Short Fiction

Excerpt: THE UNIVERSE BOX by Michael Swanwick (Tachyon)

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Next year, Tachyon Publications are due to publish The Universe Box, a new collection of 21 superb short stories by Michael Swanwick. To whet readers’ appetites for the collection, the publisher has provided CR with an excerpt from the title story. First, here’s the synopsis:

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.

In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves), sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.

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Excerpt: LETTERS FROM AN IMAGINARY COUNTRY by Theodora Goss (Tachyon)

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On November 11th, Tachyon Publications are due to publish a new collection of short fiction by Theodora Goss: Letters From an Imaginary Country. To mark the occasion, and give readers a taste of what’s in the book, CR has been provided an excerpt to share with our readers. Here’s the book’s synopsis:

Roam through the captivating stories of World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award winner Theodora Goss (the Athena Club trilogy). This themed collection of imaginary places, with three new stories, recalls Susanna Clarke’s alternate Europe and the surreal metafictions of Jorge Luis Borges. Deeply influenced by the author’s Hungarian childhood during the regime of the Soviet Union, each of these stories engages with storytelling and identity, including her own.

The infamous girl monsters of nineteenth-century fiction gather in London and form their own club. In the imaginary country of Thüle. Characters from folklore band together to fight a dictator. An intrepid girl reporter finds the hidden land of Oz—and joins its invasion of our world. The author writes the autobiography of her alternative life and a science fiction love letter to Budapest. The White Witch conquers England with snow and silence.

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Excerpt: THE SECRET LIFE OF INSECTS by Bernardo Esquinca (Dead Ink Books)

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EsquincaB-SecretLifeOfInsectsUKA couple of weeks ago, Dead Ink Books published The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca a new collection of short horror stories set in Mexico, translated by James D. Jenkins, that explore its dark, bloody history. To celebrate the release, the publisher has provided us with an excerpt to share: specifically, the story “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”. Here is the collection’s synopsis:

A forensic entomologist tries to solve the inexplicable murder of his wife, who impossibly seems to have been killed in a forest at the same time she was asleep in bed with him. A husband becomes concerned by his wife’s strange behaviour, which includes sleepwalking, muttering strange phrases, and a bizarre erotic fascination with octopi. A woman visits a witch doctor who promises to forge an unbreakable bond between her and the man of her dreams, but things go horribly awry after the man dies. And four high school friends reunite twenty years later at a class reunion and must face the long-buried truth of a demonic experience from their youth.

The history of Mexico is drenched in blood, from the sacrifices of the ancient Aztecs to the bloodthirsty conquest of the Spanish to modern-day violent crime, and that legacy of violence and death pervades these stories. They blend the genres of horror and noir in inventive ways and run the gamut from chilling to weirdly unsettling to darkly funny. It is a volume sure to please not only fans of horror and weird fiction but also anyone interested in contemporary international literature.

This edition also features brilliant full-page illustrations by Spanish artist Luis Pérez Ochando.

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Excerpt: SINKING BELL by Bojan Louis (Dead Ink Books)

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LouisB-SinkingBellUKThis Thursday (February 22nd), Dead Ink Books are due to publish a new short story collection by Navajo author Bojan Louis: Sinking Bell. The collection won a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, and was selected by NPR as one of their Best Books of 2022. To celebrate the book’s UK release, and to give readers a taste of the collection, the publisher has allowed CR to share the story “Make No Sound to Wake”. Before we get to the story, though, here’s the collection’s synopsis:

An ex-con hired to fix up a school bus for a couple living off the grid in the desert finds himself in the middle of their tattered relationship. An electrician’s plan to take his young nephew on a hike in the mountains, as a break from the motel room where they live, goes awry thanks to an untrustworthy new coworker. A night custodian makes the mistake of revealing too much about his work at a medical research facility to a girl who shares his passion for death metal. A relapsing addict struggles to square his desire for a White woman he meets in a writing class with family expectations and traditions.

Set in and around Flagstaff, the stories in Sinking Bell depict violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism. In his gritty and searching fiction debut, Bojan Louis draws empathetic portraits of day laborers, metalheads, motel managers, aspiring writers and musicians, construction workers, people passing through with the hope of something better somewhere else. His characters strain to temper predatory or self-destructive impulses; they raise families, choose families, and abandon families; they endeavor to end cycles of abuse and remake themselves anew.

And now, on to “Make No Sound to Wake”…

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Upcoming: YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN 10A by Maggie Shipstead (Knopf)

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ShipsteadM-YouHaveAFriendIn10AUSHCI’m a newcomer to Maggie Shipstead‘s work. My first, in fact, was last year’s superb, gripping Great Circle. Since then, I’ve picked up the author’s other two novels — Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements — both of which I hope to read very soon. While browsing publisher catalogues, I also stumbled across the author’s next book: her first short story collection, You Have a Friend in 10A.

In this collection of dazzling stories, Maggie Shipstead’s prowess in short fiction is on full display for the first time. Diving into eclectic and vivid settings, from an Olympic village to a deathbed in Paris to a Pacific atoll, and illuminating a cast of indelible characters, Shipstead traverses ordinary and unusual realities with cunning, compassion, and wit.

ShipsteadM-YouHaveAFriendIn10AUKHCIn “Acknowledgments,” a male novelist reminisces bitterly on the woman who inspired his first novel, attempting to make peace with his humiliations before the book goes to print.

In “The Cowboy Tango,” spanning decades in the open country of Montana, a triangle of love and self-preservation plays out among an aging rancher called the Otter, his nephew, and a young woman named Sammy who works the horses.

In “La Moretta,” a couple’s honeymoon in the hills of Romania builds ominously into a moment of shattering tragedy. In the title story, a former child actress breaks with her life in a religious cult, narrating with mesmerizing candor a story of vulnerability, loss, and the surrealism of fame.

You Have a Friend in 10A is sophisticated, gripping, and hilarious, comprised of knockout after knockout: a collection to seal Shipstead’s reputation as a versatile master of fiction.

Maggie Shipstead’s You Have a Friend in 10A is due to be published by Knopf in North America (May 17th) and Doubleday in the UK (May 19th).

Also on CR: Review of Great Circle

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Twitter

Annotated Excerpt: UNEXPECTED PLACES TO FALL FROM, UNEXPECTED PLACES TO LAND by Malcolm Devlin (Unsung)

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DevlinM-UnexpectedPlacesToFallFromUnexpectedPlacesToLandUnexpected Places To Fall From, Unexpected Places To Land, my second collection, is published by Unsung Stories. It includes twelve stories dealing with journeys taken and the paths we choose. Some of the characters might crop up as slightly different people in different places, there’s a little bit of horror, a little bit of science fiction and a weird story in which I try and prove that all accredited London taxi drivers are actually descended from the rat coachmen in Cinderella.

In the exact same moment, all possible versions of Prentis O’Rourke will cease to exist. By accident, by malice, by conflict, by illness – Prentis will not simply die. He will go extinct. These are the stories of the journeys we take and the journeys we wish we’d taken.

Malcolm Devlin’s second short story collection ranges from science fiction to folk horror as Prentis O’Rourke’s demise echoes across the dimensions. Scientists, artists, ex-nuns, taxi drivers, time travellers and aliens – the same people living varied lives in subtly different worlds. Something unprecedented will happen, and it will colour them all.

Crossing multiple realities, countless versions of ourselves, and shifting backwards and forwards through time, these are stories of forking paths and unexpected destinations – of flying and falling and getting up to try again.

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Quick Review: REALITY, AND OTHER STORIES by John Lanchester (Faber)

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LanchesterJ-RealityAndOtherStoriesUKAn intriguing collection of speculative, creepy stories

Household gizmos with a mind of their own.

Constant cold calls from unknown numbers.

And the creeping suspicion that none of this is real.

Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments – stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

I’ve always wanted to read more of John Lanchester’s work. I’ve been slowly acquiring many of his novels — for example, Fragrant Harbour and The Wall — but keep forgetting that I have them on my Kindle. I was lucky enough to get a DRC of this short story collection, and decided to dive right in. Initially, I’d intended to read a story every so often, between novels, but I ended up reading all of them in just a couple of sittings. I really enjoyed this collection. Continue reading →

Quick Review: GODS & MORTALS (Black Library)

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Various-Gods&MortalsAn anthology of Age of Sigmar short fiction, which serves very well as an introduction

For too long, the Mortal Realms have suffered under Chaos’ twisted crusade. Tainted lands writhe in agony and once great cities lie in ruins, the hopes of their people extinguished. But the storm winds rise. Sigmar’s greatest creation, the Stormcast Eternals, strike with His vengeance. Their lightning drives the darkness away and their thunder drowns out the screams of the Foul Gods’ acolytes as they fall to sword and halberd. The sons and daughters of the storm know they cannot fail. For now is the time where the fate of a world will be decided. Where Gods and mortals must rise and fight, or face their final damnation.

CONTENTS
The Dance of the Skulls & Obsidian by David Annandale
Blacktalon: Hunting Shadows by Andy Clark
Vault of Souls by Evan Dicken
Bear Eater, Force of Personality, Gods’ Gift & The Hardest Word by David Guymer
Pantheon by Guy Haley
Callis & Toll: The Old Ways by Nick Horth
Pilgrim’s Trial by Robbie MacNiven
Auction of Blood, Eight Lamentations: The Tainted Axe, The Library of Forgotten Moments, Order of the Fly: Tourney of Fate & The Road of Blades by Josh Reynolds
Gravesend Gold & The Witch Takers by C L Werner

The Age of Sigmar is a pretty massive fantasy setting, one that continues to grow. It could be a bit daunting to find a way into it. If you are looking for a way in, this is a substantial collection of short fiction may be your best bet. Including stories featuring some established characters, as well as touching upon many of the myriad facets of the Mortal Realms, reading Gods & Mortals will give readers a nice, broad glimpse of the Age of Sigmar. Continue reading →