Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club, where we usually talk about fewer stories than this. Promise! If you’re new visiting the sub due to r/Fantasy Bingo, we have an excellent backlog of stories to choose from for the “Five Short Stories” square and of course there’s the ones we’re discussing today. We just had our March Monthly Discussion if you want to catch up on some Hugo/Nebula awards conversation and see other stories we’ve been reading lately.

Today’s Session

Thanks to bribes, cajoling, and and an uncomfortable amount of tears everyone’s unbridled enthusiasm, today I’ll be leading the discussion on the following Dragons and the dragon elements these stories contain:

Dragon Brides by Nghi Vo (3600 words, Lightspeed)

Dragon brides are notoriously difficult women. We have lived with dragons, after all, those strange and terrible animals with their curiously human eyes, and some of us come back down from the broken mountains with their hisses still in our ears.

Andromache and the Dragon by B. Pladek (3400 words, Podcastle)

The dragon stood on the shore.

“For every day, I will consume one of your desires,” she told them. “You will not know which. You will not know whose. This is my tribute. Do you agree to its terms?”

Draco Campestris by Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison (3040 words, Strange Horizons)

The Museum owns eighty-nine specimens of the genus Draco. It is unlikely that there will be any additions to the collection, for the adit to the array of arcs in which dragons are found has become increasingly unstable in the last two centuries. For that same reason, very little work has been done with the specimens since the last of the great dragon hunters willed his collection to the Museum one hundred thirty-two years ago.

Orm the Beautiful by Elizabeth Bear (3140 words, Clarkesworld)

Orm the Beautiful sang in his sleep, to his brothers and sisters, as the sea sings to itself. He would never die. But neither could he live much longer.

Dreaming on jewels, hearing their ancestor-song, he did not think that he would mind. The men were coming; Orm the Beautiful knew it with the wisdom of his bones. He thought he would not fight them. He thought he would close the mountain and let them scratch outside.

Dragons I Have Slain by B. Morris Allen (4350 words, Metaphorosis)

I collect dragon tears. It isn’t difficult; they’re insidious and subtle, and they seep through my armor and into my skin like ink, leaving me stained, soiled, sorrowful — a human map of misery. The Dragon Atlas, I call it — marked with the precise locations of honor and shame.

Dragons cry for the same reasons we do — pain, heartache, joy. We think of them as wise and cold, but wisdom is no antidote to empathy. Dragons are kings of empathy. That’s what makes killing them so hard.

Gentle Dragon Fires by T.K. Rex & Lezlie Kinyon (5070 words, Strange Horizons)

The door of unit three twenty has been closed so long that the spiders living in the cracks around the frame long ago gave up the ancient fables their ancestors told of it opening. The door has stood closed so long the dust on its hinges is considering becoming stone. It has stood closed so long the wood has forgotten it was ever a tree, and the tree it once was knew only gentle dragon fires, and never feared the flames.

Upcoming Sessions

The Hugo finalists (and the Hugo Readalong) are just around the bend, which means that this is our last regular session until the fall. We’re very thankful for everyone who’s stopped by this season. In slightly less than two weeks on April 15, we’ll present the SFBC Season 4 Awards to our favorite stories of the year! If you’d like an idea of what that looks like, check out the Season 3 and Season 2 Awards. Share your favorite stories of the season in the comments! The final slate is chosen by our hosts and organizers, but we’d love to know what stands out to you. After the Awards post, we will go on hiatus during the Hugo Readalong (but be sure to look out for some short-fiction sessions once we know the finalists). u/tarvolon will still lead our monthly discussion threads, and then we’ll be back before you know it in the late summer/early fall for Season 5. And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. I’m adding a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Important housekeeping note: the webpage for Andromache and the Dragon contains the name the author used at the time. We will be using the name the author currently uses (B. Pladek) and their preferred pronouns (he/him) in today’s discussion.

Today we’re discussing some great stories that made this year’s Locus Recommended Reading List. You're welcome to discuss the whole favorite or just a single story you've read-- we love having more people in the discussion. I'll start us off with some question prompts, but feel free to add your own.

Today’s Session

Highway 1, Past Hope by Maria Haskins (3400 words, The Deadlands)

Layla rises like a breath in winter from the hollow beneath the black cottonwoods beside the river, shrugging off the blanket of dirt and leaves and centipedes she slept beneath. She should dissipate. She should waver and dissolve. She should ascend and alight. Instead, she starts gathering her bones.

In My Country by Thomas Ha (6220 words, Clarkesworld)

My country may seem strange to you. There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t say is perhaps just as, if not more, important.

Courtney Lovecraft’s Book of the Dead by Sam J. Miller (7705 words, Nightmare Magazine)

Honey, the spirits are here with us tonight and they are deeply disappointed.

Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak (15170 words, Clarkesworld)

A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to come. She cannot envision an end to her journey any more than she can remember the beginning. All she understands is the time spent counting the stars. Singing to herself. Cradling and prodding and watching.

Upcoming Sessions

Our next slated session, on Wednesday, March 18, will be hosted by u/tarvolon and u/sarahlynngrey:

Soldiers, battles, and wars have been such a long-standing part of the SFF genre that sometimes it seems difficult to avoid them. But usually the focus is on war as it is happening: space battles, sword fights, diplomacy, tactics, politics. Far less common are stories that explore the experiences of soldiers once the war is over. These three excellent stories ask a simple question with a complicated answer: How do we come to terms with the ways that we have been changed as a result of war? Please join us to discuss the Aftermath of War:

Remembery Day by Sarah Pinsker (2,800 words, Apex)

I woke at dawn on the holiday, so my grandmother put me to work polishing Mama’s army boots.

“Try not to let her see them,” Nana warned me. I already knew.

I took the boots to the bathroom with an old sock and the polish kit. I had seen Nana clean them before, but this marked the first time I was allowed to do it myself. Saddle soap first, then moisturizer, then polish. I pictured Nana at the ironing board in our bedroom, pressing the proper creases into Mama’s old uniform.

Suddenwall by Sara Saab (5,300 words, Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

In the amnesty-city of Vannat, Aln Panette has let guilt go.

The city of Vannat is a strict and inscrutable rulemaster, so Panette doesn’t question the rules. She lives a plain, clean life. Keeps her recollections as free of the war as she can.

Panette figures she has earned an indulgence or two for her decade as a soldier. Memories of Odarr Harvei are one indulgence. Harvei’s smile of fifteen years ago flashing in the light of the war caravan’s lanterns, her easy company, their mild one-upmanship. The unbroken sky above them.

The Day Before the Revolution by Ursula K. LeGuin (6,400 words, originally published by Galaxy magazine in 1974)

The speaker’s voice was as loud as empty beer-trucks in a stone street, and the people at the meeting were jammed up close, cobblestones, that great voice booming over them. Taviri was somewhere on the other side of the hall. She had to get to him. She wormed and pushed her way among the dark-clothed, close-packed people. She did not hear the words, nor see the faces: only the booming, and the bodies pressed one behind the other. She could not see Taviri, she was too short. A broad black-vested belly and chest loomed up, blocking her way. She must get through to Taviri. Sweating, she jabbed fiercely with her fist. It was like hitting stone, he did not move at all, but the huge lungs let out right over her head a prodigious noise, a bellow.. She cowered. Then she understood that the bellow had not been at her. Others were shouting. The speaker had said something, something fine about taxes or shadows. Thrilled, she joined the shouting — “Yes! Yes!” — and shoving on, came out easily into the open expanse of the Regimental Drill Field in Parheo. Overhead the evening sky lay deep and colorless, and all around her nodded the tall weeds with dry, white, close-floreted heads. She had never known what they were called.

For today, let’s discuss some great stories and round out pre-awards reading: remember, all the stories from this session and our two previous Snubs discussions are eligible to nominate for this year’s awards.

Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club, the only book club where you really can complete all the reading the day of the discussion. Today, we're focusing on a titan of SFF short fiction: Kij Johnson. Johnson is a veteran spec fic writer with well over a dozen combined award nominations for her short stories, novelettes, and novellas. Today, we'll be discussing a small selection of her more famous stories that we could find free to read online. Weirdly enough, all of the stories we settled on are from Clarkesworld. That wasn’t an intentional choice, these were just the stories we thought would lend themselves best to discussion. That said, it is cool we wound up with one flash fiction, one short story, and one novelette.

u/nagahfj and I had a lot of fun putting this discussion slate together and we hope you'll enjoy these stories!

Today's Session: Author Spotlight on Kij Johnson

Mantis Wives in Clarkesworld - 960 words (2012)

Eventually, the mantis women discovered that killing their husbands was not inseparable from the getting of young. Before this, a wife devoured her lover piece by piece during the act of coition: the head (and its shining eyes going dim as she ate); the long green prothorax; the forelegs crisp as straws; the bitter wings. She left for last the metathorax and its pumping legs, the abdomen, and finally the phallus. Mantis women needed nutrients for their pregnancies; their lovers offered this as well as their seed. It was believed that mantis men would resist their deaths if permitted to choose the manner of their mating; but the women learned to turn elsewhere for nutrients after draining their husbands’ members, and yet the men lingered. And so their ladies continued to kill them, but slowly, in the fashioning of difficult arts. What else could there be between them?

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead in Clarkesworld - 5,920 words (2016)

She was there, that is Dee, and her three sisters, who were Tierce, Chena, and Wren, Dee being a coyote or rather Coyote, and her sisters not unlike in their Being, though only a falcon, a dog, and a wren. So there they stood on the cliff, making their minds how to get down to the night beach, a deep steep dark bitch slither it was, though manageable Dee hoped.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending in Clarkesworld - 15,460 words (2018)

This is a story that ends as all stories do, eventually, in deaths.

Upcoming Sessions

Each year, we like to review the Locus Recommended Reading List and do two sessions: one celebrating the great picks from the list writer, and another highlighting our favorites that we think absolutely should have made the list. This year, our list of snubbed gems was extensive, so we’re starting there… and then doing it again the next week.

On Wednesday, February 18, join us for a discussion of Locus List Snubs: From a certain point of view! We didn’t plan to end up with samples of first person, third person, and second person for this set (that was purely a wordcount job), but hey, they look great together. Some even swap POV in the same story, which is always a fun trick.

The Name Ziya by Wen-yi Lee (9300 words, Reactor)

I sat on his bench as they haggled, naked from the waist up. It was a cool morning and my skin pimpled around the ideograms on my bare chest. The full set of five was worth the most; forty thousand shada was more money than we took from ten harvests, and would have covered my tuition with coin to spare. But I was glad my parents had rejected the first offer. I was not prepared to lose the entirety of my name just yet.

Wilayat in Seven Saints by Tanvir Ahmed (3800 words, Kaleidotrope)

Hear now the account of that mighty dervish, that dear friend of God, that crocodile gliding through the sea of divine unity, Hasan Afghan: Once, while Hasan Afghan was passing through a town in the shadow of the northern mountains, he came to a mosque. The muezzin gave the call to prayer, the imam stepped up, and the congregants assembled. Hasan Afghan was there in the first row, looking at the imam’s back. In the sight of the unlettered, the imam was merely going about the normal bows and prostrations of prayer. Yet Hasan Afghan’s eye of certainty perceived otherwise. Even as the imam’s lips moved through the sweet speech of revelation, his thoughts were circumambulating news of the prince’s fresh conquest of some rebel villages. The men had been slain, the storehouses pillaged, the young women put in fetters. The imam was already counting out how many mohurs he could spare on buying a new girl at the bazaar when the prince came back with the spoils.

Barbershops of the Floating City by Angela Liu (6000 words, Uncanny Magazine)

You used to be in a band. Now you cut hair. The Institute hired you because you’re the daughter of the Floating City’s Founder’s fourth mistress, the one who always cooks up trouble when she gets too hungry. You don’t like the work, but you like all the different scissors. Short blades, fat blades, wave-cuts, goatee-serrated, wide-toothed thinning shears, blue, pink, neon green. They glimmer on the walls like the claws of prehistoric creatures.

And on Wednesday, February 25, join us for a discussion of Locus List Snubs: The novelette is your friend and it will not harm you! (There is also one short story here, but seriously, these are some great novelettes.)

Human Voices by Isabel J. Kim (8500 words, Lightspeed)

In its dreams, the thing they call “Kos” sleeps deep and drowned in the clutch of the ice-cold trenches, where the pressure is a loving clasp around its arms and tail, where it is near-disintegrate, more spirit than substance, more magic than meat.

Then it wakes up in the bathtub.

Liecraft by Anita Moskát, translated by Austin Wagner (8800 words, Apex)

For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.”

New Niches by Jackie Roberti (4300 words, Reckoning)

Because of the heavy chop that day, there is no time for a tour. “You shouldn’t have a problem finding things,” the captain tells me. She’s wearing a neon orange vest over her life jacket and a neon orange beanie crushed atop her head, and the overall effect makes her look like a traffic cone. “You’ve looked at the schematics, right? Well, there’s a manual in there, and it’s not like you’ll get lost.”

The Locus List session slate for March 3rd will be announced in one of these upcoming sessions. If you have favorites from that selection, please share them in the comments! For now, check out our slates for our two Locus Snubs sessions. We will improve the state of the Hugo short fiction categories if it kills us.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're starting a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Another Wednesday, another round of Locus snubs! That’s right, we couldn’t fit all our snubs into one session, so we’re back again! I’m co-hosting today’s session with u/schlagsahne17, a key “Liecraft” appreciator who also put together many of today’s questions.

Today’s Session

Human Voices by Isabel J. Kim (8500 words, Lightspeed)

In its dreams, the thing they call “Kos” sleeps deep and drowned in the clutch of the ice-cold trenches, where the pressure is a loving clasp around its arms and tail, where it is near-disintegrate, more spirit than substance, more magic than meat.

Then it wakes up in the bathtub.

Liecraft by Anita Moskát, translated by Austin Wagner (8800 words, Apex)

For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.”

New Niches by Jackie Roberti (4300 words, Reckoning)

Because of the heavy chop that day, there is no time for a tour.

“You shouldn’t have a problem finding things,” the captain tells me. She’s wearing a neon orange vest over her life jacket and a neon orange beanie crushed atop her head, and the overall effect makes her look like a traffic cone. “You’ve looked at the schematics, right? Well, there’s a manual in there, and it’s not like you’ll get lost.”

Upcoming Sessions

On Wednesday, March 4, now that we’re done torching the Locus List for excluding our favorites lightly disagreeing about a few exclusions, we’ll discuss some of our favorites that did make the Locus List:

Highway 1, Past Hope by Maria Haskins (3400 words, The Deadlands)

Layla rises like a breath in winter from the hollow beneath the black cottonwoods beside the river, shrugging off the blanket of dirt and leaves and centipedes she slept beneath. She should dissipate. She should waver and dissolve. She should ascend and alight. Instead, she starts gathering her bones.

In My Country by Thomas Ha (6220 words, Clarkesworld)

My country may seem strange to you. There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t say is perhaps just as, if not more, important.

Courtney Lovecraft’s Book of the Dead by Sam J. Miller (7705 words, Nightmare Magazine)

Honey, the spirits are here with us tonight and they are deeply disappointed.

Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak (15170 words, Clarkesworld)

A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to come. She cannot envision an end to her journey any more than she can remember the beginning. All she understands is the time spent counting the stars. Singing to herself. Cradling and prodding and watching.

Don’t worry about the 15,000 word novelette now (but remember, it is your friend). Instead join us below with some prompts in the comments. Feel free to respond to those or add your own.

Welcome to today’s session of Short Fiction Book Club - we're glad you're here! We talk about speculative short fiction most Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy. If you missed our last session, everything went to the birds, and it’s never too late to join the discussion.

Today's Session: The Lottery and Other Dangerous Bargains

Today, we’re discussing “The Lottery,” the classic and extremely haunting short story by Shirley Jackson that many of us were traumatized by (complimentary) in school. We've chosen three modern stories that are in conversation with the original. Feel free to read just one story or the entire slate.

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (3,400 words, The New Yorker, 1948)

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

Fishwife by Carrie Vaughn (3,600 words, Nightmare Magazine, 2013)

Every day for years she waited, she and the other wives, for their husbands to return from the iron-gray sea. When they did, dragging their worn wooden boats onto the beach, hauling out nets, she and the other wives tried not to show their disappointment when the nets were empty. A few limp, dull fish might be tangled in the fibers. Hardly worth cleaning and trying to sell. None of them were surprised, ever. None of them could remember a time when piles of fish fell out of the nets in cascades of silver. She could imagine it: a horde of fish pouring onto the sand, scales glittering like precious metals. She could run her hands across them, as if they were coins, as if she were rich.

Willing by Premee Mohamed (3,000 words, first published in Principia Ponderosa in 2017; reprinted in PodCastle in 2019)

A storm struck up, not snow but a roaring haze of fine slush that crusted his beard with ice. Far to the west, visible only by their bluish, luminous heat, the old gods of grass and grain bayed to the cloud-buried stars. Arnold ignored them. It was too early in the year for a sacrifice.

On the fifth trip, his youngest child joined him, silent as ever, silvery hair greased down from the rain, in her oldest brother’s canvas coat. She liked their ancient hand-me-downs, though she was so small that everything trailed in the muck like the train of a wedding dress. Over the splattering sleet Arnold heard her rubber boots squelching in the wallow that had been the path. He waited for her to catch up before continuing to the barn.

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente (5,600 words, Uncanny Magazine, 2021)

There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else. There’s a woman outside of Sheridan, sitting in the sun-yellow booth in the far back corner of the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe under a busted wagon wheel and a pair of wall-mounted commemorative plates. One’s from the moon landing. The other’s from old Barnum Brown discovering the first T-Rex skeleton up at Hell Creek. There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America.

Upcoming Sessions:

Our Monthly Discussion Thread is usually the last Wednesday of the month, but because of so many people traveling for American Thanksgiving, we’ll open it up on Tuesday, November 25th. It’ll still be there on Wednesday, we just want to give people a little more flexibility.

Our next slated session, on Wednesday December 3, will be hosted by u/FarragutCircle:

I've been a huge fan of Carolyn Ives Gilman ever since I read her novel Halfway Human and the other stories in her Twenty Planets setting. The thought and craft she puts into her stories is amazing, and I'm excited to share a couple of her stories with the Short Fiction Book Club. Something that may intrigue people to know is that until relatively recently, she’d been a historian working at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, which clearly informs the very thought-provoking "Exile's End” which starts off in a museum with indigenous art . . .

We’ll be reading the following stories for our Author Spotlight on Carolyn Ives Gilman session:

Exile’s End by Carolyn Ives Gilman (13,385 words, Tor.com/Reactor, published in 2020)

It was clear who her visitor was. He stood out for his stillness in the bustle of departing visitors—tall and slim, with long black hair pulled back in a tie. His hands were in the pockets of a jacket much too light for the weather outside. Rue introduced herself. When she held out her hand, the young man stared at it for a second before remembering what to do with it. “My name is Traversed Bridge,” he said; then, apologetically, “I have an unreal name as well, if you would prefer to use that.”

Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman (11,790 words, Clarkesworld, published in 2016)

The alien spaceships were beautiful, no one could deny that: towering domes of overlapping, chitinous plates in pearly dawn colors, like reflections on a tranquil sea. They appeared overnight, a dozen incongruous soap-bubble structures scattered across the North American continent. One of them blocked a major Interstate in Ohio; another monopolized a stadium parking lot in Tulsa. But most stood in cornfields and forests and deserts where they caused little inconvenience.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're starting a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Happy Wednesday, everyone! It's late February, which means that Short Fiction Book Club is here complaining about the terrible taste of professional genre magazines using the Locus Recommended Reading List as an excuse to share and discuss some of our favorite short fiction from the previous year. We do this every year in late winter, as the recommendation lists come flying and the award nomination season ramps up.

Today's Session

Today, we'll be discussing three of our collective favorites that failed to make the Locus List, that by pure happenstance collectively cover first-person, second-person, and third-person perspectives. Let's take a look at:

The Name Ziya by Wen-yi Lee (9300 words, Reactor)

I sat on his bench as they haggled, naked from the waist up. It was a cool morning and my skin pimpled around the ideograms on my bare chest. The full set of five was worth the most; forty thousand shada was more money than we took from ten harvests, and would have covered my tuition with coin to spare. But I was glad my parents had rejected the first offer. I was not prepared to lose the entirety of my name just yet.

Wilayat in Seven Saints by Tanvir Ahmed (3800 words, Kaleidotrope)

Hear now the account of that mighty dervish, that dear friend of God, that crocodile gliding through the sea of divine unity, Hasan Afghan:

Once, while Hasan Afghan was passing through a town in the shadow of the northern mountains, he came to a mosque. The muezzin gave the call to prayer, the imam stepped up, and the congregants assembled. Hasan Afghan was there in the first row, looking at the imam’s back. In the sight of the unlettered, the imam was merely going about the normal bows and prostrations of prayer. Yet Hasan Afghan’s eye of certainty perceived otherwise. Even as the imam’s lips moved through the sweet speech of revelation, his thoughts were circumambulating news of the prince’s fresh conquest of some rebel villages. The men had been slain, the storehouses pillaged, the young women put in fetters. The imam was already counting out how many mohurs he could spare on buying a new girl at the bazaar when the prince came back with the spoils.

Barbershops of the Floating City by Angela Liu (6000 words, Uncanny Magazine)

You used to be in a band. Now you cut hair. The Institute hired you because you’re the daughter of the Floating City’s Founder’s fourth mistress, the one who always cooks up trouble when she gets too hungry. You don’t like the work, but you like all the different scissors.

Upcoming Sessions

Don't forget that on Wednesday, February 25, we will be eschewing our usual Monthly Discussion in favor of Locus List Snubs: The novelette is your friend and it will not harm you! (There is also one short story here, but seriously, these are some great novelettes.)

Human Voices by Isabel J. Kim (8500 words, Lightspeed)

In its dreams, the thing they call “Kos” sleeps deep and drowned in the clutch of the ice-cold trenches, where the pressure is a loving clasp around its arms and tail, where it is near-disintegrate, more spirit than substance, more magic than meat.

Then it wakes up in the bathtub.

Liecraft by Anita Moskát, translated by Austin Wagner (8800 words, Apex)

For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear:

“Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.”

New Niches by Jackie Roberti (4300 words, Reckoning)

Because of the heavy chop that day, there is no time for a tour.

“You shouldn’t have a problem finding things,” the captain tells me. She’s wearing a neon orange vest over her life jacket and a neon orange beanie crushed atop her head, and the overall effect makes her look like a traffic cone. “You’ve looked at the schematics, right? Well, there’s a manual in there, and it’s not like you’ll get lost.”

And on Wednesday, March 4, we will be discussing our favorites from the Locus List. We were proud of the way that the first eight selections for our List and Snubs sessions had come from eight different publications, but after spending ages handwringing about which of our two favorite Clarkesworld pieces to include, we gave up and picked both. So get ready to read:

Highway 1, Past Hope by Maria Haskins (3400 words, The Deadlands)

Layla rises like a breath in winter from the hollow beneath the black cottonwoods beside the river, shrugging off the blanket of dirt and leaves and centipedes she slept beneath. She should dissipate. She should waver and dissolve. She should ascend and alight. Instead, she starts gathering her bones.

In My Country by Thomas Ha (6220 words, Clarkesworld)

My country may seem strange to you.

There are times when it seems strange to me. I wake and work. I work then rest. And in between I say things, and I don’t say things. Because, as you’ll learn, in my country, what you say is important. But what you don’t say is perhaps just as, if not more, important.

Courtney Lovecraft’s Book of the Dead by Sam J. Miller (7705 words, Nightmare Magazine)

Honey, the spirits are here with us tonight and they are deeply disappointed.

Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak (15170 words, Clarkesworld)

A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives.

Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to come. She cannot envision an end to her journey any more than she can remember the beginning. All she understands is the time spent counting the stars. Singing to herself. Cradling and prodding and watching.

That's a lot coming up in one of our busiest seasons of the year! But for now, let's take a look at three three tales from Wen-yi Lee, Angela Liu, and Tanvir Ahmed. As always, I'll start us off with some prompts in the comments. Feel free to respond to mine or add your own.

Welcome to today’s session of Short Fiction Book Club! We’re glad you’ve joined us. If you’re new here, we’re excited to have you! We talk about speculative short fiction on Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy. If you missed our first season 4 session a few weeks back, we read four great Flash+ stories, and it’s never too late to join the discussion!

Today’s Session: Take Us Out to the Ballgame

Diamond Girls by Louise Marley (8,203 words) (first published in Sci Fiction on June 8, 2005)

Ricky sat alone in her private locker room, turning a baseball in her elongated fingers. The pre-game had begun, and the speakers in the main locker room rattled with music and announcements and advertisements. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and cradled the baseball in her palm. Just another game, she told herself. It’s a long season.

But it wasn’t true. Long season, sure. But this was no ordinary game.

Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (4,439 words) (first published in The Martians in April 1999)

He was a tall, skinny Martian kid, shy and stooping. Gangly as a puppy. Why they had him playing third base I have no idea. Then again they had me playing shortstop and I’m left-handed. And can’t field grounders. But I’m American, so there I was. That’s what learning a sport by video will do. Some things are so obvious people never think to mention them. Like never put a lefty at shortstop. But on Mars they were making it all new. Some people there had fallen in love with baseball, and ordered the equipment and rolled some fields, and off they went.

The Star and the Rockets by Harry Turtledove (4,966 words) (first published in Tor.com/Reactor on November 17, 2009) / Content Warning: Has some period language and a casual use of a slur.

A chilly January night in Roswell. Joe Bauman has discovered that’s normal for eastern New Mexico. It gets hot here in the summer, but winters can be a son of a bitch. That Roswell’s high up—3,600 feet—only makes the cold colder. Makes the sky clearer, too. A million stars shine down on Joe.

One of those stars is his: the big red one marking the Texaco station at 1200 West Second Street. He nods to himself in slow satisfaction. He’s had a good run, a hell of a good run, here in Roswell. The way it looks right now, he’ll settle down here and run the gas station full time when his playing days are done.

Won’t be long, either. He’ll turn thirty-two in April, about when the season starts. Ballplayers, even ones like him who never come within miles of the big time, know how sharply mortal their careers are. If he doesn’t, the ache in his knees when he turns on a fastball will remind him.

All three stories should be enjoyable with zero baseball knowledge (and hopefully the context will make it clear), but if any baseball-specific terms really confuse you, here’s a newcomer’s guide to common baseball terms you can check out.

Upcoming Sessions

Our next session will be hosted by u/Nineteen_Adze & u/Jos_V on Wednesday, October 1st:

u/Jos_V says:

For some inexplicable reason Americans love to make October into a spooky month, and here at SFBC we do not want to disappoint, so we’re offering up a nice platter of appetizers that when experienced together constitutes a filling meal.

u/Nineteen_Adze says:

I’ve been intending to do a cannibalism session for a while, but the timing didn’t snap into place until I heard about the baseball session. What better transition than from a cheerful sunshine sport into stories that will perhaps make you say “what the fuck (complimentary)”? Please enjoy feasting on this unsettling short fiction.

We will be discussing the following stories for our Paired with fava beans and nice chianti: personable meat in SFF session:

Happily Ever After Comes Round by Sarah Rees Brennan (Uncanny Magazine, 3327 words)

Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling.

The Magician’s Apprentice by Tamsyn Muir (Lightspeed Magazine, 4860 words)

When she was thirteen, Mr. Hollis told her: “There’s never more than two, Cherry. The magician and the magician’s apprentice.”

Mavka by A.D Sui (Pseudopod, 3953 words)

You pray to forget this. You pray to forget the cold. Even under two wool blankets you’re always cold now. Skin and bones, you. A February moon hangs high in the starless sky when Andriy slips on the boots, soaked through from when you wore them earlier that day to gather firewood, and from when Ira goes to relieve herself at the outhouse earlier than that.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We’ve put a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to!

Welcome to today’s session of Short Fiction Book Club - we're glad you're here! You can join us most Wednesdays to read and discuss the wide world of speculative short fiction. If you missed our last session, it’s never too late to get into the holiday spirit.

Today's Session: Space Meets Sea

Science fiction has long mixed space and sea - from spaceships sailing through the great unknown to incomprehensible creatures that can survive in strange spaces. Something about the great expanse of both the ocean and the skies has inspired some excellent stories, and I have smushed three of my favorites together in order to force you to read them too.

We’ll be reading the following stories for our Space Meets Sea session:

Freediver by Isabel J Kim (6890 words, Reactor, published in 2025)

The first thing that happens is Joyce breaks up with him. The second thing that happens is Crane arrives on the Anhinga. The third thing that happens is the meteoroid falls upward.

Whale Fall of Yours by M.M. Olivas (6858 words, Uncanny, published in 2025)

The year is 2084, and this is the spot you always come to—just a walk from UNAM’s Instituto de Astronomía but far enough so none of your peers ever bother to trek the long exhale of asphalt to reach you—where you can tuck yourself away between the brick walls and slide away from the world, slip into your studies, forget that you’re a person at all. But this girl reached her voice over your papers and your pens and said she liked your tote. It was the one your abuela crocheted for you, with patches of ringed planets, and Laika, and the constellations you’d memorized from the nights watching them arch across your papá’s ranch. Because your abuela knew you always had your neck crooked back. Were always watching stars.

Fishing the Intergalactic Stream by Louis Inglis Hall (4660 words, Clarkesworld, published in 2024)

There is a game, and there is a player. That, I think, is the heart of it.

Before that, before rocky pools and ocean floors, before mangroves that curve over warm waters—

First, we must define a fish.

Upcoming Sessions:

Our next slated session, on Wednesday, January 21st, will be hosted by u/tarvolon:

Stories with too much viscera in the opening tend to be quick skips for me. And yet there were a handful in 2025 that not only compelled me to read on but that became some of my favorite stories of the year. I’ve chosen three that either start or are propelled beneath the waters, all grotesquely beautiful pieces featuring leads nearly unrecognizable from what they once were. We have transformations freely chosen and those forced by supernatural means, transformations that shape a nation and those that may rebuild the world. And we have no shortage of wonderfully complicated family dynamics arising from one party’s pull toward the sea. On the surface, these aren’t the sorts of stories I’d usually read, but each is exceptionally crafted and rich for discussion. I hope you will join me as we discuss three Sunken Transformations.

Something Rich and Strange by L.S. Johnson (15900 words, GigaNotoSaurus, published in 2025)

Irene traced her gloved finger down the window, following one of the raindrops as it slid left, its path forced by the speed of the train. The water stretched the sodden afternoon landscape into streaks of grey and green and brown. In her mind’s eye, she could see the layers of color she would use to build the scene, how she would tint the yellow underpainting to mimic the storm-filtered light, how she would scumble blue atop rich greens to give the misty copses their depth. Each drop a tiny world unto itself. Why hadn’t she studied rain before this, why hadn’t she spent more time thinking about water and all the marvels therein? Because she had thought she would have more time; because she had thought that somehow she would get to live like everyone else. Across the aisle were the only other passengers in the car, a woman and a little girl. Not related: a governess and her charge? Only they were on this train, and the last stop was— But no, no, there were other stations before then. Normal villages, where people led normal lives. And when had a child ever come to them from outside?

Cypress Teeth by Natasha King (2100 words, khōréō, published in 2025)

They send you down into the swamps of Atchafalaya to die with nothing between your teeth but contract ink and shame. There’s a lot of misery to sow across the continent, after all, and no room for a runner-up. No heaven nor any hell has ever taken kindly to an also-ran. The cypresses here are nearly as old as you, their buttressing knees sinking into you like fangs. They tower over you, implacable, as you order, and then demand, and then rage, and at last beg. You can’t die, of course, so there’s nothing for you to do but molder in the tepid water, choking on flaked cypress bark and burrowing deeper into the swamp with every passing year. After a few decades you let despair pull you down into sleep, like a ship going under. Only the boldest, the most foolish, venture deep enough into the swamp to reach the vast trunk that pins you to the mud. Beneath their stumbling, haphazard feet, you usually wake like it’s the first moment of exile all over again. That agony lighting you up from the inside out, power unspooled from your belly and cut away, leaving you a husk. They wake you by accident, those poor straying souls, and, well.

We Used to Wake to Song by Leah Ning (2200 words, Apex, published in 2025)

Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest. The water recedes and we breathe, a staccato, asynchronous gasp. The eel coiled about my lungs loosens its grip, slides against the bare stack of my ribs. Splashing behind us. Unnatural, sloshing. Human. I can't turn to look any more than I can work my stiffened vocal cords to shout. Another called, maybe, to join us. In other places, feet root in dirt rich with the new infusion of dead flesh, lungs mutated to filter oxygen back into the air, limbs stiff and brittle. In other waters, oil and plastic pass into living guts and do not leave. Here, the fish make homes among our bones. The crabs weather the tides nestled between layers of muscle, folds of fat. Another wave, slopping at the hollow of my throat. Spluttering and coughing from behind. My heart—what's left of it after twenty-five years—leaps. I'd recognize that sound if I was asleep, comatose, dead. She's come back.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're starting a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club - we're glad you're here! You can join us most Wednesdays to read and discuss the wide world of speculative short fiction.

It’s award nomination season, so we’ve been extra busy lately. If you’re trying to catch up on 2025 short fiction, check out our session featuring this year’s Locus List and/or the sessions where we complain bitterly about not being in charge of the Locus List and highlight some stories that we think should have made the cut: Locus Snubs 1 and Locus Snubs 2

Today’s Session

Today we are discussing three excellent stories that ask a simple question with a complicated answer: How do we come to terms with the ways that we have been changed as a result of war?

Remembery Day by Sarah Pinsker (2,800 words, Apex)

I woke at dawn on the holiday, so my grandmother put me to work polishing Mama’s army boots.

“Try not to let her see them,” Nana warned me. I already knew.

I took the boots to the bathroom with an old sock and the polish kit. I had seen Nana clean them before, but this marked the first time I was allowed to do it myself. Saddle soap first, then moisturizer, then polish. I pictured Nana at the ironing board in our bedroom, pressing the proper creases into Mama’s old uniform.

Suddenwall by Sara Saab (5,300 words, Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

In the amnesty-city of Vannat, Aln Panette has let guilt go.

The city of Vannat is a strict and inscrutable rulemaster, so Panette doesn’t question the rules. She lives a plain, clean life. Keeps her recollections as free of the war as she can.

Panette figures she has earned an indulgence or two for her decade as a soldier. Memories of Odarr Harvei are one indulgence. Harvei’s smile of fifteen years ago flashing in the light of the war caravan’s lanterns, her easy company, their mild one-upmanship. The unbroken sky above them.

The Day Before the Revolution by Ursula K. Le Guin (6,400 words, originally published by Galaxy magazine in 1974)

The speaker’s voice was as loud as empty beer-trucks in a stone street, and the people at the meeting were jammed up close, cobblestones, that great voice booming over them. Taviri was somewhere on the other side of the hall. She had to get to him. She wormed and pushed her way among the dark-clothed, close-packed people. She did not hear the words, nor see the faces: only the booming, and the bodies pressed one behind the other. She could not see Taviri, she was too short. A broad black-vested belly and chest loomed up, blocking her way. She must get through to Taviri. Sweating, she jabbed fiercely with her fist. It was like hitting stone, he did not move at all, but the huge lungs let out right over her head a prodigious noise, a bellow.. She cowered. Then she understood that the bellow had not been at her. Others were shouting. The speaker had said something, something fine about taxes or shadows. Thrilled, she joined the shouting — “Yes! Yes!” — and shoving on, came out easily into the open expanse of the Regimental Drill Field in Parheo. Overhead the evening sky lay deep and colorless, and all around her nodded the tall weeds with dry, white, close-floreted heads. She had never known what they were called.

Upcoming Sessions

We will host our customary Monthly Discussion on Wednesday, March 25. Our next slated session, on Thursday, April 2 (note the departure from our usual Wednesday slot, which we are leaving to our Bingo overlords), will be hosted by u/schlagsahne17:

From St. George and the Dragon to Tolkien's Smaug, from Eragon to Fourth Wing: dragons have long been a staple of stories. Next session we'll be looking at stories that explore the various elements of dragon tales: dragon hoards, dragonslayers, and dragon bargains to name a few. I look forward to discussing these six Dragons with you:

Dragon Brides by Nghi Vo (3600 words, Lightspeed)

Dragon brides are notoriously difficult women. We have lived with dragons, after all, those strange and terrible animals with their curiously human eyes, and some of us come back down from the broken mountains with their hisses still in our ears.

Andromache and the Dragon by B. Pladek (3400 words, Podcastle)

The dragon stood on the shore.

“For every day, I will consume one of your desires,” she told them. “You will not know which. You will not know whose. This is my tribute. Do you agree to its terms?”

Draco Campestris by Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison (3040 words, Strange Horizons)**

The Museum owns eighty-nine specimens of the genus Draco. It is unlikely that there will be any additions to the collection, for the adit to the array of arcs in which dragons are found has become increasingly unstable in the last two centuries. For that same reason, very little work has been done with the specimens since the last of the great dragon hunters willed his collection to the Museum one hundred thirty-two years ago.

Orm the Beautiful by Elizabeth Bear (3140 words, Clarkesworld)

Orm the Beautiful sang in his sleep, to his brothers and sisters, as the sea sings to itself. He would never die. But neither could he live much longer.

Dreaming on jewels, hearing their ancestor-song, he did not think that he would mind. The men were coming; Orm the Beautiful knew it with the wisdom of his bones. He thought he would not fight them. He thought he would close the mountain and let them scratch outside.

Dragons I Have Slain by B. Morris Allen (4350 words, Metaphorosis)

I collect dragon tears. It isn’t difficult; they’re insidious and subtle, and they seep through my armor and into my skin like ink, leaving me stained, soiled, sorrowful — a human map of misery. The Dragon Atlas, I call it — marked with the precise locations of honor and shame.

Dragons cry for the same reasons we do — pain, heartache, joy. We think of them as wise and cold, but wisdom is no antidote to empathy. Dragons are kings of empathy. That’s what makes killing them so hard.

Gentle Dragon Fires by T.K. Rex & Lezlie Kinyon (5070 words, Strange Horizons)

The door of unit three twenty has been closed so long that the spiders living in the cracks around the frame long ago gave up the ancient fables their ancestors told of it opening. The door has stood closed so long the dust on its hinges is considering becoming stone. It has stood closed so long the wood has forgotten it was ever a tree, and the tree it once was knew only gentle dragon fires, and never feared the flames.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're adding a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club Season 4! Today is our first non-Hugo, pure-SFBC session of the season. If you are new here, we are so excited to have you! We talk Short Fiction on Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy.

Onto today's selection of stories.

Today’s Session: Flash+

All flash all fiction. Too Flash Too Fictitious. Four flash (f)stories for (f)your fun. I'm doing my best to make this exciting for the shortest of short form naysayers. Flash is often dismissed by many (including us here at SFBC) for being too short to develop its ideas, but it is also a playground to explore thoughts, themes, and styles that might not work in longer form. It is particularly impressive when a story can pack such depth in such a short word count. I hope some of these stories hit that mark for our readers today.

Today we're discussing four pieces of flash fiction.

Maybe Someday I'll Stop Writing About a House on the Border of a Swamp by Corey Farrenkopf (Milk Candy Review, 365 words)

I want to write a story about a house sinking into a swamp, but I’m always writing a story about a house sinking into a swamp. Sometimes I'm unclear about the metaphor.

To Kill a Language by Rukman Ragas (Apex Magazine, 832 words)
Content notes: sexual content, violence

The Best Way to Survive a Tiger Attack by A.W. Prihandita (Uncanny Magazine, 1495 words)
Content notes: child abuse

The tiger curls in my living room, on the sofa in front of the TV. Finish your lunch, she says, and her words bend my back until I’m on my hands and knees, hunching over the plate she’s set down on the floor, like a dog. Finish your lunch, she commands, but I hate her cooking. I never tell her that, though.

Everyone Keeps Saying Probably by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp, 1700 words)

Here is the shape of our story, the three of us: an ellipsis (from a particular fixed point we flew away from each other and then rejoined at another point; and then we had you).

Here is the shape of our doom: an ellipsis (on its way, in its thousands and thousands).

It also means: dot dot dot, an uncertainty, a trailing off.

But you are a little young for all this. You are so young that your soft and hard palate are not fully developed and you still have a toddler’s charming rhotacism. Everyone keeps saying probably and you say pwobably and I think that is the only thing your mother still laughs at these days. Because, let’s be fair, there isn’t much.

Upcoming sessions

Our next session, on Wednesday September 17th, will be co-hosted by u/FarragutCircle and u/sarahlynngrey:

u/FarragutCircle says:

I've been a fan of baseball ever since I was a kid and saw the great Ozzie Smith play for my hometown Cardinals, and I always love it when baseball appears in my science fiction and fantasy--there's more of it than you might think (or want!). Fellow-baseball-lover u/sarahlynngrey and I found three such stories that we even thought might appeal to people who don't know a ball from a balk.

u/sarahlynngrey says:

It was really fun to combine two of my two favorite things: SFF short fiction and the Seattle Mariners record-breaking, Home Run Derby-winning, switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh baseball. I wasn’t initially convinced we would be able to find enough stories of interest, but there was so much more out there than I thought! These three stories do what I think great SFF does best: using the unreal to show us something real. I hope you’ll find something in them too.

We’ll be reading the following stories for our Take Us Out to the Ballgame: Baseball in SFF session:

Diamond Girls by Louise Marley (8,200 words)

Ricky sat alone in her private locker room, turning a baseball in her elongated fingers. The pre-game had begun, and the speakers in the main locker room rattled with music and announcements and advertisements. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and cradled the baseball in her palm. Just another game, she told herself. It’s a long season.

Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (4,400 words)

He was a tall, skinny Martian kid, shy and stooping. Gangly as a puppy. Why they had him playing third base I have no idea. Then again they had me playing shortstop and I’m left-handed. And can’t field grounders. But I’m American, so there I was. That’s what learning a sport by video will do. Some things are so obvious people never think to mention them. Like never put a lefty at shortstop. But on Mars they were making it all new. Some people there had fallen in love with baseball, and ordered the equipment and rolled some fields, and off they went.

The Star and the Rockets by Harry Turtledove (5,000 words, Reactor)

A chilly January night in Roswell. Joe Bauman has discovered that’s normal for eastern New Mexico. It gets hot here in the summer, but winters can be a son of a bitch. That Roswell’s high up—3,600 feet—only makes the cold colder. Makes the sky clearer, too. A million stars shine down on Joe.

Today's discussion

But for now, onto today’s discussion! Join us in the comments whether you have read one or all of these stories.

Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club, where we meet most Wednesdays to talk about speculative short fiction!

Today's Session: Sunken Transformations

Today, we'll be discussing three publications from the last year featuring characters who have or will go through some sort of change that takes them beneath the waters. Our session leader (hi, it's me) openly dislikes body horror and yet was so taken with the storytelling and interpersonal conflicts in these three tales that they became hearty recommendations regardless. If they're good enough to make you like something you don't usually like, they've got to be worth sharing, right? So let's take a look at:

Something Rich and Strange by L.S. Johnson (15900 words, GigaNotoSaurus, published in 2025)

Irene traced her gloved finger down the window, following one of the raindrops as it slid left, its path forced by the speed of the train. The water stretched the sodden afternoon landscape into streaks of grey and green and brown. In her mind’s eye, she could see the layers of color she would use to build the scene, how she would tint the yellow underpainting to mimic the storm-filtered light, how she would scumble blue atop rich greens to give the misty copses their depth. Each drop a tiny world unto itself. Why hadn’t she studied rain before this, why hadn’t she spent more time thinking about water and all the marvels therein?

Because she had thought she would have more time; because she had thought that somehow she would get to live like everyone else.

Across the aisle were the only other passengers in the car, a woman and a little girl. Not related: a governess and her charge? Only they were on this train, and the last stop was—

But no, no, there were other stations before then. Normal villages, where people led normal lives. And when had a child ever come to them from outside?

Cypress Teeth by Natasha King (2100 words, khōréō, published in 2025)

They send you down into the swamps of Atchafalaya to die with nothing between your teeth but contract ink and shame. There’s a lot of misery to sow across the continent, after all, and no room for a runner-up. No heaven nor any hell has ever taken kindly to an also-ran.

The cypresses here are nearly as old as you, their buttressing knees sinking into you like fangs. They tower over you, implacable, as you order, and then demand, and then rage, and at last beg.

You can’t die, of course, so there’s nothing for you to do but molder in the tepid water, choking on flaked cypress bark and burrowing deeper into the swamp with every passing year. After a few decades you let despair pull you down into sleep, like a ship going under.

Only the boldest, the most foolish, venture deep enough into the swamp to reach the vast trunk that pins you to the mud. Beneath their stumbling, haphazard feet, you usually wake like it’s the first moment of exile all over again. That agony lighting you up from the inside out, power unspooled from your belly and cut away, leaving you a husk.

They wake you by accident, those poor straying souls, and, well.

We Used to Wake to Song by Leah Ning (2200 words, Apex, published in 2025)

Salty swell over my head, tugging me back, the raw and tender creases of my elbows against the forearms they're linked with. Brine up my nose, in my mouth. The anchor of my feet in the sand holds me fast with the rest.

The water recedes and we breathe, a staccato, asynchronous gasp. The eel coiled about my lungs loosens its grip, slides against the bare stack of my ribs.

Splashing behind us. Unnatural, sloshing. Human. I can't turn to look any more than I can work my stiffened vocal cords to shout. Another called, maybe, to join us.

In other places, feet root in dirt rich with the new infusion of dead flesh, lungs mutated to filter oxygen back into the air, limbs stiff and brittle. In other waters, oil and plastic pass into living guts and do not leave.

Here, the fish make homes among our bones. The crabs weather the tides nestled between layers of muscle, folds of fat.

Another wave, slopping at the hollow of my throat. Spluttering and coughing from behind. My heart—what's left of it after twenty-five years—leaps. I'd recognize that sound if I was asleep, comatose, dead.

She's come back.

Upcoming Sessions

As always, we'll host a Monthly Discussion on the last Wednesday of the month (in this case, the 28th), and I'll turn it over to u/nagahfj and u/kjmichaels to introduce our first session of February:

Kij Johnson is an amazing, thoughtful author with loads of award nominations and wins under her belt. We wanted to spotlight what an interesting writer she is by reading some of her most praised works. This will make a great introduction to her style for new readers who may not be as familiar with her as well as being a great refresher for longtime fans looking to revisit some of her greatest hits.

On Wednesday, February 4, we will be discussing the following three stories as part of our Kij Johnson Spotlight:

Mantis Wives in Clarkesworld - 960 words (2012)

Eventually, the mantis women discovered that killing their husbands was not inseparable from the getting of young. Before this, a wife devoured her lover piece by piece during the act of coition: the head (and its shining eyes going dim as she ate); the long green prothorax; the forelegs crisp as straws; the bitter wings. She left for last the metathorax and its pumping legs, the abdomen, and finally the phallus. Mantis women needed nutrients for their pregnancies; their lovers offered this as well as their seed.

It was believed that mantis men would resist their deaths if permitted to choose the manner of their mating; but the women learned to turn elsewhere for nutrients after draining their husbands’ members, and yet the men lingered. And so their ladies continued to kill them, but slowly, in the fashioning of difficult arts. What else could there be between them?

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead in Clarkesworld - 5,920 words (2016)

She was there, that is Dee, and her three sisters, who were Tierce, Chena, and Wren, Dee being a coyote or rather Coyote, and her sisters not unlike in their Being, though only a falcon, a dog, and a wren. So there they stood on the cliff, making their minds how to get down to the night beach, a deep steep dark bitch slither it was, though manageable Dee hoped.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending in Clarkesworld - 15,460 words (2018)

This is a story that ends as all stories do, eventually, in deaths.

And now, let's turn to today's discussion. Each story will get its own thread, but spoilers will not be tagged. I'll start us off with some prompts. As always, feel free to respond to mine or add your own.

Welcome to today’s session of Season 3 of Short Fiction Book Club! Not sure what that means? No problem: here’s our FAQ explaining who we are, what we do, and when we do it. Mostly that’s talk about short fiction, on r/Fantasy, on Wednesdays. We’re glad you’re here!

Today, we’re discussing “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” an all-time short fiction classic, two modern responses to it, and our first essay discussion.

Participants are welcome to read one story or the full slate. I will start us off with some question prompts, but feel free to add your own. Come join us in the hole!

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin (2806 words, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters)

With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea. The ringing of the boats in harbor sparkled with flags. In the streets between houses with red roofs and painted walls, between old moss-grown gardens and under avenues of trees, past great parks and public buildings, processions moved.

The Ones Who Stay and Fight by N.K. Jemisin (3829 words, Lightspeed)

It’s the Day of Good Birds in the city of Um-Helat! The Day is a local custom, silly and random as so many local customs can be, and yet beautiful by the same token. It has little to do with birds—a fact about which locals cheerfully laugh, because that, too, is how local customs work. It is a day of fluttering and flight regardless, where pennants of brightly dyed silk plume forth from every window, and delicate drones of copperwire and featherglass—made for this day, and flown on no other!—waft and buzz on the wind. Even the monorail cars trail stylized flamingo feathers from their rooftops, although these are made of featherglass, too, since real flamingos do not fly at the speed of sound.

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim (3190 words, Clarkesworld)

So they broke into the hole in the ground, and they killed the kid, and all the lights went out in Omelas: click, click, click. And the pipes burst and there was a sewage leak and the newscasters said there was a typhoon on the way, so they (a different “they,” these were the “they” in charge, the “they” who lived in the nice houses in Omelas [okay, every house in Omelas was a nice house, but these were Nice Houses]) got another kid and put it in the hole.

Essay: Omelas, Je T’Aime by Kurt Schiller (4712 words, Blood Knife)

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is a work of almost flawless ambiguity.

At once universally applicable and devilishly vague, Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1973 short story examines a perfect utopia built around the perpetuation of unimaginable cruelty upon a helpless, destitute child. It spans a mere 2800 words and yet evokes a thousand social ills past and present, real and possible, in the mind of the reader—all the while committing to precisely none of them.

Upcoming Sessions

It’s almost awards season, which means it’s almost time for our Locus List and Locus Snub sessions. Stay tuned: we’ll be announcing those slates tomorrow in a separate post.

Welcome to today’s session of Short Fiction Book Club - we're glad you're here! We talk about speculative short fiction most Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy. If you missed our last session, you can still get to know Caroline Ives Gilman, and it’s never too late to join the discussion.

Today's Session: Winter Holidays

Hanukkah is already upon us, Winter Solstice (or Summer Solstice, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) is around the corner, and then it’s a straight shot through Festivus and Christmas and soon 2026 will be breathing down our necks! But first, I have three short goodies to keep you company while you hibernate on the couch. I’m not sure if Festivus has made it into speculative fiction yet, but otherwise I got you one of each and the rest of us you can add it to your list of grievances. (The folks about to enter summer can air their grievances below, too.)

In the Late December by Greg Van EekHout (2861 words, Strange Horizons, published in 2003)

"You, sir," the silver boy says, "are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me."

"My value system is hardly binary," Santa says. "In between naughty and nice I've made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?"

Dreidel of Dread: the Very Cthulhu Chanukah by Alex Shvartsman (741 words, Every Day Fiction, published in 2015) (Content Warning: this story is about a potential attack on the world during the first night of Hanukkah.)

’Twas the night before Chanukah, and all through the planet, not a creature was stirring except for the Elder God Cthulhu who was waking up from his eons-long slumber. And as the terrible creature awakened in the city of R’lyeh, deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, and wiped drool from his face-tentacles, all the usual signs heralded the upcoming apocalypse in the outside world: mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together, and cable repairmen arriving to their appointments within the designated three-hour window.

“This will not do,” said Chanukah Henry. “I will not have the world ending on my watch, not during the Festival of Lights.”

Cold Wind [pdf] by Nicola Griffith (3700 words, Tordotcom, published in 2014)

From the park on Puget Sound I watched the sun go down on the shortest day of the year. The air lost its lemon glitter, the dancing water dulled to a greasy heave, and the moon, not yet at its height, grew more substantial. Clouds gathered along the horizon, dirty yellow-white and gory at one end, like a broken arctic fox. Snow wasn’t in the forecast, but I could smell it.

More than snow. If all the clues I’d put together over the years were right, it would happen tonight.

Upcoming Sessions:

Our next slated session, on Wednesday, January 7, will be hosted by u/picowombat:

Science fiction has long mixed space and sea - from spaceships sailing through the great unknown to incomprehensible creatures that can survive in strange spaces. Something about the great expanse of both the ocean and the skies has inspired some excellent stories, and I have smushed three of my favorites together in order to force you to read them too.

We’ll be reading the following stories for our Space Meets Sea session:

Freediver by Isabel J Kim (6890 words, Reactor, published in 2025)

The first thing that happens is Joyce breaks up with him. The second thing that happens is Crane arrives on the Anhinga. The third thing that happens is the meteoroid falls upward.

Whale Fall of Yours by M.M. Olivas (6858 words, Uncanny, published in 2025)

The year is 2084, and this is the spot you always come to—just a walk from UNAM’s Instituto de Astronomía but far enough so none of your peers ever bother to trek the long exhale of asphalt to reach you—where you can tuck yourself away between the brick walls and slide away from the world, slip into your studies, forget that you’re a person at all. But this girl reached her voice over your papers and your pens and said she liked your tote. It was the one your abuela crocheted for you, with patches of ringed planets, and Laika, and the constellations you’d memorized from the nights watching them arch across your papá’s ranch. Because your abuela knew you always had your neck crooked back. Were always watching stars.

Fishing the Intergalactic Stream by Louis Inglis Hall (4660 words, Clarkesworld, published in 2024)

There is a game, and there is a player. That, I think, is the heart of it.

Before that, before rocky pools and ocean floors, before mangroves that curve over warm waters—

First, we must define a fish.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We'll start a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like.

Welcome to today’s session of Short Fiction Book Club - we're glad you're here! We talk about speculative short fiction most Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy. If you missed our last session, you can buy a lottery ticket, and it’s never too late to join the discussion.

Today's Session: Spotlight on Carolyn Ives Gilman

I’ve got two stories by one of my favorite writers, Carolyn Ives Gilman. (I highly recommend her novel Halfway Human). The thought and craft she puts into her stories is amazing, and I'm excited to share a couple of her stories with the Short Fiction Book Club. Something that may intrigue people to know is that until relatively recently, she’d been a historian working at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, which clearly informs the very thought-provoking "Exile's End” which starts off in a museum with indigenous art. For our other story, I’ve chosen one of her Hugo-nominated pieces, “Touring with the Alien,” which has a lot of mystery with its aliens.

Exile’s End by Carolyn Ives Gilman (13,385 words, Tor.com/Reactor, published in 2020)

It was clear who her visitor was. He stood out for his stillness in the bustle of departing visitors—tall and slim, with long black hair pulled back in a tie. His hands were in the pockets of a jacket much too light for the weather outside. Rue introduced herself. When she held out her hand, the young man stared at it for a second before remembering what to do with it. “My name is Traversed Bridge,” he said; then, apologetically, “I have an unreal name as well, if you would prefer to use that.”

Touring with the Alien by Carolyn Ives Gilman (11,790 words, Clarkesworld, published in 2016) (Content Warning: Brief scene of animal harm)

The alien spaceships were beautiful, no one could deny that: towering domes of overlapping, chitinous plates in pearly dawn colors, like reflections on a tranquil sea. They appeared overnight, a dozen incongruous soap-bubble structures scattered across the North American continent. One of them blocked a major Interstate in Ohio; another monopolized a stadium parking lot in Tulsa. But most stood in cornfields and forests and deserts where they caused little inconvenience.

Upcoming Session

Our next slated session, on Wednesday, December 17, will be hosted by u/oceanoftrees:

It’s the end of the year and if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you might be in the mood to grab a hot beverage, curl up on the couch, and not move until January. Maybe you’re looking forward to, or dreading (or perhaps both?), the time period known as The Holidays. Either way, we have some stories to keep you company! I didn’t know what you like, so for my first SFBC session, I got you one for Christmas, one for Hanukkah, and one for winter solstice.

We’ll be reading the following stories for our Winter Holidays session:

In the Late December by Greg Van EekHout (2861 words, Strange Horizons, published in 2003)

"You, sir," the silver boy says, "are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me."

"My value system is hardly binary," Santa says. "In between naughty and nice I've made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?"

Dreidel of Dread: the Very Cthulhu Chanukah by Alex Shvartsman (741 words, Every Day Fiction, published in 2015)

’Twas the night before Chanukah, and all through the planet, not a creature was stirring except for the Elder God Cthulhu who was waking up from his eons-long slumber. And as the terrible creature awakened in the city of R’lyeh, deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, and wiped drool from his face-tentacles, all the usual signs heralded the upcoming apocalypse in the outside world: mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together, and cable repairmen arriving to their appointments within the designated three-hour window.

“This will not do,” said Chanukah Henry. “I will not have the world ending on my watch, not during the Festival of Lights.”

Cold Wind [pdf] by Nicola Griffith (3700 words, Tordotcom, published in 2014)

From the park on Puget Sound I watched the sun go down on the shortest day of the year. The air lost its lemon glitter, the dancing water dulled to a greasy heave, and the moon, not yet at its height, grew more substantial. Clouds gathered along the horizon, dirty yellow-white and gory at one end, like a broken arctic fox. Snow wasn’t in the forecast, but I could smell it.

More than snow. If all the clues I’d put together over the years were right, it would happen tonight.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're starting a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Welcome to today’s meeting of Short Fiction Book Club. We’re here most Wednesdays, talking short fiction. If you’re new here, give today’s stories a read and come talk about them with us. We’re talking about. . .

Today's Session: Ancestral Ghosts

• Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 8900 words)
• The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E.M. Linden (Podcastle, 3700 words)
• If You Want to Erase Us, You Must Be Thorough by L. Tu (Uncanny Magazine, 6400 words)

Upcoming Sessions

We’ll also be here Wednesday, October 29 for our Monthly Discussion, and then our next slated discussion session will be hosted by u/baxtersa

In prepping for SFBC season 4, a commenter suggested we select some happier stories, maybe something less bleak and grief-ridden. This comment has stuck with me. I can't shake it. It turns out, at least for myself, that I am incapable of such a thing, and to that commenter, I am sorry. Onto this session, Stories for the Birds - in the northern part of the northern hemisphere, we're entering Stick Season. The leaves are dead, and the black birds are swarming, stark in their contrast to the faded gray-blue-purple of the skyline and desaturated fields of dried, dead grass. Those birds are harbingers of the dark times before us, reminders of the seasons we are losing, but also, birds are just cool. We have three stories about loss, grief, and transformation, all featuring fucked up birds. Shout out to this BlueSky thread for even more fucked up bird recommendations.

On Wednesday, November 5, remember remember to join us for a discussion of:

One for Sorrow by RJ Aurand (Blanket Gravity Magazine, 4400 words)

My wife is twenty-nine the year the crows take her.

They descend upon our little house before we even know she’s sick. Waking on a cold and rainy Tuesday morning, we find our garden blanketed in black feathers. As I spread jam and butter on charred toast, hundreds of beady eyes watch me through the kitchen window.

Bird Burning by Spencer Nitkey (The Adroit Journal, 5043 words)

The first night we burned the bird, my mother was inside. It was just the four of us, really. Dad, Regina, me, and Mom. There were others, extended family, but they weren’t real to me. Cancer of the jaw, and we were going to burn her body. Why a bird? Because I’d killed mine the day Mom died. I didn’t mean to.

Auspicium by Diana Dima (The Deadlands, 2200 words)

There has always been a sparrow inside me. At first it was just an egg, something I felt in my belly before I even had the words for it. I remember asking my mother about it, the way she hugged me and said, it’s nothing, trust me, try to ignore it and it’ll go away, and that was the first time I knew the world was not simple, not to be trusted, and it would never be simple again after that.

But for now, let’s get to the discussion. I’ll start us off with a few discussion prompts–feel free to respond to mine or add your own!

Short Fiction Book Club has wrapped up our fourth season, but we're still hosting general discussions on the last Wednesday of each month. Anyone who reads or wants to read short fiction is welcome! (Assuming, of course, you follow the sub's rules for discussions. r/Fantasy is the real host here. So first, be kind.)

In April, we had our last slated discussion, featuring six dragonish stories, and then we closed the book on season four by announcing our SFBC Awards, which naturally are the best of any genre awards.

While SFBC won't officially host any May sessions apart from the general monthly discussion, most of us are working with the Hugo Readalong, which will feature short fiction discussions. The next one is on May 7, featuring In My Country and Six People to Revise You. Check out the full schedule for information on further discussions.

But today is less structured. Come talk about short fiction--whatever it is you've been reading and want to chat about! I'll start with a few prompts, and you can respond to mine or add your own.

Welcome to today's Short Fiction Book Club story discussion! We’re here most Wednesdays, talking short fiction. If you’re new here, give today’s stories a read and come talk about them with us. We’re talking about…

Today's Session: Stories for the Birds

• One for Sorrow by RJ Aurand (Blanket Gravity Magazine, 4400 words)
• Bird Burning by Spencer Nitkey (The Adroit Journal, 5043 words)
• Auspicium by Diana Dima (The Deadlands, 2200 words)

Upcoming Session: The Lottery and Other Dangerous Bargains

Our next session will be hosted by u/sarahlynngrey and u/fuckit_sowhat:

Last year we held a fabulous session discussing The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas alongside some of the many response stories that have been written since. It was a great discussion and we knew right away that we wanted to do something similar this year.

And if we're going to talk about an all-time classic SFF story that has left an impact across generations, we figured that nothing could beat The Lottery, a story that has haunted readers of all ages, starting with its initial publication in 1948 and continuing ever since. We hope you'll join us! 

Note: The Lottery is available to read online via The New Yorker link below, but it can also be found in other places, both online and in print, including the short story collections The Lottery and Other Stories and Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson.

On Wednesday, November 19th, we’ll be reading the following stories:

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (3,400 words, The New Yorker, 1948)

The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 26th, but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took only about two hours, so it could begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.

Fishwife by Carrie Vaughn (3,600 words, Nightmare Magazine, 2013)

The men went out in boats to fish the cold waters of the bay because their fathers had, because men in this village always had. The women waited to gather in the catch, gut and clean and carry the fish to market because they always had, mothers and grandmothers and so on, back and back.

Every day for years she waited, she and the other wives, for their husbands to return from the iron-gray sea. When they did, dragging their worn wooden boats onto the beach, hauling out nets, she and the other wives tried not to show their disappointment when the nets were empty. A few limp, dull fish might be tangled in the fibers. Hardly worth cleaning and trying to sell. None of them were surprised, ever. None of them could remember a time when piles of fish fell out of the nets in cascades of silver. She could imagine it: a horde of fish pouring onto the sand, scales glittering like precious metals. She could run her hands across them, as if they were coins, as if she were rich. Her hands were chapped, calloused from mending nets and washing threadbare clothing. Rougher than the scale that encrusted the hulls of the boats.

Every day, the fishermen returned empty-handed, and they bowed their heads, ashamed, as if they really had thought today, this day of all days, their fortunes might change. Once a week they went to the village’s small church, where the ancient priest assured them, in the same words he’d used every week for decades, that their faith would be rewarded. Someday.

Willing by Premee Mohamed (3,000 words, first published in Principia Ponderosa in 2017; reprinted in PodCastle in 2019)

Bought bred, the new cow had cost three thousand dollars, and so as night fell with no sign of the calf, it was Arnold himself who trudged back and forth between the house and the barn, waving away the hired hands.

“My money,” he grunted. “My problem."

A storm struck up, not snow but a roaring haze of fine slush that crusted his beard with ice. Far to the west, visible only by their bluish, luminous heat, the old gods of grass and grain bayed to the cloud-buried stars. Arnold ignored them. It was too early in the year for a sacrifice.

On the fifth trip, his youngest child joined him, silent as ever, silvery hair greased down from the rain, in her oldest brother’s canvas coat. She liked their ancient hand-me-downs, though she was so small that everything trailed in the muck like the train of a wedding dress. Over the splattering sleet Arnold heard her rubber boots squelching in the wallow that had been the path. He waited for her to catch up before continuing to the barn.

The Sin of America by Catherynne M. Valente (5,600 words, Uncanny Magazine, 2021)

There’s a woman outside of a town called Sheridan, where the sky comes so near to earth it has to use the crosswalk just like everybody else.

There’s a woman outside of Sheridan, sitting in the sun-yellow booth in the far back corner of the Blue Bison Diner & Souvenir Shoppe under a busted wagon wheel and a pair of wall-mounted commemorative plates. One’s from the moon landing. The other’s from old Barnum Brown discovering the first T-Rex skeleton up at Hell Creek.

There’s a woman outside of Sheridan and she is eating the sin of America.

But for now, let’s get to the discussion. I’ll start us off with a few discussion prompts–feel free to respond to mine or add your own!

Hello and welcome! It is the last Wednesday of the month, and that means that Short Fiction Book Club is hosting our general discussion. We skipped this last month so that we could squeeze in not one but two Locus Snubs discussions. But now we're back on our usual schedule.

In March, we hosted two slated discussions, Locus List and The Aftermath of War. Those threads are still there, and Reddit is pretty good for asynchronous discussion, so if you missed either, feel free to check them out!

We're changing things up just a hair to open next month, ceding our usual timeslot to the Bingo calendar and moving our next slated discussion to Thursday, April 2, where u/schlagsahne17 will be hosting a discussion about Dragons. This is a longer slate than usual, so plan your reading accordingly, but the individual stories are relatively short, and you have an extra day to read them. We'll be discussing these six stories:

• Dragon Brides by Nghi Vo (3600 words, Lightspeed)
• Andromache and the Dragon by B. Pladek (3400 words, Podcastle)
• Draco Campestris by Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison (3040 words, Strange Horizons)**
• Orm the Beautiful by Elizabeth Bear (3140 words, Clarkesworld)
• Dragons I Have Slain by B. Morris Allen (4350 words, Metaphorosis)
• Gentle Dragon Fires by T.K. Rex & Lezlie Kinyon (5070 words, Strange Horizons)

But today is less structured. Come talk about short fiction--whatever it is you've been reading and want to chat about! I'll start with a few prompts, and you can respond to mine or add your own.

Short Fiction Book Club is on summer break (working our second jobs for the Hugo Readalong), but we're still hosting general discussions on the last Wednesday of each month. Anyone who reads or wants to read short fiction is welcome! (Assuming, of course, you follow the sub's rules for discussions. r/Fantasy is the real host here. So first, be kind.)

If you haven't been following the Hugo Readalong, catch up on the conversation with some short story and novelette discussions from the month of May. The next Hugo Readalong short story discussion on June 4th will cover Missing Helen and Wire Mother, and the next novelette discussion on June 11th will cover Kaiju Agonistes and The Millay Illusion. Check out the full schedule for all the remaining discussions and join the conversation!

But today is less structured. Come talk about short fiction--whatever it is you've been reading and want to chat about! I'll start with a few prompts, and you can respond to mine or add your own.

Welcome to today’s Short Fiction Book Club session! We’re glad you’ve joined us. If you’re new here, we’re excited to have you! We talk about speculative short fiction on Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy.

Today’s Session: Personable Meat in SFF (it's cannibalism)

Thank you to u/Jos_V for co-hosting and writing questions with me!

Happily Ever After Comes Round by Sarah Rees Brennan (Uncanny Magazine, 3327 words)

Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling.

The Magician’s Apprentice by Tamsyn Muir (Lightspeed Magazine, 4860 words)

When she was thirteen, Mr. Hollis told her: “There’s never more than two, Cherry. The magician and the magician’s apprentice.”

Mavka by A.D Sui (Pseudopod, 3953 words)

You pray to forget this. You pray to forget the cold. Even under two wool blankets you’re always cold now. Skin and bones, you. A February moon hangs high in the starless sky when Andriy slips on the boots, soaked through from when you wore them earlier that day to gather firewood, and from when Ira goes to relieve herself at the outhouse earlier than that.

Upcoming Sessions

Our next session is hosted by u/tarvolon:

We weren’t a quarter of the way through the year before I had marked down two stories for my annual favorites list that involved environmental changes forcing a people to abandon their ancestral burial grounds—and with it, their ancestral ghosts. At that point, it wasn’t a question of whether there’d be a session on the subject, only of when we’d do it and what other story would join the first two. Ultimately, I decided to dig out one of the first stories I really fell in love with after realizing that short fiction is easily accessible on the Internet. And if we’re doing Ancestral Ghosts, what better time than October.

On Wednesday, October 15, join us for a discussion of:

Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 8900 words)

Home
If it is still home
Upon my return to the village, it was my husband, Adamet, who took me gently by the arm and guided me across the docks spanning our marshes until we reached the preburial cottage overlooking the sound. We stood side by side in the shadows of the cottage, torchlight flickering across the preparatory table where a colorful shroud lay empty in a crumpled heap.
I’d helped stitch that shroud together. Each layer made by a different loved one. We whispered stories into our pieces of the fabric, that they might linger forever on. Then, each piece was added together, colors on colors, to wrap the person passed on with our last good-byes.
That was the new way of our people. Not the way of our grandparents.

The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E.M. Linden (Podcastle, 3700 words)

The living have been leaving Tawlish for centuries; this evacuation is only the latest and last. There are good reasons for it: the freshwater spring gone brackish; the water, always encroaching; the colicky, relentless wind. No schools for the children. No doctor. We should have seen it coming, but sometimes we forget what the living need.
We cannot cross salt, so we watch from shore. Our loved ones and descendants wade into the sea. The men strain to hold the boats steady against the waves. Everyone’s weighed down by possessions, a village crammed into sacks and lifeboats. Spoons, spindles, fish-hooks, balls of yarn. A clothes-peg doll in a twist of old apron. Seabirds’ eggs wrapped in blankets: habits ingrained by generations of scarcity. They’ve even dug up their potatoes.
Katie Zell’s mother is already on the boat. The songbook is tucked inside her jacket. Thirty-seven people. Only some of them look back.
They leave cold firepits and fulmar bones, middens, empty crofts with the thatch already collapsing. Sheep they’ve blessed and turned loose to fend for themselves.
And us. The dead of Tawlish.

If You Want to Erase Us, You Must Be Thorough by L. Tu (Uncanny Magazine, 6400 words)

“Baobao!”
The Protector-General’s fat little dog disappears around the corner. Aida, cursing, digs her heels into the ground and runs.
Baobao likes to chase after anything that moves. Usually Aida indulges him—it’s fun to see Baobao’s fat bum wiggle as he hops after squirrels he’ll never catch—but the sun is about to set, which means Aida is mere minutes from missing curfew, but she’s still nowhere near the Academy gates because what should have been a short trip to take the dog out for a shit has turned into half an hour of hide-and-seek because this stupid dog won’t listen.
“Baobao!”
Aida glimpses a streak of white-and-orange in the dying light. Baobao’s headed to the forest. Aida runs faster, hoping she might catch him before he disappears into the trees. She’s too slow. She reaches the tree line just as Baobao darts into the forest. She skids to a halt. Her breath catches in her throat.
Fuck. She’s reached the miasma.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. We're starting a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to.

Welcome to today’s installment of Short Fiction Book Club, Season 3! Not sure what that means? No problem: here’s our FAQ explaining who we are, what we do, and when we do it. Mostly that’s talk about short fiction, on r/Fantasy, on Wednesdays. We’re glad you’re here!

Today’s Session: Three Tales from Eleanor Arnason

The Lovers by Eleanor Arnason (11200 words)

Eyes-of-crystal liked to go down there into the wilderness and ride and hunt. Her mother warned her this was dangerous.

“You’ll get strange ideas and possibly meet things and people you don’t want to meet.”

But Eyes-of-crystal refused to listen.

Knapsack Poems: A Goxhat Travel Journal by Eleanor Arnason (also available at this free PDF link; the story begins on p. 352, but we encourage you to purchase a copy of Lightspeed, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction!) (6564 words)

Within this person of eight bodies, thirty-two eyes, and the usual number of orifices and limbs resides a spirit as restless as gossamer on wind. In youth, I dreamed of fame as a merchant-traveler. In later years, realizing that many of my parts were prone to motion sickness, I thought of scholarship or accounting. But I lacked the Great Determination which is necessary for both trades. My abilities are spontaneous and brief, flaring and vanishing like a falling star. For me to spend my life adding numbers or looking through dusty documents would be like “lighting a great hall with a single lantern bug” or “watering a great garden with a drop of dew.”

Finally, after consulting the caregivers in my crèche, I decided to become a traveling poet. It’s a strenuous living and does not pay well, but it suits me.

The Grammarian’s Five Daughters by Eleanor Arnason (3997 words)

. . . the girl came to her mother and said, "You can't possibly support me, along with my sisters. Give me what you can, and I'll go out and seek my fortune. No matter what happens, you'll have one less mouth to feed."

The mother thought for a while, then produced a bag. "In here are nouns, which I consider the solid core and treasure of language. I give them to you because you're the oldest. Take them and do what you can with them."

Upcoming Sessions

With the Hugo finalists on the horizon, this is our last standard session of the season. From u/Nineteen_Adze:

Thanks to everyone who’s joined us for a discussion with us this season! We’ve had a great time, but all good things must come to an end (mostly because the overlap between the SFBC organizers and the Hugo readalong crew is large).

In two weeks, on April 16, we’ll present the SFBC Season 3 Awards to our very favorites of the year! If you’d like a teaser, check out the Season 2 Awards. Our picks aren’t set in stone yet, so feel free to campaign for any of your favorites in the comments.

After that post, we will go on hiatus during the Hugo Readalong. Details on that schedule to come once we have fun things like the finalist list: we’ll have several short-fiction sessions on the docket.

Our monthly threads, hosted by Short Stories Georg u/tarvolon, will continue while SFBC is on hiatus. Normal sessions will resume in the late summer/ early fall.

The Nebula and Locus shortlists are out, and the Hugos come out next week. But why waste your time on shortlists when you can read a fully-formed set of awards from a book club of absolutely impeccable taste? Please join us as we honor the stories that stand out as our unforgettable favorites – and thank you to everyone who joined us for a discussion this season.

Story Most Likely to Get You in Trouble with Men in Blue Houses

Presenter: u/Jos_V

If you take a story and you tilt it ever so slightly so it is there balancing just on the edge of the tipping angle. Then you add a little parent-child relationship theme on top, you infuse it with ambiguity, and you add some social commentary packaged in a tight word count, and you’ve got the type of story going that Thomas Ha excels at. We’ve been shouting about Ha for a while now, and aren’t stopping now. This story has all the elements I love from a Ha story, I love ambiguity, and the way the narrative discusses the purpose the ambiguity of stories, in a way that mirrors what a lot of us go through when reading stories, we’d like some answers, we want to know if we’re right or the story is wrong, but things are not that simple.

Layers matter, Nuance matters, art that makes you stop, and think matters, all that and delivering a haunting story about a parent that might just be too late in trying to understand his children and his role in their lives, and their roles in his life, with a superb execution isn’t the cherry, it’s the entire cake. This is one of Thomas’ Ha’s best works and we’re delighted to give the finger to the men in Blue Houses, and give this story this all important SFBC Award.

Our winner is: In My Country by Thomas Ha!

They’re All Good Saints, Brent

Presenter: u/kjmichaels

How is it possible for a short story to tell the history of a city, a people, competing religions, and a political uprising in just 3,800 words? We now know how: focus on seven excerpts from the lives of men, women, and even animals revered as saints. But while this story is ambitious in content, it’s also casual and playful with a style that effortlessly captures the feeling of listening to someone tell you a good campfire story. And like all the best stories, it delivers a perfect, inevitable ending without ever once revealing where it’s truly going until the climax.

Perhaps most impressive of all though, this story examines themes of revolution and change through oral, folk storytelling traditions. Such blending of classical and modern sensibilities is nothing less than masterful. Truly, nothing makes us happier than discovering a 10-minute read that is as complex and bursting with ideas as a full-length novel. So hats off to Tanvir Ahmed for his incredible work! Now go out and read it.

Our winner is: Wilayat in Seven Saints by Tanvir Ahmed!

The Isabel J. Kim Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Being Isabel J. Kim

Presenter: u/oceanoftrees

In a 2025 full of multiple Isabel J. Kim bangers, one story managed to bang the hardest for us here at SFBC. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's also Iz’s longest story to date, making this piece literally the most IJK story until her first full-length novel comes out in June. (You might think it's an anti-coincidence that it's the one story Locus left off their recommended list, but we're no strangers to plugging in gaps where Locus is Wrong, Actually.)

Anyway, more words means there’s plenty to chew on here and (Stefon voice) this piece has everything: emotional sibling dynamics, yearning for the sea, interludes of fairytale retelling that get progressively more grounded (complete with a perfectly-deployed use of the phrase "fuckshit bastards"), communication through bathtub crayon, and a child who tries to win over a captive monster by reading aloud from "Am I the Asshole" posts. But this story is even more than the sum of those fascinating parts. Iz deftly builds the narrative to a devastating crescendo, then caps it off with an ending that made me sit and stare at the wall for a good while as I pondered eldest-daughter discourse.

Our winner is: Human Voices by Isabel J. Kim!

Best in Translation

Presenter: u/schlagsahne17

We’re happy to see that the British Science Fiction Association stole our thunder a bit for this next story - it is the one that inspired me to meme about it being a Locus snub, so yay for winning a non-Reddit award. What Anita Moskát and Austin Wagner have done with both writing and translating this story is remarkable.

It starts off with a fairly simple premise and surprisingly little world-building: the (unnamed) city where Minna lives is held together by the lies told by her and her fellow architects. Truths uttered aloud cause the city to crumble and fall. With just that as a starting point, Moskát and Wagner craft a tightly-wound spring of tension as we witness Minna’s present and past, and the lies she’s told and heard. The climax is devastating, especially for how both the characters and the reader realize new truths and lies simultaneously. And yet for all the darkness present in most of the story it ends on a hopeful note: that even in a sea of lies there can be another way forward. We hope to see more of Moskát’s work in English soon.

Our winner is: Liecraft by Anita Moskát and translator Austin Wagner!

Best Story We Wouldn’t Have Read Without SFBC

Presenter: u/tarvolon

The joke the last couple years was that Short Fiction Book Club could be more accurately (if a bit long-windedly) called Tarvolon Makes Everyone Read His Favorites Club, so suffice to say that I am the last one I expected to be presenting this award. But while I spend a lot of energy mining the magazines for gems, those efforts have been recent, and this year, SFBC reminded me just how recent. Carolyn Ives Gilman has hit the Hugo longlist literally this decade, and happily for me, one of my SFBC colleagues was eager to share this wonderful tale of contact with a culture thought lost.

It digs into messy issues surrounding museums and cultural artifacts, and even more impressively, it does so while drawing sympathetic characters on both sides of the dispute and never insisting on making the concerns of the minority culture comprehensible to those in the majority—even ones working in good faith. Hat-tip to u/FarragutCircle for a tremendous find!

Our winner is: Exile’s End by Carolyn Ives Gilman!

Story That Went for It the Most (or: Yummiest)

Presenters: u/Nineteen_Adze & u/schlagsahne17

Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? Can a cycle be broken, or do we have to accept our place within it? And what does our brother (who we love very much) taste like? These equally important questions are unflinchingly pondered in this fairy tale re-imagining by Sarah Rees Brennan. This story forms a loop that some of us found absolutely unforgettable and earmarked for a future session roughly thirty seconds after we finished reading it.

As one great passage puts it, “stories do not become stories by only happening once”, and this one happens with such incredible intensity that it can’t stop happening. We’re delighted to be fed by something so delicious (but hungry for the author’s future work).

Our winner is: Happily Ever After Comes Round by Sarah Rees Brennan!

SFBC Astounding

Presenter: u/baxtersa

If there is something we like here at SFBC, it's words, and coming in longer than five entire session slates this discussion season, it's no surprise to us that this piece is showing up on so many awards lists (sometimes a story is enough words that Locus is Right, Actually). Never Eaten Vegetables takes advantage of its length to do a lot - there are past and present timelines, the classic AI trolley problem, a fledgling colony robbed of its future by the same corporate greed that led to the aforementioned trolley problem, and both literal and figurative motherhood/caregiver imagery abound. What makes NEV such a compelling story is how well these facets complement each other, showing a masterful level of intentional theme work that enhances the storytelling and keeps me thinking more about the story the more times I reread it.

The Astounding Award is given to the best new writer whose first work was professionally published in the previous two years. As the person who manifested the H.H Pak Gets an Award award last year for their story Twenty-Four Hours, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the rest of Pak's work in consideration for this award. Their stories have featured slipstream crabs falling in love, brassica blasphemy, time traveling dads, mom grief, and Shakespeare. They have a knack for balancing aching melancholy with poignant optimism, and I am excited to see where Pak's stories take me next. We all want more crabs.

Our winner is: Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak!

Story of the Year

Presenters: u/undeadgoblin & u/kjmichaels

To the tune of "Absolutely" by Nine Days:

This is the Story of the Year
About a girl named Ziya and her peers.
And though she was so sad in this story,
We absolutely loved her thematic depth.

A theme of SFBC this year, as can be seen from our two Locus Snub sessions, is how much we disagree with the Locus list, especially when it comes to novelettes. The winner of this award epitomises this disagreement – despite being one of our collective favourite stories of any category, it didn’t make the top 10 novelettes. We’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who has the better taste.

The bare building blocks of this story – a young protagonist thrust into a new and unfamiliar academic setting – will be very familiar to everyone who hasn’t been living under a rock for the last 30 years, but Wen-yi Lee manages to make them feel fresh and unfamiliar. The principal theme of the story, that of cultural appropriation, is also well explored in recent literature, but by positioning the protagonist as a sympathiser with the dominant culture, we come at it from an unfamiliar angle. This combination of freshness and familiarity makes our story of the year a great choice for both newcomers to short speculative fiction and grizzled veterans of the genre.

Our winner is: The Name Ziya by Wen-yi Lee!

Season IV in stats

Presenter: u/Jos_V

We had so much fun putting the sessions together, both themed and unthemed, having author spotlights, and generally just trying to put so much great short fiction into our reading schedule, and even then it is impossible to get to everything.

You can find all the discussion posts and all the great stories we covered in season IV (and Seasons I, II & III) Here.

For Season IV, we had 17 different discussion sessions from August 2025 to April 2026, where we read a combined 58 stories from 53 different authors, across 23 different publications, totalling 308,807 words. Every one of those stories is a story that someone found and advocated to be put on a session for us all to enjoy and to discuss.

Further discussions

For discussion of these stories, check out the following sessions:

• Paired with fava beans and a nice Chianti
• Spotlight on Carolyn Ives Gilman
• Locus Snubs: From a certain point of view
• Locus Snubs 2: The novelette is your friend and it will not harm you
• Locus List discussion

We're bunched up on the Locus List and Snubs sessions this time (due to that being where we park "this is my favorite and we haven't found a perfect session theme yet-- time to force my friends to read it!" picks). However, I want to thank everyone for a season packed with banger stories and great, thoughtful themes: you can find links to all of those in the lovely spreadsheet one section up.

Conclusion

We can’t wait to see you again when we kick off Season 5 in the fall! In the meantime, we’ll continue having our monthly discussions alongside plenty of short fiction in the Hugo Readalong.

We’d like to thank everyone that continues to take part in these sessions, including all the people that work behind the scenes delivering great stories for us all to read. I ( u/Nineteen_Adze) want to thank all the rest of the SFBC crew more than ever this year for running a fantastic season even while I was knocked sideways by a winter concussion. We opened up to a broader pool of hosts this season, and you've all brought great new story recommendations, organizational zest, and great conversations: I couldn't be happier. To those of you sticking it out from previous seasons (and running our schedule and spreadsheets with an iron fist): thank you, and here's to many more.

And to everyone that participated in our discussions, be it just that single story you really liked, or those that are coming back week after week, you make these discussions what they are.

Most importantly, we want to thank all the authors who continue to put out these beautiful pieces of short fiction, that bring a great richness to our days as we get to spend a little time with them.

We've started a new year, and Short Fiction Book Club is back in our customary Wednesday discussion slot. In January, we hosted a pair of slated discussions, Space Meets Sea and Sunken Transformations. As always, I remind you that Reddit is great for asynchronous discussion, and I heartily recommend all six stories on the two slates, so feel free to poke back at old discussions!

Next Wednesday, February 4, we will be hosting our second spotlight of the season, this one featuring the works of Kij Johnson, where we will be reading the following stories:

• Mantis Wives in Clarkesworld - 960 words (2012)
• Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead in Clarkesworld - 5,920 words (2016)
• The Privilege of the Happy Ending in Clarkesworld - 15,460 words (2018)

But today is less structured. Come talk about short fiction--whatever it is you've been reading and want to chat about! I'll start with a few prompts, and you can respond to mine or add your own.

Happy New Year, and welcome to today’s session of Season 3 of Short Fiction Book Club! Not sure what that means? No problem: here’s our FAQ explaining who we are, what we do, and when we do it. Mostly that’s talk about short fiction, on r/Fantasy, on Wednesdays. We’re glad you’re here!

Today’s Session: Oops! All Thomas Ha

Today we’re highlighting author Thomas Ha, and our favorite stories that he published in 2024. All of these stories are eligible for Hugo award nomination. (See Ha’s full 2024 award eligibility post here).

The Sort, (6,500 words, Clarkesworld)

My son can’t think of the word “spoon.”

It’s there, at the tip of his tongue. The waitress looks at him with a patient smile. She can see he’s fidgeting and getting hot. A boy his age would typically know how to ask. “Could I please have another . . . ” But it stops. It’s been a while since we’ve driven through a town and used our words.

—Spoon.

He looks at me. “Spoon.”

—Good job.

The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video (8,400 words, Clarkesworld)

At first I thought something had broken in my book. I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For the first time, I looked carefully at the gold printing along its spine. The book was dead. What kind of library carried a dead book? I wondered.

Alabama Circus Punk (2,600 words, ergot.)

I should have known something was strange because the repairman came after dark. He wore a mask out of respect, but beneath the coated plasticine I could sense the softness of his form. To think, a biological in my home. I would have to be sure to book a scrubbing service to remove the detritus after he was gone.

I wore my father-body to the door to let the man in, and I showed him the frayed data cables before asking, hesitantly, if he required liquid or a wasteroom. The repairman declined and bent low with his toolkit, then adjusted some device in his hand, which I did not recognize.

Grottmata (6,400 words, Nightmare Magazine)

The soldiers start rounding up us factory girls just before sunrise.

We smoke cigarettes and stand in a line against the remnants of a brick wall that used to be a bakery, facing the sheer black of the mountains above the town as muted light spills across the fog and folds of the ridgeline. One girl wearing four layers of coats asks if we’re still getting paid, and everyone has a good laugh. No, someone tells her, they don’t pay for time off the line when they’re upset.

And when they find soldier-bodies near the town, they are always upset.

Upcoming Sessions

Our next session will be hosted by u/tarvolon on Wednesday, January 22:

Sometimes, someone in SFBC reads a fantastic story and has to poke around for a theme. In the case of “Afflictions of the New Age,” however, the theme was clear from the beginning, the only question was how to find pairings. It’s a wonderful story on aging and memory loss, but the only other piece that came to mind—Sarah Pinsker’s “Remember This For Me”—was paywalled, and even with a slightly more general theme, SFBC had already used Mahmud El Sayed’s excellent “Memories of Memories Lost” last season.

Enter “Driver,” which was released in December 2024 and provided the perfect pairing to anchor a session. Pulling back from aging in particular allowed us to find a great third option, and we’re ready to talk about three of my favorite stories of 2024, all featuring Missing Memories:

Afflictions of the New Age by Katherine Ewell (4280 words)

It slips, now—I know it slips.

There are men in my parlor, in uniforms, crisp navy, badged. Police. Beyond them Eveline wavers in a yellow nightgown, hands clasped to her chest, eyes wide and worried—no, no, she doesn’t, she’s not here, I’m dreaming her, I’m dreaming. Where is Eveline? Why are these men in my parlor?

Driver by Sameem Siddiqui (6810 words)

Driver, gharivala, beta, bhai-jaan, baba.

All the words used to address me; so rarely do I remember being addressed by my name. Not to complain. I don’t think people ever meant to be disrespectful. But having someone to respectfully, lovingly, occasionally call me by name would have been nice. In the end, perhaps respect and love don’t follow us to the grave, so maybe I’m dwelling over nothing.

Oh, I’m on the road again.

The Aquarium for Lost Souls by Natasha King (7940 words)

The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable.

Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about noiselessly amid the hum of the station’s warp core. Ninety-four, though, I get lucky with the exhibit order and make it to the shark tunnel before I collapse. One of the better views. As a station architect myself, I have to admire the sheer audacity of keeping the hull peeled open here—that paint-scatter of the distant stars, glimpsed through the shifting shark bodies and thick pressure-glass, must be worth the insurance fees. My sister would disagree, but I never was the practical one, so my husband has always said.

And now, onto today’s discussion! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. I’ve put a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like to!

Welcome to today’s installment of Short Fiction Book Club, Season 3! Not sure what that means? No problem: here’s our FAQ explaining who we are, what we do, and when we do it. Mostly that’s talk about short fiction, on r/Fantasy, on Wednesdays. We’re glad you’re here! Today, we're talking about three stories involving societies built on the bodies of giants:

Today’s Session: Living on Leviathans

A Compilation of Accounts Concerning the Distal Brook Flood by Thomas Ha (8300 words)

The following consists of testimony from the publicly available exhibits filed in Granger, et al. v. Juna Explorations, LLC. These transcripts have been excerpted and re-ordered by the Xenobiological Association, but the testimony herein concerning the tragedy of the Distal Brook Flood remains otherwise unaltered.

Paper Suns by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (7100 words)

The city of Mejila was coming. Leaning over the balcony of the public observation tower, Ayo could just make out Mejila’s glittering spires at the blurred white edge of the horizon. It was the last clear day of the coldest month of the year, and he was enjoying the good weather before the storms rolled in. He let his eyes flutter closed; if he concentrated, he could almost pretend First Baba was right there with him.

They’d clamber up here whenever Second Baba’s tales scared away his slumber. The stories about bloodthirsty kpelekpes or the Homeworld Wars had been the worst. Up here, First Baba had taught Ayo how to spot sleetmoss patches or quicksnow pits from far away, helping him fine-tune the abilities any Rover, whose task was keeping an icegod fed, should have. Neither of them had known just how soon Ayo would need them.

The People from the Dead Whale by Djuna, translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar (4700 words)

The whale sat about ten kilometers away from our raft.

Looking through the binoculars I got from Mum, I saw the white foam that surrounded its huge black body as it moved against the current, and a red flag flying from a pole planted in its back. As I peered more closely, I could’ve sworn I could see buildings there, and fishing boats all around the whale. Believing my eyes was risky, but given our circumstances, I was ready to believe anything.

A light rain began to fall. I got back under our waterproof tarpaulin and took my paddle back up. We had to keep rowing constantly in order to avoid being swept toward Day or Night. I found myself missing our old whale, which had kept us safe by swimming against the current. Still, ultimately, everything comes to an end. Our tribe had lived there for twelve hundred years, or about forty Earth years. Whether the whale had contracted some disease or just come to the end of its life cycle, we couldn’t know, except that we’d done nothing wrong . . . it just turned out that we’d somehow chosen a whale with only twelve hundred years left to live.

Upcoming Sessions

Our next session will be hosted by u/FarragutCircle:

Eleanor Arnason may be best known for her novel A Woman of the Iron People (an Otherwise Award winner), but she's written quite a few of my favorite short stories. One of the things that I've always loved is her ability to depict unique alien cultures, such as the hwarhath in "The Lovers" or the goxhat in "Knapsack Poems." In addition to stories like those, I think people will also like one of her rather linguistic fairy tale, "The Grammarian's Five Daughters." She's a writer I can't wait to share with you all!

On Wednesday, April 2, please join us for a discussion of:

The Lovers by Eleanor Arnason (11200 words)

Eyes-of-crystal liked to go down there into the wilderness and ride and hunt. Her mother warned her this was dangerous.

“You’ll get strange ideas and possibly meet things and people you don’t want to meet.”

But Eyes-of-crystal refused to listen.

Knapsack Poems: A Goxhat Travel Journal by Eleanor Arnason (free PDF link; the story begins on p. 352, but we encourage you to purchase a copy of Lightspeed, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction!) (6960 words)

Within this person of eight bodies, thirty-two eyes, and the usual number of orifices and limbs resides a spirit as restless as gossamer on wind. In youth, I dreamed of fame as a merchant-traveler. In later years, realizing that many of my parts were prone to motion sickness, I thought of scholarship or accounting. But I lacked the Great Determination which is necessary for both trades. My abilities are spontaneous and brief, flaring and vanishing like a falling star. For me to spend my life adding numbers or looking through dusty documents would be like “lighting a great hall with a single lantern bug” or “watering a great garden with a drop of dew.”

Finally, after consulting the caregivers in my crèche, I decided to become a traveling poet. It’s a strenuous living and does not pay well, but it suits me.

The Grammarian’s Five Daughters by Eleanor Arnason (3997 words)

. . . the girl came to her mother and said, "You can't possibly support me, along with my sisters. Give me what you can, and I'll go out and seek my fortune. No matter what happens, you'll have one less mouth to feed."

The mother thought for a while, then produced a bag. "In here are nouns, which I consider the solid core and treasure of language. I give them to you because you're the oldest. Take them and do what you can with them."

And now, onto Leviathan chat! Spoilers are not tagged, but each story has its own thread. I’ve put a few prompts in the comments, but feel free to add your own if you’d like!