sense, but does it persuasively, much in the way that a dream's lack of sense nevertheless feels real. It rocks you back on your feet a bit, demands that you consider the gap between your logical interpretation of what you're reading and its emotional evocation. My only complaint about this story was that it was not as memorable as I'd have liked it to be, perhaps because its tones shaded very similarly, to me, to Kelly Link's "Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water" (included in the linked collection). They're both lovely stories and well-deserving of sharing space, but for me, the similarity rang in such a way that I didn't love "Beautiful Boys" quite as much as I could have. In subject matter, though not tone, I was also reminded of Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" (which may have been deliberate; I could easily read this piece as a feminist reply to Gaiman's which I don't read as sexist but does create women as other. I would see this as a thought-provoking reply, not a rebuke, a sort of "yes, and also").

"Valedictorian" by N. K. Jemisin (AFTER) - Nora (Nojojojo to Alas readers) is one of my favorite writers, although I think she's a better novelist than she is a short story writer. This story is sharp and smart, like all of Nora's work, and extremely aware of how power flows and what power means. In this story, I also see her as contemplating the shifting definitions of "what is human" in a way that only a writer who's interested in the power dynamics of race and colonialism (and to a lesser extent other social justice issues) would do; in a way that reminds me of Octavia Butler, she looks at how social groups create the concept of other, and both the ways in which that is legitimate and illegitimate, xenophobia mixed with preservation. The main character in this piece has a sharp voice and a memorable perspective. In a world where everyone tries to stick safely to the middle of the pack, the main character has no patience for curbing her talents and dazzles academically, even though she knows that each year's Valedictorian will be taken by the alien "other" outside her city's walls, along with the bottom 10% of each graduating class.

"Afterlife" by Sarah Langan (Nightmare) - There's nothing too complex, political, or unlike-anything-I've-ever-seen about this relatively simple story of a woman who has never been able to move away from her childhood home and her possessive, agrophobic, hoarder mother. She sees the ghosts of children who have failed to move on to the afterlife and tries to help them move on before they fade out of existence. Her household is in tumult as they are about to be thrown out for lack of paying the mortgage, and the main character is placed at a moment of change, forced, like her ghost children, to brave a new course of action. As I said, there's nothing extremely unusual about the concept, but it's just drawn in a way that caught me; I was interested in the main character, with her passive uncertainty mixed with her desire to do good in the world, and I was interested in the world of ghosts. I liked that even though it was clear that there was a metaphorical element to a house full of hoarded objects and stifled, unhappy people, being haunted, that element didn't feel like it was being too strongly underlined. The story also had a pleasing structure.

"One Breath, One Stroke" by Cat Valente (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE) - As I mentioned above in my review of Liu's "Mono no Aware," this anthology contained a number of stories that I really enjoyed. It's incredibly hard to describe this one. It's sort of a drift of intense, beautiful imagery, delicately and gorgeously written, a lyrical fascination woven of the surprising and strange. The experience of it can't be easily summarized, I think.

"Armless Maidens of the American West" by Genevieve Valentine (Apex) - Again, Valentine's having a strong year in short fiction. In this piece, which was the best of Apex Magazine's this year, she looks at a genre of story which I hadn't been familiar with before--apparently, there's a trope in fairy tales about armless maidens who have been mutilated by loved ones who should have protected them. Valentine relocates this trope from fairytales into American mythology and creates real armless maidens who live on the fringe of society, observed but denied. They are victims of a kind of violence that no one knows how to acknowledge, and thus they reject the girls whose bodies are evidence of it, refusing to confront what frightens them. The main character tries to bridge this gap, to see the deliberately unseen. Analogies are clear but not heavy-handed. This story was linked on IO9 which apparently drove a lot of well-deserved web traffic to the story.

Recommended

"Tornado's Siren" by Brooke Bolander (Strange Horizons) - Lilting story of a tornado that falls in love with a girl. Bolander is new to publishing in the genre, but smart, strange in a way I enjoy, and excellent on the prose level. I'm very interested in seeing how she continues to develop as a writer. I expect to nominate her for the Campbell. See also her Lightspeed story: "Her Words Like Hunting Vixens Spring" which isn't entirely successful as a story qua story, but is more unusual in structure and content than "Tornado's Siren."

"Synch Me, Kiss Me, Drop" by Suzanne Church (Clarkesworld) - I haven't seen anyone else writing excitedly about this one which confuses me a bit. I found it really intense. There were a couple of stories this year that dealt the effect of technology on music in the near future that I found quite effective, this one and one in Asimovs ("Kill Switch" by Benjamin Cromwell), both of which evoked intense sensation through their description of the effects of music on the listener. This was one of those stories that I felt intensely immersed in as I read--very sensorily involved.

"Flash, Bang, Remember" by Tina Connolly and Caroline Yoachim (Lightspeed) - Connolly and Yoachim are both writers I enjoy. Connolly's prose is character-inflected and wry; Yoachim's is dark, strangely structured, and intensely imagistic. Somehow, together, their work is neither edged with humor nor woven through disjunctive imagery, but instead it becomes both direct and heavily structured. In this story, clones on a generation ship are imprinted with the same childhood memories--memories created by The Child, a boy who lived a long time ago. The ship is now trying to raise a new Child, a female version, but they want to make sure that her memories are perfectly appropriate, that she's just the right kind of person, even as she navigates a world in which everyone but her shares the same memories. The treatment of this idea is straightforward, but I liked it quite a bit.

"Shades of Amber" by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - The main advantage this story has is being very pretty, which is actually something that Beneath Ceaseless Skies specializes in. The story is about aliens (or the fantastical equivalent) who show their emotions through the colorful shading of their skins, with respect given to those who shade most deeply and with the most range. The main character has little range, but her brother is gorgeously colored. The story follows the way this influences their life paths.

"Sexagesimal" by Katherine E. K. Duckett (Apex) - In a strange, not-entirely-explained (in a good way) afterlife where memories and time are traded to fulfill wants and needs, a dead woman tries to figure out why her husband has fallen asleep, suffering from the only disease that afflicts the dead. This is lovely and intriguing, although it's a story that doesn't fulfill its promise: I ended up being less interested in the events of the plot than I was in the setting and the set-up.

"On Petercook 2046" by Andy Duncan (Tor) - Why doesn't science fiction have more stories about people doing regular, boring work in the asteroid belt? Duncan answers the question with this story: because the work isn't very interesting. But he does it in a way that's remarkably funny and entertaining. The quirky characters talk with a lightness of dialogue that made me think of P. G. Wodehouse, although I think Duncan must have been referencing "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern" are dead.

"Breaking the Frame" by Kat Howard (Lightspeed) - One of Kat Howard's projects appears to be metafictionally deconstructing the structure of fairytales. In the past, some of her work on this theme has struck me as too skeletal, relying on the reader to supply emotional content rather than evoking that content itself. In this one, wherein a woman and a photographer collaborate on taking photographs that represent feminist interventions with traditional fairy tales, I feel that she's found a compelling stride. The story creates its own imagery and material to place in conversation with the

"What Everyone Remembers" by Rahul Kanakia (Clarkesworld) - This is a story of a post-apocaylptic future in which some of the last human survivors are trying to create a new race of sentient species to continue after them. I really liked the way that Kanakia handled the POV of the emerging sentience--both in the tight POV that described its acquisition of knowledge, and in its alienness.

"Good Hunting" by Ken Liu (Strange Horizons) - Ken Liu almost always tackles subjects of interest to me; in this case, the story is metaphorically about how the colonial influence on the far east changed its culture. A demon hunter's son finds himself out of work when western industry and trains displace old magic; his friend, a fox-girl, loses her ability to transform until she allows herself to be remade in metal. Lots of stories have handled the metaphorical transition from magic to industrialization, but I think Liu's depth of interest in colonialism and the cultural pscyhology of both the Sinitic Cultural Complex and the colonial West makes this story more interesting than most.

"Maxwell's Demon" by Ken Liu (Fantasy & Science Fiction) - Yes, Ken Liu again. :P In this story, he looks at the history of how Americans mistreated and manipulated Japanese citizens during World War Two, not only incarcerating them in internment camps, but using threats of mistreatment to force them to take on "patriotic" tasks. (This is not to say that there weren't many Japanese citizens who genuinely wanted to serve in the army and so on, but the way in which the American forces created untenable situations in order to force some people into doing so was disgusting.) An American citizen of Japanese descent is forced into spying on Japan for the United States. Some criticism has painted the main character of this story as passive, a characterization I emphatically object to--part of the story is about the way in which huge cultural powers crush the individual's ability to make free decisions, even those (like America) that claim to support it. Liu's main character navigates her foreclosed options in a compelling way that, as always, reflects Liu's cultural and historical interest.

"Virtue's Ghosts" by Amanda Olson (Beneath Ceaseless Skies) - Another Beneath Ceaseless Skies story, another odd and lovely world wherein the setting is as (or more) important than the plot. In this world, each person is assigned a "virtue" at their coming of age, and with it a pendant that forces them to adhere to it. The main character's aunt, who had been a talented singer, is forced into silence. The plot is simple--the main character learns about the pendants and how to navigate their restrictions--but I found the concept and the surreal style compelling.

"If the Mountain Comes" by An Owomoyela (Clarkesworld) - In a world lacking water, the main character is the daughter of a rich merchant who has made his fortune by controlling the modest water source. She joins forces with those who want to use technology to bring water more democratically to the people, even though her father is reacting violently to this assault on his power. This story is more traditional than many of An's--it's less disjunctive and has stronger characterization. In style, it reminds me most of hir story "All That Touches the Air."

"Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain" by Cat Rambo (Near + Far) - One of the reasons why Cat is one of my favorite short story writers is how much beautiful, unusual imagery she can evoke with only a few perfect details. Planet Porcelain is ideal in this regard. The main character works for the tourist bureau, writing lists of striking places and events, and the unusual descriptions of the setting are breathtaking. The lists themselves create a strong and thematically appropriate backbone for the story. The main character lives on the titual Planet Porcelain, where citizens are built from porcelain; as someone from the lower classes, she is built from inferior clay, which the richer citizens she works among never forget. The story starts in spring, the season of love, with the main character refusing to give into the romance of the weather. The reason why she is too jaded for love fall into place as the story progresses. This story is lovely, and the background events are compelling and odd, but I wanted something a touch stronger from the frame story in order for the piece to feel complete for me; I felt unfinished when the story was over, a sensation which was thematically appropriate to the story, but didn't quite strike the right note. From the author's note in the collection, it seems this story is in dialogue with a piece of work with which I'm not familiar; it's very possible that if I knew that work, the story would not feel unfinished to me.

Notable Stories

"Pinktastic and the End of the World" by Camille Alexa (WHEN THE VILLAIN COMES HOME)
"Intestate" by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)
"Final Exams" by Megan Arkenberg (Asimovs)
"Birthdays" by Chris Barzak (Birds and Birthdays)
"Great-Grandmother in the Cellar" by Peter Beagle (UNDER MY HAT)
"The Marker" by Cecil Castelucci (AFTER)
"Aquatica" by Maggie Clark (Clarkesworld)
"Kill Switch" by Benjamin Cromwell (Asimovs)
"Give Her Honey When You Scream" by Maria Dahvana Headley (Lightspeed)
"Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!" by Hal Duncan (Subterranean)
"Luck Fish" by Peta Freestone (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"Murdered Sleep" by Kat Howard (Apex)
"Lion Dance" by Vylar Kaftan (Asimovs)
"To the Moon" by Ken Liu (Fireside Magazine)
"People of Pele" by Ken Liu (Asimovs)
"Winter Scheming" by Brit Mandelo (Apex)
"Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by Meghan McCarron (The Revelator)
"Sexy Robot Mom" by Sandra McDonald (Asimovs)
"The Carved Forest" by Tim Pratt (UNDER MY HAT)
"The Mote-Dancer and the Firelife" by Chris Willrich (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"The Three Feats of Agani" by Christie Yant (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
"The Philosophy of Ships" by Caroline Yoachim (Interzone)
"Bear in Contradicting Landscape" by David Schwartz (Apex)

Rachel Swirsky's Stripped Down Short Fiction Reccs, 2012

OK, due to a recurring migraine, I've been trying to write out my full-review posts on what fiction I strongly recommend this year for like 10 days, and I just need to put the information up. So I'm going to put up a stripped down version here. Just titles and links. I've got the files set up for my review text so I can hopefully fill that in this weekend, but I'd like to at least get the titles out there.

My actual list will include, in addition to reviews, a much longer list of stories that I'm enthusiastic about instead of just my top few selections.

SHORT STORIES

Definitely on my ballot
"Immersion" by Aliette deBodard (Clarkesworld)
"Mono no Aware" by Ken Liu (THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE, Haikasoru)

Possibly on my ballot
"Mantis Wives" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld)
"Education of a Witch" by Ellen Klages (UNDER MY HAT)
"Searching for Slave Leia" by Sandra McDonald (Lightspeed)
"The Great Loneliness" by Maria Romasco-Moore (Unstuck #2)
"The Segment" by Genevieve Valentine (AFTER)

NOVELETTES

Definitely on Ballot
"Mating Habits of the Late Cretaceous" (excerpt) by Dale Bailey (Asimovs)
"Fade to White" by Cathrynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld)

Possibly on Ballot
"Swift, Brutal Retalliation" by Meghan McCarron (Tor.com)
"The Finite Canvas" by Brit Mandelo (Tor.com)
"Aftermath" by Joy Kennedy O'Neill (Strange Horizons)
"Hold a Candle to the Devil" by Nicole M. Taylor (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

NOVELLAS

Ballot
"After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall" by Nancy Kress (Tachyon)
"African Sunrise" by Nnedi Okorafor (Subterranean)
"Katabasis" by Robert Reed (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
"Murder Born" (excerpt) by Robert Reed (Asimovs)
"The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon)

Recomended
"All the Flavors" by Ken Liu (Giganotosaurus)
"A Seed in the Wind" by Cat Rambo (ebook)