Short story: “Punk Voyager”

“Punk Voyager,” by Shaenon K. Garrity

Read quite effectively (with the cussing!) for Escape Pod 380, January 24th, 2013, by Nathaniel Lee; revived for Escape Pod 937 for Flashback Friday on April 18th, 2024

3,016 words

(Spoilers for a fun, silly story! Go read or listen to it first!) Sooo…you’ve gotta love a story where President Reagan gets cock-punched. The beginning doesn’t really give you a character to latch onto and root for, but by the end you’re rooting for, if not a specific character, then the sheer anarchic nonsense going on.

I tsked at the punks’ disrespect for Chuck Berry. But disrespect is kind of their thing.

I was surprised and pleased to see that Cory Doctorow recommended this story.

Short story: “Likes”

“Likes,” by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

In the New Yorker, October 2nd, 2017 (read); read very well by David Bezmozgis for the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, April 2024 (listen)

A few thousand words?

Damn, that’s a great evocation of a moment in history and, it seems to me, of parenthood. Not that I know anything about parenthood. But the obsessive quality of this dad’s worry, I understand just fine.

“There’s so much vagueness around the election. The year is never given. The name of the candidates is never given,” Bezmozgis remarks, and wonders if future generations will need footnotes. I find this vagueness so interesting.

Novelette: “You Came to the Tower”

“You Came to the Tower,” by Shaenon K. Garrity

In Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 4, October 9th, 2019 (read online), and read by Wulf Moon on their podcast

9,970 words

Wow, awesome story. You can really feel the influence of We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Garrity remarked on Bluesky that this is inspired by that novel and I Capture the Castle, which I haven’t yet read), although Cat is quite a bit younger than Merricat. And like We Have Always Lived, this story makes you almost perversely feel the rightness, the beauty of the protagonist’s girlish oddity. You root for her to make the Tower safe for her and Kaida again, whatever the cost. Garrity is a gem.

Some lines I adore:

“But there’s a deep, muddy furrow between knowing the fact of something and seeing it before you.”

“The agony of love! It is exactly like it is in books after all.”

Short story: “A Theory Pre-Post-Mortem”

“A Theory Pre-Post-Mortem,” by Joyce Carol Oates

In Conjunctions:73, Earth Elegies, Fall 2019, with a January 30th, 2020 reading posted here; collected in Zero-Sum

Maybe 1,500 or 2,000 words?

Oh, that ending, when it seems the story has only begun. But what more is there to say than love—foolishness—a changing world—love.

Short story: “The Cold”

“The Cold,” by Joyce Carol Oates

In Virginia Quarterly Review, Volume 95 #2, Summer 2019 (online here, but you get a limited number of free articles); collected in Zero-Sum

6,579 words

Weird ending, even for Oates. Grief/postpartum depression (?) causing actual hallucinations?

Short story that became part of a novel: “Safari”

“Safari,” by Jennifer Egan

Appeared in the New Yorker, January 3rd, 2010 (subscribers can read here); anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2010, although I thought BASS got stories from the previous year only?; became chapter 4 of the novel in short stories A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011), which won the Pulitzer; read by Greg Jackson for the New Yorker Fiction Podcast‘s March 1st, 2024 episode

Several thousand words

(Spoilers.) Ah, those flashforwards. Poor Rolf. Poor everyone. I really enjoy the kids’ characters/minds.

Short stories: “Mr. Stickum”

“Mr. Stickum,” by Joyce Carol Oates

In Playboy, Summer 2019 (read online); collected in Zero-Sum

4,561 words

Marvelous. I can’t completely visualize Mr. Stickum, but I think Oates doesn’t intend us to. That ending, that last paragraph, seems to tell us that these girls/women were/are never motivated by justice at all. I remember that age, the lovingly crafted fantasies of revenge, vigilantism, secret power. Nothing sweeter indeed.

The first-person plural narrative voice is so well chosen. Perhaps Oates didn’t even consider it consciously when she chose it.

Such an interesting choice on Oates’s part to publish this in Playboy. One often asks whether magazines of that kind, and Playboy in particular, are exploitative of women and sexuality—well, some of us do not ask, merely argue or assert it as fact. I haven’t read an issue of Playboy in so many years that I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking a stance. I seem to recall I mostly looked at the cartoons at the time anyway.

Short story: “Demon Clown Diary”

“Demon Clown Diary,” by Shaenon Garrity

In The Sockdolager, which is seemingly on hiatus now, summer 2016

3,374 words

Oh this is fun. Love that last line.

Short story: “Foley’s Pond”

“Foley’s Pond,” by Peter Orner

In The Paris Review, Issue 202, Fall 2012 (online for subscribers) and read by Jim Fletcher on a season 4 episode of their podcast, February 21st, 2024

It feels quite short, maybe 2,000 words?

This is so good. For some reason the narrator didn’t make the kid’s question sound like a question, but the context afterwards made it clear.

Flash fiction story: “Pot”

“Pot,” by Chuck Rothman

In Daily Science Fiction, March 16th, 2015; read amusingly by Eric Valdes for PodCastle 820, January 2nd, 2024

734 words

Ha.