SF stories where kindness wins
March 19, 2021 6:43 AM   Subscribe

The link has five stories. There are plenty more in the comments.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz (12 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oh Penric is fun. And I loved the Goblin Emperor and I did not know that there was a sequel coming so that's exciting!
posted by Wretch729 at 7:28 AM on March 19, 2021


This is my wheelhouse, especially during pandemic times. I am not looking for catharsis, I'm looking for books that have wit, good writing but also, very much, kindness.

I love the Penric series, and it has really benefitted from the ability to publish short novellas on eReaders. Twenty year ago I think even someone like Bujold would be getting pressure to make them novel length and these tight little stories would get diluted.

Goblin Emperor is great too. I briefly confused it for Nine Goblins, which would fit perfectly on this list as well (as would at least 90% of T. Kingfisher's stuff.)

I liked Hal Clement as a teenager but don't think I read this one. I think I may track down that and the other two.
posted by mark k at 7:50 AM on March 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


That's the only Hal Clement I've ever read. I remember there's a chapter about finding cognates and their first conversations, which we really enjoyable and a nice change from universal translators.
posted by Hactar at 8:12 AM on March 19, 2021


There is a great deal of kindness to be found throughout the works of Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe and most especially Cordwainer Smith.
posted by y2karl at 8:51 AM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


My experience reading Terry Pratchett was always the underlying kindness. The cynicism always seemed to come with a wink, and the truly horrible stuff seemed to get addressed in a (more-or-less, and internally coherent) satisfactory way. Thanks for sharing this today!
posted by elkevelvet at 8:58 AM on March 19, 2021 [6 favorites]


It's great to see James White on this list. I grew up reading and re-reading his Sector General novels, which are fun and full of kindness on a space hospital full of aliens and medical mysteries. Ignorance and disease always lose to science and cooperation, and empathy is a key skill.
posted by beandip at 9:06 AM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


I find your lack of soap-opera obsessed misanthropic killer robots disturbing.
posted by signal at 9:57 AM on March 19, 2021 [10 favorites]


If you haven't read T. J. Klune's The House On The Cerulean Sea yet, please give it a shot. It's not science fiction, exactly, though it takes place in a quasi-modern dystopia. Kind of. The author refers to it as gentle fantasy. I'd classify it as a life-changing experience. So many feelings.

But I'm not here to plug that one. After reading Cerulean Sea, I decided to go back and read everything Mr. Klune has published. I can't quite sum up what it means as an old gay guy to see a writer put such craft, such love, and such talent into queer stories, with queer characters living interesting lives and having funny and/or terrifying queer adventures.

And in all of his books, kindness is everything.

The one I keep coming back to, though, is a science fiction novel called Murmuration. It's a Twilight Zone style science fiction novel, and an absorbing mystery. And I keep thinking about the ending, and wondering what I would have done, and what that says about me.
posted by MrVisible at 10:21 AM on March 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


Oh, this is wonderful. The Goblin Emperor has been my comfort read, and I am very (quietly, hopefully) excited to read anything that ends up joining it on a list of stories in which kindness prevails. I haven't read any of the other four; I keep seeing recommendations for Lois McMaster Bujold, but the sexual abuse in the first book of hers that I tried put me off; I'm looking forward to checking out Penric's Demon.

Thank you for mentioning the wealth to be found in the comments.

(And also, this makes me realize that there are probably a lot of good recommendations to be found at Tor.com; I shall have to explore further.)

I'm sure all MeFites already know about the excellent collection of short story links posted by brainwane, turned into a webpage and an ebook and a spreadsheet by aniola - but in case you didn't know, please take a look. It's a fantastic collection full of great stories, many with notable kindness.

What a wonderful gift. Thank you so much for posting this, Nancy Lebovitz!
posted by kristi at 11:06 AM on March 19, 2021 [4 favorites]


A few more I'd recommend:

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher. It's kind of like a romantic comedy where the meet cute involves a "respectable widow" and sword containing the immortal soul of a warrior. I hope those crazy kids make it work somehow! Clockwork Boys, also by her, is great--it's the only book that made me simultaneously say "Did this person just novelize a D&D campaign they ran?" and "Please give more!"

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord is less overtly comic, but has lyrical writing that draws on themes from African folk tales and kindness is the point.

I keep seeing recommendations for Lois McMaster Bujold, but the sexual abuse in the first book of hers that I tried put me off

I'm a fan of hers and there's probably no book that I don't like, taken as a whole, but there's enough, well, borderline stuff spread across her books that I don't recommend her works to others indiscriminately. The only outright abuse I remember is in the early Vorkosigan books (and it's bad) but other ones have relationships that get the side eye from me--and would get more than that, if they appeared in books where the author was a man. (The Sharing Knife, recommended by a commenter in the original thread, comes to mind--it would totally belong on this list but not everyone's going to get past the central relationship.)

But there's none of that in the Penric and Desdemona stuff. Hope you like it!
posted by mark k at 4:28 PM on March 19, 2021 [3 favorites]


A lot of what Theodore Sturgeon wrote is like this. A Saucer Full of Loneliness is the one that comes to mind, but also Slow Sculpture and many others. Sturgeon was one of the first SF writers to realize that the medium should be about people as well as ideas.
Bruce Sterling's Paradise. The hero is in love with a beautiful woman he can't even talk to, and the more his world falls apart the happier he is because he's with her. One of my favorite short stories.
Also Michael Shaara's Opening Up Slowly, from the collection Soldier Boy..
And, of course, almost anything by Zenna Henderson, but especially Subcommittee, from The Anything Box.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 6:22 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


First Contact
posted by lathrop at 3:40 PM on March 20, 2021


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