“The Wrinkles” by Troy Keller
12.30.12
Story 365/366
Keller is an attorney who writes. This story ponders the concept of biology as destiny. You can read it here at East of the Web. You can read more of Keller’s fiction on his site, Leastwise.
See you tomorrow!
“The City of Cries” by Catherine Asaro
12.22.12
Story 359f/366
A former professional dancer with a PhD in chemical physics (from Harvard), Asaro is a Nebula Award-winning writer. This tale is about matriarchs and the military and a missing prince. Call it feminist space pulp/sf noir. This story appears in Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick.
See you tomorrow!
“A Wizard of the Roads” by Therese Arkenberg
12.17.12
Story 359a/366
There’s terrific writing here, especially at the beginning when we meet the boy wizard Will. (Harry Potter he is not.) This is a post-apocalyptic story, so it seems fitting I’m posting it on 12.21.12. This story appears on the Daily Science Fiction site. You can read it here.
See you tomorrow!
“Live-Tweating the Apocalypse” by Ian Creasy
12.13.12
Story 356a/366
I love this title. I wish I’d seen the story before I started working on the Nightfalls anthology. It’s funny and smart and sad. It’s a love story as so many end of the world stories are. The story ran on Daily SF in November. Creasey’s short story collection, Maps of the Edge is available here.
See you tomorrow!
“The Hateful Brilliance of his Eyes” by Alec Austin
12.13.12
Story 356/366
This story appears in Strange Horizons and it’s a little bit swashbuckling space opera with a dash of fantasy and a sardonic edge. Favorite line in the story: “He’s over-exerted his yang qi,”
See you tomorrow!
“Night Train to Mundo Fine” by Jimmy Callaway
12.02.12
Story 332/366
This is just a dazzling science fiction story that plays with tense in a way that’s dizzying. I missed this story when it first ran on A Twist of Noir, but snagged it for the Nightfalls anthology. You can read the story here.
See you tomorrow!
“Division by Zero” by Ted Chiang
11.28.12
Story 328/366
Some of the best stories I’ve read this year play with mathematical concepts and this one is no exception. The story appeared in the anthology Full Spectrum #3 in 1991 and is also in his collection Stories of Your Life and Others. You can read it here on the Fantastic Metropolis website. An interview with Chiang appears here.
See you tomorrow!
“Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs” by Leonard Richardson
11.26.12
Story 325/366
Richardson likes dinosaurs. He mentions that on his web page. This story begins with a dinosaur walking into a gun store looking to make a purchase. (“Why?” the gun shop owner asks him. “For protection,” he replies.) This story appeared on Strange Horizons in 2009. Read it here. Richardson is also the co-author of Restful Web Services, a book about building websites that machines can read–which he believes is the next big thing. Yes, more proof that we’re living in a 1950s science fiction movie.
See you tomorrow!
“Body Solar” by Derryl Murphy
11.25.12
Story 324/366
A man takes a very special journey. It originally appeared in On Spec in 1993. You can read the story here.
See you tomorrow!
“Ace 167” By Eeanor Arnason
11.17.12
Story 317/366
You have to love this opening line: It was after I lost my job as the manager of a traveling troupe of precision unicyclists that I met Ace 167. This story originally appeared in Orbit 15, an anthology edited by Damon Knight in 1974; you can find it on Lightspeed here.
See you tomorrow!
A short story a day review 