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The Short Story Reader #72 - Stranger Shores by Gregory Feeley
Previous | Next What a breathtaking story this is. Gregory Feeley writes of posthuman intelligences in the far-off future, filled with longing and curiosity for their far-off human past across what cannot have been less than ten thousand words (it is, in fact, just under nine-thousand). The Minds were inorganic, self-aware as humans simply cannot be, and liberated from reliance on fallible…
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The Short Story Reader #71 - Happiness by Octavia Cade
Previous | Next Octavia Cade tells an ambitious and lengthy story in the pages of Clarkesworld #199, and I enjoyed the reading of it even as it failed to appeal to me. I loved the form of this story. You could, if you wanted, pick a variety of options and read the story that way, rather than going through the entirety of it. The form is a delight, a choose-your-own-adventure kind of deal that…
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The Short Story Reader #69 - Keeper of the Code by Nick Thomas
Previous | Next Nick Thomas tells the story of a good man struggling to do the right thing, knowing that he will be turned into a pariah if he does; knowing, too, that just because society does not accept it as the right thing, does not make it wrong. “Keeper of the Code” tells the story of an off-shoot of humanity in the distant future. Having left our home planet and the rest of humanity…
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The Short Story Reader #67 - The Librarian and the Robot by Shi Heiyao, translated by Andy Dudak
Previous | Next Shi Heiyao’s piece about a librarian and a robot gives me some serious “WALL-E” vibes, I think as I read its first pages. Our librarian, simply referred to as The Curator, returns to Earth long after the planet has been abandoned by humanity. Her task is simple–restore the planet’s largest library to its former glory: As she’d hoped, the main structure of the complex had…
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The Short Story Reader #66 - Rake the Leaves by R. T. Ester
Previous | Next R. T. Ester’s “Rake the Leaves” is an interesting story about alternate worlds and a government within which rests a shadowy organization capable of taking away the memory of those who ask too many questions. An awful lot is going on – our protagonist’s friend and mentor, the Professor, is paranoid about the possibility that they will come for him. Sections of the story are…
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The Short Story Reader #65 - There Are the Art-Makers, Dreamers of Dreams, and There Are Ais by Andrea Kriz
Previous | Next Juno is an artist some thirty-three years in the future, at a time when making a living off your art is more difficult by far than it is now. Not only because of generative AIs, but because of the laws that rise in response to these generative AIs turn to be far more damaging for the common artist than you can imagine. This story, while looking to the future, also enters in…
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The Short Story Reader #64 - Re/Union by L/Chan
Previous | Next What does honoring the dead look like in a future in which a person’s digital footprint is used to create simulacra of the dead? Machine learning and the proprietary technology of “Project W” – “Double You. Memory plus character equals personhood, or so the tagline went” – allow the dead to commingle with the living in L Chan’s fascinating piece. These simulacra are static, for…
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