Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
The summer is flying by! I don’t know about you, but I have like eleventy zillion things I want to get done outside while the weather is nice. But that means I have less time to read, which bums me out. I can’t win! One thing that makes me feel like I’m getting in a lot of reading is short stories. They take less time to put in your brain, and they’re resolved quickly.
If you want to get in some reading and not have to worry about losing the plot, you should read short stories, too! To that end, I have pulled together a list of excellent older sci-fi and fantasy collections from small presses that you may have missed. Betcha can’t eat just one! (Note: My editor would like me to tell you that no, you should not actually eat the books.)
North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud
This is an award-winning collection of dark fantasy stories filled with monsters, both literal and figurative. People fall in love, people fall out of love, people make terrible decisions and Faustian bargains (which is also a terrible decision.) There is a werewolf and an angel. (But not a werewolf angel. Someone write that story. You’re welcome.) There are aliens. These stories cover a lot of weird ground. And they’re also the basis for the Hulu series Monsterland!
Meet Me in the Future by Kameron Hurley
Switching gears from fantasy to sci-fi now: This is a highly lauded collection that is out of this world. Sometimes literally! A swamp dweller must save the world from her ex, a body-hopper seeks revenge for the loss of his pet elephant, fighters come together to work a machine that changes reality, a sentient starship is the recipient of affection, and more!
Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons by Keith Rosson
This book houses 15 wildly original dark fantasy stories about humanity, loss, hope, and more. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are sent on a team-building cruise by God to boost morale, a husband searches for his missing wife’s cult by way of a fortune teller, a man buys his wife a hearse to ride in on her way to scatter her sister’s ashes. There’s a story involving the Tooth Fairy, ghosts, a haunted restaurant, and a distressing story about a hog farm (but not as upsetting as the story in the collection below!)
Swords and Spaceships
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Ambiguity Machines by Vandana Singh
One of the things I loved about this smart collection is that I learned that Singh is a scientist before I read the stories. It made them that much more dazzling, because she knows how to use her knowledge to create realistic fiction. There’s a poet who wakes up centuries later as an AI companion on a spaceship, a woman who can look into the past, aliens who may or may not be controlling physics, trouble in a solar-powered village in Delhi, a woman who travels to Alaska to find out about her missing aunt, and possibly the most upsetting story I’ve read involving a slaughterhouse.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda
Last but not least is this English language debut by Japanese author Yukiko Motoya. These eleven speculative stories are strange and transfixing! There’s the title character, a housewife who tries to change her body to get her husband’s attention; a saleswoman dealing with a customer who won’t come out of the fitting room; a boy who learns that umbrellas may be the key to flying; a woman who thinks her beloved’s facial features are starting to mimic her own; and many more zany tales!
And if you want more short story recommendations, I got you, boo.
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
English (US) · 