"Was it rude to tell your boss she was growing scales?"
October 21, 2020 6:07 PM Subscribe
Since September 1, 2010, Daily Science Fiction has published a new short scifi/fantasy story each weekday. The easiest way to navigate the archives is probably by story topic, so you get titles, author names, and excerpts (example). Here are six very short stories you might like.
A short, silly piece, published this year: "The Dragon Queen of the Suffix County Public Library" by Barbara A. Barnett. "Dara the Library Director sprouted the first scale during our weekly staff meeting, after I suggested a change to the Staff Favorites book display."
"Apology Accepted" by Kathryn Felice Board is a short, sad, incisive piece that is probably in some way about emotional labor. "You have to save something to forgive yourself."
"Measures and Countermeasures" by Beth Cato (content note: anorexia) portrays the lengths Colleen and her mother will go to pursue their (opposed?) goals, and has a melancholy-but-trending-happy ending. "She dug in a pouch and found her contact cases. The blue case held a prescription for her sight. The white one, she'd bought from another girl."
And: three stories that particularly play on Internet writing styles: "Search History" by KT Bryski is a quick zombie story, "43 Responses to 'In Memory of Dr. Alexandra Nako'" by Barbara A. Barnett (previously) is reanimation-related horror in a blog comments section, and "Only g62 Kids Will Remember These Five Moments" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse) is clickbait set on a colony ship.
(Also, speaking of found-document/epistolary sf/f: as previously mentioned on the blue, "Feature Development for Social Networking" by Benjamin Rosenbaum.)
A short, silly piece, published this year: "The Dragon Queen of the Suffix County Public Library" by Barbara A. Barnett. "Dara the Library Director sprouted the first scale during our weekly staff meeting, after I suggested a change to the Staff Favorites book display."
"Apology Accepted" by Kathryn Felice Board is a short, sad, incisive piece that is probably in some way about emotional labor. "You have to save something to forgive yourself."
"Measures and Countermeasures" by Beth Cato (content note: anorexia) portrays the lengths Colleen and her mother will go to pursue their (opposed?) goals, and has a melancholy-but-trending-happy ending. "She dug in a pouch and found her contact cases. The blue case held a prescription for her sight. The white one, she'd bought from another girl."
And: three stories that particularly play on Internet writing styles: "Search History" by KT Bryski is a quick zombie story, "43 Responses to 'In Memory of Dr. Alexandra Nako'" by Barbara A. Barnett (previously) is reanimation-related horror in a blog comments section, and "Only g62 Kids Will Remember These Five Moments" by Leonard Richardson (disclaimer: my spouse) is clickbait set on a colony ship.
(Also, speaking of found-document/epistolary sf/f: as previously mentioned on the blue, "Feature Development for Social Networking" by Benjamin Rosenbaum.)
Here are six very short stories you might like.
Nice find. For whatever reason, a lot of very short short stories (pace Hemingway and his baby shoes) seem to tend to fantastical genres. I recall many years ago reading a book entitled something to the effect of The World’s Best Short Short Short Stories: this set an upper limit of fifty words and presented then in decreasing order of length. At fifty words you can still produce decent vignettes of family drama and professional and interpersonal dilemmas. As the word count tightens, the tendency toward sf increases. At eight words, I found a story attributed to Anthony Burgess, although he mentions it in a 1948 article as being widely known already:
Anyway, the word count in the book got tighter and tighter until you were down to the single-word stories. One was a sweeping history of humankind:
Nice find. For whatever reason, a lot of very short short stories (pace Hemingway and his baby shoes) seem to tend to fantastical genres. I recall many years ago reading a book entitled something to the effect of The World’s Best Short Short Short Stories: this set an upper limit of fifty words and presented then in decreasing order of length. At fifty words you can still produce decent vignettes of family drama and professional and interpersonal dilemmas. As the word count tightens, the tendency toward sf increases. At eight words, I found a story attributed to Anthony Burgess, although he mentions it in a 1948 article as being widely known already:
As you know, the shortest science fiction story ever written goes like this : " that morning the sun rose in the west "At six words we come across something that Ramsey Campbell’s daughter Timsin said at four which so unnerved her father, he published it under her name:
When I’m dead, I’ll be hungry.Six or so, as I recall, seemed to be about the lower limit to get any sort of meaning into the story. If you are straining to squeeze a second verb into your narrative, there’s not much room to maneuver. Often we see the title doing some heavy lifting.
Anyway, the word count in the book got tighter and tighter until you were down to the single-word stories. One was a sweeping history of humankind:
GenelypseAnother was tithed, iirc, “The Ultimate One-Word First Contact Story:”
Ouch!Counterintuitively, the one-word stories were not the shortest. Two stories by Edward Wellen snuck in under that limit. One was called, “If Eve Failed To Conceive” and ran thus:
.Even punctuation got shed in the shortest piece in the book. The final story was titled “Why Booth Didn’t Kill Lincoln.” In its entirety, here it is:
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:54 PM on October 21, 2020
storybored: I see that piece got republished in 2016 and the author bio there has an email address, in case you want to let them know you liked it!
ricochet biscuit: HMMM, now I'm curious to find non-speculative flash fiction that's as short as the pieces you're discussing!
Often we see the title doing some heavy lifting.
Yeah -- when I was in elementary school, I wrote a poem that had a title like "On the Uniqueness of Our Solar System's Nuclear Power Source" that went something like (in totality):
ricochet biscuit: HMMM, now I'm curious to find non-speculative flash fiction that's as short as the pieces you're discussing!
Often we see the title doing some heavy lifting.
Yeah -- when I was in elementary school, I wrote a poem that had a title like "On the Uniqueness of Our Solar System's Nuclear Power Source" that went something like (in totality):
Sun?posted by brainwane at 8:44 AM on October 22, 2020
One!
There was an Ask thread a couple of years ago on the best stories on Daily Science Fiction. A couple of MeFites shared links to their stories.
posted by maurice at 2:04 PM on October 22, 2020
posted by maurice at 2:04 PM on October 22, 2020
I just had to know the title of the anthology you mentioned, ricochet biscuit, because it sounds like something I want to read. You memory is impressive, because you were spot-on with several story titles. That's how I managed to find Worlds in Small, collected by John Robert Colombo.
Thank you for putting it on my radar!
posted by xenization at 6:53 PM on October 22, 2020
Thank you for putting it on my radar!
posted by xenization at 6:53 PM on October 22, 2020
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I've wondered who the author is, since the credit is given to a pseudonym.
posted by storybored at 9:37 PM on October 21, 2020 [2 favorites]