New story from me today in Clarkesworld! The Plasticity of Youth is in their February issue.
This is one where babies come out differently than planned but so does the world receiving them. So…barely speculative, that’s how the world actually is? Anyway it’s near-future science fiction.
This is technically not my first publication of ’22 but my last publication of ’21: this story came out for subscribers in the December ’21 issue of The Deadlands.
But! It is now available for free to you, the general public! Here you are, Roots of Lamentation. In which there are more rivers in the Greek hell than we usually get to talk about….
Please note that The Deadlands is a magazine dedicated to fiction about death and the afterlife, so this is a story dealing with death and grieving; judge when you want to read it accordingly.
…and a few novelettes and poems mingled in….
On a Branch Floating Down the River, A Wren Is Singing, Betsy Aoki (Uncanny)
The White Road or How a Crow Carried Death Over a River, Marika Bailey (Fiyah Issue 18)
The Red Mother, Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com)
Trojan Road, Leah Bobet (Plenitude)
The Station of the Twelfth, Chaz Brenchley (Tor.com)
Below Salt-Heavy Tides, Andi C. Buchanan (Mermaids Monthly)
Radioactivity, Octavia Cade (Uncanny)
When I fell apart my mother put me back together, Renee S. Christopher (Fiyah Issue 20)
Demon Fighter Sucks, Katherine Crighton (Apex)
From the Fire, Leah Cypress (Asimov’s Nov/Dec 2021)
Salvage Song, Julia Da Silva (Reckoning)
The Last Days of Summer in the City of Olives, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
When Your Being Here Is Gentler Than Your Absence Hard, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
For the World’s More Full of Weeping, Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Quintessence, Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Revolution Will Not Be Served With Fries, Meg Elison (Lightspeed)
Cause and Manner, Jeannelle Ferreira (The Deadlands)
Women on the Edge of an Atomic Breakdown, Jeannine Hall Gailey (Allium)
I Swim Up From Below, Sarah Gailey (Mermaids Monthly)
Redwood Houses, Amelia Gorman (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
All the Open Highways, Alexis Gunderson (The Deadlands)
Hourglass, Jordan Hirsch (Star*Line, Fall 2021)
Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever, Audrey R. Hollis (Fireside)
The Case of the Turned Tide, Savitri Horrigan (Grist: Imagine 2200)
City Lights As Myth, Yong-Yu Huang (Strange Horizons)
The Wizard’s Book Tastes of Flight, Jennifer Hudak (Flash Fiction Online)
A Serpent for Each Year, Tamara Jerée (Strange Horizons)
Six Fictions About Unicorns, Rachael K. Jones (Uncanny)
To Rest, and to Create, L.A. Knight (Fiyah Issue 19)
Frequently Asked Questions About the Portals at Frank’s Late-Night Starlite Drive-In, Kristen Koopman (It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility)
Fractured, Aimee Kuzenski (Translunar Travelers Lounge)
The Bear Prince, P.H. Lee (Lightspeed)
Friendship and Other Anomalous Results, P.H. Lee (Nature Futures)
Just Enough Rain, P.H. Lee (Giganotosaurus)
Kuemo of the Masks, Naomi Libicki (Giganotosaurus)
My Mother’s Hand, Dante Luiz (Constelacion)
Birds Are Trying to Reinvent Your Heart, Jennifer Mace (Baffling)
Letters from the Ides, Jennifer Mace (Reckoning)
Ossify, Jennifer Mace (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
Photolinguistics, Jennifer Mace (Reckoning)
My Custom Monster, Jo Miles (Fireside)
The Deflection of Probability, Premee Mohamed (Escape Pod)
The Badger’s Digestion; Or the First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by an Aouwan Researcher, Malka Older (Constelacion)
A Better Way of Saying, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
The Music of the Siphorophenes, C.L. Polk (F&SF)
The Shape of Wings and Feathers, Jenny Rae Rappaport (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
From the Embassy of Leaks to the Court of Cracks, Catherine Rockwood (Reckoning)
Meditations on Sun-Ra’s Bassism, Yah Yah Scholfield (Fiyah Issue 19)
All Worlds Left Behind, Iona Datt Sharma (Khoreo)
As I Wait for the Killing Blow, M. Shaw (Fireside)
Forward, Victoria, Carlie St. George (The Dark)
Thirteen of the Secrets in my Purse, Rachel Swirsky (Uncanny)
Every Night and All, Sonya Taaffe (Nightmare)
Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application for an Eternal Spirit Core, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld)
Letters from a Traveling Man, W.J. Tattersdill (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Phases of the Moon, Alice Towey (Fireside)
The Burning Girl, Carrie Vaughn (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Saint Simon of 9th and Oblivion, Sabrina Vourvoulias (Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology)
Bathymetry, Lorraine Wilson (Strange Horizons)
Unseelie Brothers, Ltd., Fran Wilde (Uncanny)
How to Find Yourself in a Fairy Tale, A.C. Wise (Daily SF)
For Lack of a Bed, John Wiswell (Diabolical Plots)
Gender Reveal Box, $16.95, John Wiswell (Fireside)
Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands, John Wiswell (Fireside)
That Story Isn’t the Story, John Wiswell (Uncanny)
The Tyrant Lizard (And Her Plus One), John Wiswell (Drabblecast)
We Are Not Phoenixes, John Wiswell (Fireside)
The Machine Is Experiencing Uncertainty, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Escape Pod)
(Note that the recommendation post for the whole year is a different post and coming soon thereafter.)
On a Branch Floating Down the River, A Wren Is Singing, Betsy Aoki (Uncanny)
The White Road or How a Crow Carried Death Over a River, Marika Bailey (Fiyah Issue 18)
When I fell apart my mother put me back together, Renee S. Christopher (Fiyah Issue 20)
Demon Fighter Sucks, Katherine Crighton (Apex)
From the Fire, Leah Cypress (Asimov’s Nov/Dec 2021)
The Last Days of Summer in the City of Olives, Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Women on the Edge of an Atomic Breakdown, Jeannine Hall Gailey (Allium)
I Swim Up From Below, Sarah Gailey (Mermaids Monthly)
All the Open Highways, Alexis Gunderson (The Deadlands)
Hourglass, Jordan Hirsch (Star*Line, Fall 2021)
The Wizard’s Book Tastes of Flight, Jennifer Hudak (Flash Fiction Online)
A Serpent for Each Year, Tamara Jerée (Strange Horizons)
Six Fictions About Unicorns, Rachael K. Jones (Uncanny)
The Bear Prince, P.H. Lee (Lightspeed)
Friendship and Other Anomalous Results, P.H. Lee (Nature Futures)
Just Enough Rain, P.H. Lee (Giganotosaurus)
The Deflection of Probability, Premee Mohamed (Escape Pod)
A Better Way of Saying, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com)
Forward, Victoria, Carlie St. George (The Dark)
Every Night and All, Sonya Taaffe (Nightmare)
Letters from a Traveling Man, W.J. Tattersdill (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Burning Girl, Carrie Vaughn (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Saint Simon of 9th and Oblivion, Sabrina Vourvoulias (Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology)
That Story Isn’t the Story, John Wiswell (Uncanny)
New story today in Nature Futures! Star Corps Crew Manual Section 15-A37: On Mental Dislocation. Some of you new crew members need to remember there’s a stun setting on this thing….
Happy Halloween, friends!
As your monstrous treat this year, please consider an ebook or physical copy of my new chapbook, Monstrous Bonds. It’s available now! Five stories for adults (two reprints, three original) of monsters and friendship. Environmentalism and kaiju! Harpies living at the airport! Monsters and monster-hunters each looking out for their pals against a world with some pretty monstrous problems, internal and external!
I wrote these stories for my friend John Wiswell, but you can have them too! Cover by friend and local writer-artist-all around cool person Jordan Shiveley!
New story out from Daily Science Fiction this morning! The Last Navigator.
This one is about a generation ship AI who finds the humans want to go somewhere a bit different…
Today’s new story from me is in Nature Futures, and it’s called Without a Password.
As the post-story notes at the bottom tell you, the seed for this one stayed in my head eighteen years before it had enough to grow on. I’m told patience is a virtue.
The Red Mother, Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com)
The Station of the Twelfth, Chaz Brenchley (Tor.com)
Below Salt-Heavy Tides, Andi C. Buchanan (Mermaids Monthly)
Radioactivity, Octavia Cade (Uncanny)
For the World’s More Full of Weeping, Andrew Dykstal (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
The Revolution Will Not Be Served With Fries, Meg Elison (Lightspeed)
Cause and Manner, Jeannelle Ferreira (Deadlands).
Redwood Houses, Amelia Gorman (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever, Audrey R. Hollis (Fireside)
The Case of the Turned Tide, Savitri Horrigan (Grist: Imagine 2200)
City Lights As Myth, Yong-Yu Huang (Strange Horizons)
To Rest, and to Create, L.A. Knight (Fiyah Issue 19)
Frequently Asked Questions About the Portals at Frank’s Late-Night Starlite Drive-In, Kristen Koopman (It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility)
Letters from the Ides, Jennifer Mace (Reckoning).
Ossify, Jennifer Mace (Climbing Lightly Through Forests)
My Custom Monster, Jo Miles (Fireside)
The Shape of Wings and Feathers, Jenny Rae Rappaport (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
Meditations on Sun-Ra’s Bassism, Yah Yah Scholfield (Fiyah Issue 19)
As I Wait for the Killing Blow, M. Shaw (Fireside)
How to Find Yourself in a Fairy Tale, A.C. Wise (Daily SF)
Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands, John Wiswell (Fireside)
The Tyrant Lizard (And Her Plus One), John Wiswell (Drabblecast)
Today’s new story is a special case: Grist magazine is having a special climate fiction issue called Imagine 2200, and for it they selected my story A Worm to the Wise.
Frankly it is not easy to focus on hope and optimism this year, so I’m very pleased to have managed this story with its focus on soil science and community. I also love what Grace Abe did with the illustration. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the issue, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this one.