This time around it was even harder to just pick four stories, since I loved almost every single story in this collection. The 2019 collection edited by Carmen Maria Machado is definitely my favorite year so far. You know the drill by now. If you can, buy the book, if you can't, follow the links to the stories that can be found online. Enjoy!
1) While it was hard to pick the other three, choosing this one as number one was actually quite easy. Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good by LaShawn M. Wanak is really quite something. From the premise to the setting to the characters and social commentary, this story is truly exquisite. There's an epidemic of so-called stumps, wood-like spore formations that can be lethal if breathed in. Some people have the ability to destroy these stumps with singing and these people are asked to work for an agency of questionable intent that does just that. Telling you more would spoil it, I fear and it is so much more than I can quickly summarize in a few sentences.
2) When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis by Annalee Newitz is about a disease-tracking and epidemic-preventing robot who gets left alone when the funding for its program runs out (pointedly enough its human handler now works for Amazon Health). And still it follows its objective to keep the population of St. Louis safe. It is aided by a crow it befriended and by a child living in an occupied building. I like the optimistic tone despite the dismal state of that world and I greatly enjoy the robot learning crow language.
3) I love Martin Cahill's Godmeat because it hints at every turn at a greater story, a larger world. A brilliant cook is tasked with preparing the meat from dead Old Gods for new vengeful gods to help them take on physical form. He does so because he is angry at the world and feels betrayed and he relishes the challenge. That the ascension of the new gods would almost certainly mean the end of the world is something he accepts, at least in the beginning. Despite the grandiose backdrop, it is actually a quite personal story about regret and redemption and letting go of resentment.
4) Nino Cipri's Dead Air is a subtle horror story told through transcripts of audio-recordings, which I greatly enjoyed. The manner of telling contributed to the uncanniness and uncertainty, because you couldn't be sure what was happening. An artist interviews her lovers for an art project and unexpectedly falls in love with one of them, a mysterious woman that cannot - but has to - go home to confront the things that haunt her. I really like the atmosphere created here through story-telling and the use of transcripts and the way the story haunted me.
Okay, I can't restrain myself. I recommend two more stories:
Ada Hoffmann's Variations on a Theme from Turandot for a wonderful blend of fiction and reality that happens in a theater and the escape that lies in the malleability of stories.
P. Djèlí Clark's The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington for episodic tales of magic and consequences and what it says on the tin.
I truly enjoy these collections a lot. Maybe I should look into subscribing to one of these magazines the stories come from and get more stories more often. Anyway, enjoy these! They're brilliant!
Satori over and out
