This year’s list of nominated short stories covers a pretty wide range of themes. In this group there are two re-told fairy tales, a portal to another world via a book-loaning program, ruminations on wholesale slaughter by a sentient house, a day in the life (well, week in the life) of a couple of brand
By an odd coincidence, all three of the Hugo-nominated novelettes I saved for last are about memory and death. Hard-hitting stuff here. They’re also about the stories we tell and why we tell them: to remember the past, to link us to each other, and to make us reach for something more than just survival.
Naomi Kritzer is an extremely prolific writer of short stories (my favorite format), and her collection Comrade Grandmother made me curious to see what she can do when she has an entire novel’s worth of room. In Freedom’s Gate – the first book in The Dead River’s trilogy – Kritzer expands on the world hinted at in her short story “Spirit Stone”.
“Caroline says that fairy godmothers don’t have wings anymore,” I said. “Because of underground nuclear testing.” My subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction lapsed a while ago, but finding a back issue from 2014 is making me want to start it up again. I’m always looking for new authors to read, and
Around this time of year all the book publishers start talking about what you should be reading over the next couple of months. “Great Beach Books”, “Perfect Summer Reading”. No one gets very specific about the criteria though. Should the books be light and easy to read? Linked to big news stories or the latest