A (not The) History of Twitter and Short Speculative Fiction

About a week there was a discussion happening on Twitter about the importance of Twitter. Actually, there were many such conversations happening and many probably are still happening. One of these discussions was of specific interest to me, however, as it was focused on the importance (or not) of Twitter to the current era of short speculative fiction consider by many to be a golden age1I would consider myself one of these many people., at least in content if not in its contributions to writers’, editors’ or publishers’ bank accounts. In response to that discussion I wrote a long thread about the very important ways I had personally seen Twitter contribute as an important tool to the creation of this golden age. The rest of this post is a cleaned up adaption of that thread posted here so that it will continue to exist if Twitter doesn’t and for anyone else interested in this history.

Here is the quick and dirty version: do I think Twitter has been important to the development of the current golden age of short speculative fiction? Yes, absolutely. Not question. More importantly, I think it’s important to consider WHO it has been most important for.

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2022 Short Fiction Round Up 2

Time for some more short fiction I want to share with you all. It’s been a couple weeks since the last post (which was the first of the year) and I figure I should make a note about the schedule I plan to keep as I try to once again not get derailed off this project. My desire is to make weekly recommendation posts, but I’m giving myself permission to not feel bad at all if it slips to bi-weekly at times. Too often when I start missing my own self-imposed deadlines I start feeling bad and then I start not wanting to think about it at all which makes it harder to get done which leads to more missed deadlines and more feeling bad and and and I think you see where I’m going with this, yeah? So that’s the goal: weekly, but not feeling bad if it isn’t.

Often when I’m reading and picking out stories for these posts I find themes and patterns start to emerge, and I always find that interesting and fun, but this week is a little different because I decided to actively seek out stories that fit a theme I wanted. That theme? I wanted stories that made me happy. That I would want to read again because they made me so happy. Every story I recommend is a story I like, and that I think are really good. That’s not the same thing as saying every story I recommend makes me happy. It’s been a hard couple weeks for so many people everywhere. It always is you might say, but these couple weeks have felt extra so.

And so I chose to look for the happy. That’s come out in different ways as you’ll see below. Not every story is funny or joyful, though there’s a good helping of that, but for me each of these stories left me feeling good. Made me want to read them again and let them put a smile on my face, whether that smile was the aftermath of a burst of laughter or bittersweet and tinged with memory. It is my sincere wish that you find something here that makes you smile and a little happy too.

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Severance: “Defiant Jazz”

I haven’t done this in awhile, but we have been gifted with my new favorite TV show, Severance, and I have felt compelled to talk about the character and storycraft of my favorite episode of the season. If you haven’t watched Severance yet, or haven’t watched up to at least the focus of this discussion, episode 7, “Defiant Jazz”, you should be warned that this will be spoilerific. I don’t think I’ll be spoiling anything of the final two episodes of the season, but these things can bleed together a bit so I can’t make any promises.

Now, if you aren’t concerned with spoilers or have watched the first 7 or more episodes of the show then, please, read on. Last warning though, from here on: there be spoilers.

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2021 Short Fiction Round Up 2

The roundup returns with 5 more stories I’d like to share with you. 5 things I read this week and enjoyed. There is a lot of dark and horror on the slate this week but there is also some pure fun and funny of the light hearted and macabre sort. Every story this week is available to read for free, though I always encourage you to support your favorite magazines when and if you can. By word of mouth for stories you particularly like if nothing else. Now, on with the recommendations!

“There, in the Woods” by Clara Madrigano from The Dark #68

Kicking things off with a good old ‘there is something in the woods’ story. It’s grim (though not gruesome) and the weight of near-hopelessness descends by the end but the story drew me in, much like the woods our protagonist lives by, and I found myself wanting to stay with it to the end. After, as I thought more and more about the story of Lucy and the creepy land and forest that has taken her parents, her husband, and a local boy she didn’t even know I found myself trying to decide if she had been fated to some kind of doom from the moment, as a child, when her parents moved the family to their new house by the woods, or from the moment she let herself fall for her husband Nick. Perhaps one led, in an inevitable sort of way, to the other. “There, in the Woods” feels like, as Chuck Wendig has described Paul Tremblay’s writing, “supernatural-adjacent” horror and it is the parts of the story that would be unsettling even if there weren’t something in the woods that will likely leave you thinking over the story again later.

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Past FIYAH Stories Featured in the Roundup

One of my favorite speculative fiction magazines, FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, got a lot of deserved and overdue attention this past weekend and has acquired enough new subscribers to move into paying their writers SFWA pro rates. This has really brightened my day!

Along with the impromptu subscription drive efforts I noticed many people asking about back issues. You can buy back issues of FIYAH and they’ve also put together back issue bundles for each of their previous years of operation. That being the case I thought a little roundup of the FIYAH stories I’ve included in past roundups would be in order.

Please note: EVERY issue of FIYAH is excellent and I am not issuing these as any kind of authoritative “best of” of the magazine. That’s not how my roundups work. I read widely and I put a selection of things I personally particularly enjoy into my roundups in the weeks I do them. I don’t usually read issues of any magazine back to front in order all in one go so stories I choose to include in round ups are never a commentary on the other stories in any particular issue of any particular magazine that I don’t, that’s just not how my process works.

That said, if you’re looking for some back issues of FIYAH here are some stories I enjoyed in the past and what I said about them then. I’ve edited out some commentary that’s irrelevant to the actual stories for here and it should be noted that over time how verbose I’ve been when discussing stories in my roundups has generally grown and also waxed and waned. The amount of words I spilled over any story has no bearing on my views of it’s quality. If I included it in a roundup it’s because I like it and think it’s well worth people’s time.

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