Hello and welcome back to another round up of short SFF speculative fiction I’ve enjoyed recently. And wow did I really enjoy these. I think we’ve got some lighter stuff than we’ve had in recent roundups, though not everything here falls into that category. We also have a return of a couple authors I’ve featured in previous roundups. Octavia Cade, whose short fiction is a must try for me, becomes the third author I’ve recommended at least three stories of and Charles Payseur, who is, in my opinion, the premiere short spec fiction reviewer out there, has his second appearance in my roundup. And now for the actual stories:

“When We Were Patched” by Deji Bryce Olukotun from Escape Pod 730

This is a fun story and one that has left me pondering many little pieces of it. It seems pretty straightforward: it is a story about a futuristic kind of extreme tennis match as told by the AI assistant to the referee for the match. What shakes things up is that as an AI with it’s own thoughts and opinions Theodophilus finds itself as much in conflict with the referee Malik as the two fierce competitors of the match do with each other. What I find myself pondering still is how trustworthy of a narrator Theodophilus is and how much our own feelings about sport and the right and wrong way for athletes to behave might influence how much we want to trust the AI. I also really appreciated all the generally subtle but very effective worldbuilding that happens in this story.¹Though I don’t think I’d particularly like the highly corporate world it hints at. Finally, though the sports match is the secondary conflict in this story it still paints a picture of a great championship match that the sports fan in me can’t help but appreciate, especially in this sports-less time we find ourselves in.