It's been quiet here, I know. The tumbleweed has come, and buggered off again.
Me, I had COVID in early spring. Not too bad, as illnesses go, in my case. But it knocked me sideways, in some way. Between long COVID, work stress (I work in healthcare), and the general political clusterfuck on both sides of the Atlantic I have been left in a state, where I have not read a book, never mind written about one, in 9 months now.
I have, fresh of the press, Neal Asher's Lockdown Tales sitting in front of me. Maybe some topical short stories from a writer I really enjoy will help me get back in the saddle? Here's to hope...
Meanwhile, I'd like to point you to two efforts that came out of the COVID disruption and lockdowns, both entitled Decameron, for reasons all too transparent.
First out of the gate, simply because I host it, is this collection by friends, acquaintances, and others struggling to make sense of this new world order: Decameron: Storytelling in the Time of the Pandemic
And secondly, in a much bigger, much more professional, and in large part financially driven (half/half to the authors and a charitable organisation) way, the Jo Walton-curated New Decameron (you need to be a Patron to read most of it. Best spent 1$ of your life I reckon).
Erinn L Kemper is a Canadian Horror writer living in the Carribean, with a number of published short stories to her name.
The Song is not something I would have rated as horror, but rather as desolate and dystopian; but I can see how you could arrive at that definition when coming from the other direction, so to speak. It is set on a former oil rig now serving as a whale farming and research station, and follows a change in behaviour of the whales, and associated changes to their songs.
It is, I'm sure to no surprise, not entirely cheerful, and for me had both echoes of Somtow Sucharitkul's Starship and Haiku and, to a lesser degree, of Peter Watt's Bulk Food. But judge yourself, the link is below and on the right - it's worth your time!
Norwegian-based High North Alliance claims the carbon footprint resulting from eating whale meat is substantially lower than that of beef. One serving of whale meat contains 181% of your daily intake of iron, and 55% of your daily intake of B12. It is low in fat and cholesterol. As of 2010, fluke meat cost up to two hundred dollars per kilogram, more than triple the price of belly meat.
—Dr. Suzanne Anderson, How Do You Like Your Whale?
Future Tense Fiction is a series of short stories from Future Tense and the ASU (Arizona State University)'s Center for Science and the Imagination.
It is published monthly on Slate - the theme for April-June 2019 was Space Settlement. The series focuses on how technology and science will change our lives.
And I would suggest you have a look at the May installment, the short story 'No Moon and Flat Calm' by Elizabeth Bear; mixing space exploration with the lessons learned from the Titanic.
Earlier this year the latest installment of the Pan-African science fiction anthology AfroSFv3, edited by Ivor W Hartmann, was released.
To whet the appetite we are given free access to the short story Njuzu by Zimbabwean author TL Huchu from it; interweaving traditionally SF vocabulary and setting about an accident on a mining colony on Ceres with Shona mythology to dazzling effect. Telling from this freebie in the Johannesburg Review of Books I reckon that we are in for a treat with the collection!
AfroSFv3 Author Spotlight: T.L. Huchu’s work has appeared in Interzone, The Apex Book of World SF 5, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Year's Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016, AfroSFv1, and elsewhere. He enjoys working across genres, from crime to sci-fi to literary fiction. Currently, he is working on new fantasy novel. Find him @TendaiHuchu
This is available to you both to read, and as a podcast narrated by Halima Salah.
As Escape Pod put it: Mame Bougouma Diene is a Senegalese American humanitarian living in Brooklyn, NY with a fondness for tattoos, progressive metal and policy analysis. He is the Francophone/US spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society. Another Day in the Desert is a prequel to “Ogotemmeli’s Song” released [...] in AfroSFv3, and also a prequel to “Apes and Satellites” published by Brittle Paper in 2017.
The picture on the right is from the Escape Pod profile of the Narrator of the podcast, Halima Salah.
It's been quiet here, I know. The tumbleweed has come, and buggered off again.
