2010 Locus Short Story Club
OK, I’ve received just enough encouragement to be dangerous here, so we’ll try this out. Last week I put together a list based on all the awards short lists I could find to date. I argued that these represent a newborn consensus about the best fiction of 2010. On the list were three short stories and three novelettes, five of which are available online. In the spirit of Torque Control’s Short Story Clubs, I propose to read the five available short stories on the following schedule:
- May 22: “The Jaguar House, in Shadow”, Aliette de Bodard [Hugo Nebula] [Discussion]
- May 29: “Ponies”, Kij Johnson [Hugo Nebula] [Discussion]
- June 5: “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made”, Eric James Stone [Hugo Nebula] [Discussion]
- June 12: “The Things”, Peter Watts [Locus Hugo BSFA, Shirley Jackson] [Discussion]
- June 19: “Plus or Minus”, James Patrick Kelly [Locus Hugo Nebula]
This interleaves the novelettes with short stories, with luck avoiding burn-out. It will put people ahead on their Hugo reading if they are so inclined. And it will wrap up just before the Locus Awards are announced in Seattle. I hope you’ll be able to join in the reading and the discussion!
what would be more valuable than simply rubber stamping consensus would be to ask: what awesome stories were overlooked and should’ve been on such lists. jv
Obviously the full Locus Recommended Reading List has 45 novelettes and 68 short stories that we think are worth reading. [I felt like that might be a bit too much for a Short Story Club series.] And personally, I posted back in February about short stories that I was nominating for the Hugos. Lois Tilton reviews short fiction on Locus Online twice a month. I don’t think we’re particularly hiding the titles that we think awesome; but now that nomination season is pretty much behind us it’s interesting to see what’s emerged at the head of the pack.
Well, I’m in.
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This seems a bit premature. The Sturgeon and World Fantasy lists among others haven’t yet been published.
I like the idea; get more people reading and discussing short fiction, hooray. Jeff, you can host that roundtable for under-served stories on your blog, eh? 🙂 Ex: the Locus recommended reading list had no stories from Redstone, just one from Daily SF, nothing from Shimmer, nothing from Weird Tales (JM McDermott’s “Dedalus and The Labyrinth” comes to mind), one story from Realms of Fantasy, nothing from Electric Velocipede, nothing from LCRW, nothing from Sybill’s Garage, nothing from Abyss & Apex, … One which immediately comes to mind, though, is Brenda Cooper’s “My Father’s Singularity” (Clarkesworld) which is actually quite in the running for my favorite story of 2010. Another is Felix Gilman’s “Lightbringers and Rainmakers” on Tor.com. (Another thing which I note here is that Kij Johnson’s “Ponies” is not actually on the Locus Recommended reading list; so this short story club list here already adds something.) Also missing is (again, IMHO, though of course no reading list can be infinite) the SHINE anthology, DARK FUTURES, and THE IMMERSION BOOK OF SF. (Missing Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Alchemist” makes sense, as this is a reading list, and the novella was out only in audio last year, print wasn’t until this year.)
Back on Jeff’s idea, the recommended reading list had nothing from Crossed Genres, which I read some of this year, and at least Ada Milenkovic Brown’s “Nadirah Sends Her Love” was quite memorable.
@Sam M-B: And that’s an excellent start on a completely different 68 item list, which is valuable but still impractical for a Short Story Club. I’m with you, Karen. (And Sam and Jeff could always end comments on one of these stories with recommendations for others that they consider to be relevant to the discussion in some way, and of equal or higher merit.)
I agree that many fine works aren’t here – in fact most of my favorite stories of the year – but it will be interesting to hear all the thoughts about these specific stories. I’ll be involved.
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