Three recent SF/F short stories about memories lost and found
July 6, 2018 6:12 PM   Subscribe

Eleanor Pearson, "Mirror Images" (Syntax & Salt, 19 March 2018; selected as an 'editor's choice' story): "My aunt kept every mirror she ever broke. She kept many things: used toothbrushes, twist-ties with the wires sticking out, and those little white squares of plastic that close bags of bread. They lay jumbled at the bottom of old yogurt containers until she pulled them out to clean with or fasten things with. The mirrors, she had no immediate use for."

Bo Balder, "A Cigarette Burn In Your Memory" (Clarkesworld, January 2018): "Gouda's clients have always lost someone, even if it takes them a while to work up to it. This man has lost a daughter. His kind, round face is grooved with sadness. She likes him at once, which isn't her usual MO. 'She was taken two years ago,' he says. 'Me and the wife had gone shopping, and when we came back, she was gone.'"

Hal Y. Zhang, "Cast Off Tight" (Fireside, June 2018): "On the one hundredth day anniversary of her death he picks up the needles. It is all an accident. She had been knitting the night before she died--a ritual as sacrosanct as morning coffee--and left everything unfinished, sprawling, as anyone would if they didn't know they were going to die."
posted by Wobbuffet (4 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
I actually broke a mirror and had seven years of bad luck. It was in 1996.
posted by thelonius at 7:02 PM on July 6, 2018


Excellent work on the short story beat, Wobuffet.
posted by Artw at 7:44 PM on July 6, 2018 [5 favorites]


These are great, Wobbuffet, thanks. I particularly liked the Eleanor Pearson one.
posted by mollweide at 8:03 PM on July 6, 2018


Thank you for posting this. really like all...um...both of the stories.
posted by happyroach at 10:02 PM on July 6, 2018


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