Short Story Review Catch Up 6

The last catch up post, for now. Ten more short stories I read, which clears everything up to, um, the end of October.

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1. The Serpentine Band by Congyun 'Mu Ming' Gu, translated by Tian Huang in Clarkesworld

Chen is the daughter of a senior official in Ming China. On several occasions he has made drastic decisions for the good of the empire. The empire is, nevertheless, collapsing.

He gave her a serpentine band of jade, impossible to make, that the master who created it folded space to make it possible. There are tales of people finding ways through to other lands where they can live in peace and plenty. And in his retirement he has made a garden imbued with these principles.

Chen is left to discover how all this might be resolved.

Read This: For a beautifully convoluted tale of Ming China’s intractable problems and also infinite space
Don’t Read This: Twisting time and space in this way conceals rather than reveals the history

2. Twenty Thousand Last Meals Aboard An Exploding Space Station by Ann LeBlanc in Mermaids Monthly

Riles Yaltan is a merp-aug, a water adapted cyborg, caught in a three day timeloop aboard a space station that will inevitably explode. For the first few hundred iterations she and her team try frantically to repair it. None of that works. So to spare them Riles wipes their memory backups and decides to go on a quixotic quest to eat at every restaurant on the station. This was considered impossible as they open and close and there are over twenty thousand of them. But with the timeloop she might manage it.

Then the insurance company brings in a ringer, her sister.

Read This: Mermaid cyborg timeloop sibling conflict with restaurant reviews
Don’t Read This: Mermaid what where when how?

3. Live Maine Lobsters by David K Gibson in Wigleaf

The narrator bought some live lobsters for a romantic surprise dinner, but they were in an accident and in hospital for a week. The lobsters survived but the romance didn’t (I don’t think).

And now, recovered, married, where are the lobsters? Where the romance?

Read This: A short piece about relationships under strain and also lobsters
Don’t Read This: Lobsters should not be a metaphor, no matter how obscure

4. The Life-Cycle Of A Cyber Bar by Arthur Liu translated by Nathan Faries in Future Science Fiction Digest

A man goes into a bar to do a deal. It goes wrong and there is a shoot out.

This is part of the life-cycle of the cyber bar. It happens again and again.

But there’s more to the life-cycle and maybe it will change.

Read This: To see a scene from a cyber-thriller examined again and again from stranger and stranger angles
Don’t Read This: I just wanted a quiet drink and suddenly there’s shooting?

5. The Antithesis Of Virtue by Aimee Ogden in Kaliedotrope

Zsiuze is a fallen angel, a banished Cupbearer exiled from the Vertex by the Great God Tau. She goes to speak to the witch queen Etaki in Karnot because they both wish to return and they both wish to see Tau cast down.

But Tau manipulates space and time within Vertex, consuming and assuming what they wish, gifting the Cupbearers godwire that links and powers and controls. They are an intelligence that controls the nature of reality there. He cannot be lied to or overwhelmed.

And yet there are other worlds that do not care for Tau, and Zsiuze and Etaki’s cunning may not be enough. Nor do they agree what will come after.

Read This: A tour-de-force science fantasy cosmic divine conflict
Don’t Read This: I don’t care about AIs with delusions of godhead in shifting realities

6. Straw Spun by Leah Cypess in Cast Of Wonders

Alina’s mother made a deal with a goblin, who helped her spin straw into gold. The price was her child, if she could not guess his name, yet she did not guess and her child is there and her mother is not.

The bargains with fairyland are made with love, and the ties of family.

Read This: To find out the goblin’s name and what that means for Alina
Don’t Read This: You have no interest in bargains with the fae

7. Cleaning The Bathroom And Other Chores You Won’t Do by Neeru Nagarajan in Cobalt Review

Our narrator cleans the bathroom, but won’t do the washing as they still have clean underwear. And their spouse – who they address directly as you – will not be happy. And perhaps one day they will take their unhappiness and their scars and change things.

Read This: For a shatteringly powerful moment in a relationship
Don’t Read This: Because a moment is not enough

8. The Clock, Having Seen It’s Face In The Mirror, Still Knows Not The Hour by Adam Stemple in Clarkesworld

John Joseph is a clockwork man, possibly the first, in a world that turns hostile to them. His ruined remains are bought by Lady Joanna who first saw him when she was a child.

His memory, like his body, is patchy and out of place.

Read This: To learn how human the clockwork man is and why this is a problem
Don’t Read This: Arbitrarily ordering memories according to a scheme of preference is just confusing

9. Stronger by K J Parker in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

The people of the Black Isle demand tribute, young men and women to be sacrificed to a monster with the head of a bull. And there’s nothing anyone can do, they’re the only ones with warships and soldiers, and they make the laws and they make the tablets with writing.

But strength can be a weakness and everyone cheats. So our protagonist doesn’t believe the legends, he thinks this is a slaving operation and when the woman he loves is taken he comes up with a plan to go to the forbidden Black Isle, where he is sure there is no monster, and rescue her, or get revenge, or at least find out what’s going on.

Read This: For a bold and idiosyncratic take on the minotaur myth
Don’t Read This: The minutae of how a drachma is weighed and how to cheat it is boring

10. Song So Pure And Cruel by March McCarron in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

A pooka swims out to sea and encounters Danu, goddess of the moon, far from mortal lands in Breasal. There they live, goddess and minor fae. But sometimes they return to middle earth and the king of faerie wishes to see Danu. He cannot compel her and she does not want to see him. But he can compel the pooka and Danu has fallen in love.

Read This: For an old school story of the celtic fairies, immortality and love
Don’t Read This: Fairies are cruel