Friday short fiction #34: cornucopia fantastica Americana

Tim Green   The Fantastic Voyage of Nazareth Pike   1992
Because I didn't get to Renovation in Reno last weekend this has mostly been a serendipitous week of randomly encountered recent SF from the US, with many names here that'll be familiar to most on my Friends List.

Barbara A. Barnett, 'God's Gift to Women'  (DAILY SCIENCE FICTION, 7 MARCH 2011)
On Tuesday I spent half a day catching up on some yet-to-be-read stories at Daily Science Fiction, and this was one of the flash fiction highlights. Surely an oh-so-familiar story for many women and one that has a smart ending – see if you can see it coming.

Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, 'The IIe of Dogges'  (MARTI McKENNA, BRIDGET McKENNA, eds., AEON SEVEN, MAY 2006)
Found in Gardner Dozois's 24th Year's Best SF from 2007, this is a historical piece about a missing play from a medieval English playwright, something that necessarily spends a lot of time on scene-setting before its science fictional aspect becomes apparent. The flow of the narrative is a little hampered by the slightly archaic language, although it's also this that make it a memorable story.

Jason Sanford, 'The Never Never Wizard of Apalachicola'  (ORSON SCOTT CARD'S INTERGALACTIC MEDICINE SHOW #20, DECEMBER 2010)
The capstone story to Sanford's first collection Never Never Stories, an evocative piece that sees an astronaut discovering his own connection to the magic that surrounds NASA's space program. This is a neat story that mixes SF and fantasy like oil and water, allowing each ingredient to keep its identity without becoming homogenised into something resembling 'science fantasy'. (The Intergalactic Medicine Show requires a subscription from readers).

Rachel Swirsky, 'Again and Again and Again'  (INTERZONE #226, JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2010)
A wry story of how children will always need to shock their parents, from the recent past through to far-future generations. I've read quite a bit more of Swirsky's short fiction this week and I'm becoming more and more impressed with both her clear storytelling and her great diversity of style... this is as different from 'A Memory of Wind' as it's possible to get and stretches the mind in completely different ways.

Favourite short story of the week: Jay Lake, Ken Scholes, 'The Starship Mechanic'  (TOR.COM, JANUARY 2010)
An alien falls to Earth in San Francisco and takes up residency at Borderlands, one of my favourite bookstores anywhere. The Jay and Ken Show can be a far sharper double act than their MC-ing of last weekend's Hugo Awards ceremony, and I found myself reading this with a knowing smile throughout because it was clearly aimed at fans of the store, and therefore also me, a semi-regular visitor. It's also included in Gardner's 28th Year's Best SF, deservedly so because this is a lot of fun.

PS. There are now some Hugo Award edited highlights online: witness again johnnyeponymous's 'Best Fanzine' meltdown, and I hope soon we'll also see Robert Silverberg's hilarious preamble to the 'Best Novella' Award – he had me in stitches when I watched it live.