Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth: April 2016
Every Heart a Doorway is a gorgeous, perfect novella from the twisted mind of Seanan McGuire, published by Tor.com. Part love letter (and suspicious side-eye) to the popular trope of children’s literature about accidental doorways into magical worlds, part slasher movie.
Seriously, it’s like all of my favourite fantasy novels of all time ganged up on each other for a game of murder that got a little too real.
Nancy is a wonderful, sad, thoroughly complex heroine, still mourning that she was made to leave the Land of the Dead (and still, like many other children at Eleanor West’s Home For Wayward Children, waiting and hoping to be invited back to her beloved magical land). Her new friends at the school are equally layered and fascinating, from Kade, the trans boy who was rejected from his magical land for not being the princess they thought he was (SO SAD) to bleak, former-assistant-to-mad-scientist Jack, and her pale, vampire groupie sister, Jill. Each of these children are shaped by the magical land they visited, and have been sent away from parents who can’t accept the change in them since their return.
Every Heart a Doorway is so sad and beautiful and clever and I can’t recommend this novella enough.
Kate Orman is one of those writers who I always make the time to read when a new (rare) story makes its way out into the world! “Keeping Mum” (Cosmos Online) is an emotionally fraught story about alien linguistics, brain surgery and how a distant race could invade the Earth without even setting foot here, by gifting us with advanced communication and cognitive skills.
“Touring with the Alien,” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld) deals with similar ideas to Orman’s story – humans who are altered in order to more effectively communicate with an unseen, unknowable alien lifeform – but this version is told as a dark, thought-provoking road trip between an confused, uptight alien host and his security detail – a woman still working through her own personal demons.
“The Destroyer,” by Tara Isabella Burton (Tor.com), is a weird and wonderful (and utterly horrid) mother-daughter mad scientist/robotics story, based in an alternate Rome [so basically, yes, a short story designed to hit all my buttons and become an instant favourite]. I’ve never read anything by Burton before, but will now be watching out for her name! Loved this piece so much.
