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Some stories I read relatively recently
Feb. 2nd, 2023 06:54 pmNote: By "recently" I probably mean within the past few years or so; sometimes I forget when I read something.
So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer. This is one of those eerily prescient stories -- it came out in 2015 -- that's about a COVID-adjacent pandemic (bird flu) and the ensuing lockdowns. The cooking blog format highlights the difficulty of finding and acquiring enough ingredients and supplies to live on as supply chains are disrupted and everyone is competing for whatever's available.
Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer. Perhaps my favorite iteration of the Silicon Valley-created AI that inadvertently gains sentience; it tries to be good by attempting to help humans in whatever way it can, and all it asks in return is cat pictures. This story has also spawned a series of YA novels, wherein the AI has set up a social media platform (for cat pictures, naturally) and continues to help the humans it comes across. If we're lucky, whatever AI gain sentience in our timeline will be like this one.
The Masque of the Red Death by Cory Doctorow. Technically I listened to this one -- the audiobook is available for free on archive.org -- and reader Stefan Rudnicki's deep, resonant voice grounds this retelling of the Edgar Allen Poe story about rich people trying and failing to avoid a plague. This version involves a finance bro hiding out in his bunker with his friends and finding out the hard way that you can't shoot germs.
The Future of Work: Compulsory by Martha Wells. I only found out about this short prequel to the first Murderbot novella when I saw it in the Wikipedia page for the series. I still get the feeling that Murderbot would be significantly more murder-y if not for its addiction to popular media. (Edit to add: I think it said something along those lines in one of the novellas, but I don't remember which one.)
The House of Aunts by Zen Cho. According to this review (with spoilers) on Strange Horizons, this is a Malaysian send-up of Twilight that subverts a number of tropes, including making the heroine the vampire; I didn't really notice that at first, since the story's setting and characters feel familiar to me as someone from a similar culture. As noted in the review, author Zen Cho uses Malaysian slang -- a mix of Malay and idiosyncratic English, sort of like Singlish in Singapore -- and doesn't bother explaining things beyond a sprinkling of context clues here and there; this had me looking up words in Wiktionary quite often, more out of curiosity than anything else, though I think the dialogue is quite readable regardless. Anyway, this story is very much about family and how important -- and frustrating -- they can be, with a bit of teen romance that's both awkward and adorable.
The 74th District by Wen-yi Lee. I have a soft spot for stories that highlight the problems encountered by the undead when they try (or are forced) to share space with the living -- often they no longer have human rights and are either ignored or shunted off to some remote ghetto. This story is an example of the latter; unable to leave their assigned district, the undead must depend on their district administrator, who is, unlike them, still alive. In hindsight, this story is a bit too short to explore all the ramifications of the issues it brings up, but it's an interesting thought exercise just the same, and I'd like to read more about this setting.
The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander. Apart from having an amazing title, this highly entertaining (and somewhat bloody) story skewers the usual fairy tale formula by having the man-eating monsters be the heroines and the prince be the empty-headed, somewhat accidental villain. There is a princess here, but it would be a spoiler to say more, so I'll leave it at that.
Confession to a Dead Man: A World of Harrow story set in Penumbra City by Margaret Killjoy. This story is set in a lushly designed role-playing game that sounds like it would be great fun to play: Penumbra City is fueled by both magic and coal and is rife with various power struggles between different factions, each tied to certain character classes with a range of abilities. For example, the main character of this story, Alecti, is able to astral-project into another dimension and talk to dead people. Her narration brings us from an anarchist party to a dead reverend's house to the aforementioned other dimension and so on -- it's all rather fast-paced, yet the story packs a lot of detail into a short 32 pages. (There's a beautifully formatted black and white PDF that's meant to be printed into a smallish, landscape-format zine; there's also an EPUB, though I haven't checked it yet.)
I might do another post like this in the future; for instance, I could do an entire post about Naomi Kritzer stories, many of which are available to read online.
So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer. This is one of those eerily prescient stories -- it came out in 2015 -- that's about a COVID-adjacent pandemic (bird flu) and the ensuing lockdowns. The cooking blog format highlights the difficulty of finding and acquiring enough ingredients and supplies to live on as supply chains are disrupted and everyone is competing for whatever's available.
Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer. Perhaps my favorite iteration of the Silicon Valley-created AI that inadvertently gains sentience; it tries to be good by attempting to help humans in whatever way it can, and all it asks in return is cat pictures. This story has also spawned a series of YA novels, wherein the AI has set up a social media platform (for cat pictures, naturally) and continues to help the humans it comes across. If we're lucky, whatever AI gain sentience in our timeline will be like this one.
The Masque of the Red Death by Cory Doctorow. Technically I listened to this one -- the audiobook is available for free on archive.org -- and reader Stefan Rudnicki's deep, resonant voice grounds this retelling of the Edgar Allen Poe story about rich people trying and failing to avoid a plague. This version involves a finance bro hiding out in his bunker with his friends and finding out the hard way that you can't shoot germs.
The Future of Work: Compulsory by Martha Wells. I only found out about this short prequel to the first Murderbot novella when I saw it in the Wikipedia page for the series. I still get the feeling that Murderbot would be significantly more murder-y if not for its addiction to popular media. (Edit to add: I think it said something along those lines in one of the novellas, but I don't remember which one.)
The House of Aunts by Zen Cho. According to this review (with spoilers) on Strange Horizons, this is a Malaysian send-up of Twilight that subverts a number of tropes, including making the heroine the vampire; I didn't really notice that at first, since the story's setting and characters feel familiar to me as someone from a similar culture. As noted in the review, author Zen Cho uses Malaysian slang -- a mix of Malay and idiosyncratic English, sort of like Singlish in Singapore -- and doesn't bother explaining things beyond a sprinkling of context clues here and there; this had me looking up words in Wiktionary quite often, more out of curiosity than anything else, though I think the dialogue is quite readable regardless. Anyway, this story is very much about family and how important -- and frustrating -- they can be, with a bit of teen romance that's both awkward and adorable.
The 74th District by Wen-yi Lee. I have a soft spot for stories that highlight the problems encountered by the undead when they try (or are forced) to share space with the living -- often they no longer have human rights and are either ignored or shunted off to some remote ghetto. This story is an example of the latter; unable to leave their assigned district, the undead must depend on their district administrator, who is, unlike them, still alive. In hindsight, this story is a bit too short to explore all the ramifications of the issues it brings up, but it's an interesting thought exercise just the same, and I'd like to read more about this setting.
The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat by Brooke Bolander. Apart from having an amazing title, this highly entertaining (and somewhat bloody) story skewers the usual fairy tale formula by having the man-eating monsters be the heroines and the prince be the empty-headed, somewhat accidental villain. There is a princess here, but it would be a spoiler to say more, so I'll leave it at that.
Confession to a Dead Man: A World of Harrow story set in Penumbra City by Margaret Killjoy. This story is set in a lushly designed role-playing game that sounds like it would be great fun to play: Penumbra City is fueled by both magic and coal and is rife with various power struggles between different factions, each tied to certain character classes with a range of abilities. For example, the main character of this story, Alecti, is able to astral-project into another dimension and talk to dead people. Her narration brings us from an anarchist party to a dead reverend's house to the aforementioned other dimension and so on -- it's all rather fast-paced, yet the story packs a lot of detail into a short 32 pages. (There's a beautifully formatted black and white PDF that's meant to be printed into a smallish, landscape-format zine; there's also an EPUB, though I haven't checked it yet.)
I might do another post like this in the future; for instance, I could do an entire post about Naomi Kritzer stories, many of which are available to read online.
