Hello! Welcome to my between-stories post, and thanks for opening this email and giving it a look. It’s so easy to not read email, I do it all the time, and I’m honored that you didn’t do that with mine.
To write this post, I took the highly scientific step of googling “Best Sci Fi Stories You Can Read Online For Free”, and found this lovely listicle…
https://chireviewofbooks.com/2017/08/22/the-10-best-sci-fi-stories-you-can-read-online-for-free/
…because everything already exists on the internet and we’re all just making copies!
But the value I’m adding here is, I read them all and picked the three you should consider making time for this morning, and I’m here to tell you why.
As always, please feel free to like, comment on, and share this post/my newsletter if you’re impelled to do so:
ANd now, onto the recs!
FIRST:
http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-game-of-smash-and-recovery/
“The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link is not, as I initially thought, a description of my night-life in my mid-twenties. Instead it’s an amazing science fiction story about a brother and a sister stranded on some kind of alien world, playing a game of hide-and-seek that doesn’t quite make sense as they wait for unnamed parents to return from somewhere unspecified.
Very much like my night-life (and honestly day-life) in my mid-twenties, the main character in this story doesn’t really understand the world around her. (Perhaps this story is allegorically about my gaping blind spots and terrible life choices during this period?) The protagonist depends very much on her brother, who seems to have special knowledge that weighs on him. She even understands that her brother is able to communicate with their parents in a way she is not. Then it’s revealed she has special powers. And it just. keeps. going like that.
What’s so special about this story is how it seems stranger the more it explains itself. And in the end, it defies an easy categorization even as it evokes a sense of inevitability to all that preceded it. Not easy to do in ~5000 words!
SECOND:
https://weirdfictionreview.com/2016/09/day-of-the-builders/
“Day of the Builders” by Kristine Ong Muslim, is, first and foremost, a stylistic exemplar. Muslim’s voice is clear as a bell, wending its way around multiple characters and dramatic shifts in tone without ever feeling like its jamming different stories together, which (let me freaking tell you!) is very hard to do.
It’s also a refreshing reminder of the transcendental importance of perspective. It takes the point of view of a villager, in a remote village being visited by white scientists whose ways start out as inexplicable to the villagers, and end up being inevitable.
What’s amazing about the perspective is how *neutral* it is. It’s not a lament for a lost village, and it’s not a justification of the destruction of antiquity. It doesn’t judge either side of the story, and empathizes with both, yet somehow comes off as dispassionate, even clinical, in its rendering of events. The thematic tie at the end (which I won’t spoil) reveals a depth to the story that only millions of years of time can create.
THIRD:
http://www.conjunctions.com/print/article/brian-evenson-c67
“Smear” by Brian Evenson, is also surprisingly not a description of my hair choices in high school. Instead it’s the strangest story on this list, and I’m honestly not even 100% sure I *get* this story, but it’s short and it kept me riveted and just the concept—a guy accidentally wakes up during an interstellar mission and is kept alive in stasis by a computer until he starts to lose it—is so compelling that it’s worth your time.
Also, it feels like maybe some kind of weird analogy to modern life? The titular Smear is actually a thing in the story, it’s not allegorical, and the way the guy interacts with it via the ship’s onboard computer reminds me of every person I’ve ever seen trying to get Siri to do literally anything.
FINALLY:
Hope you enjoy one or more of those great stories! I’ll be back next Sunday with another original for your consumption, and until then, have a great week and happy reading!