I grew up with a shelf-full of Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines. My mother's favorites. I didn't read them, myself. I didn't really get it. Until now. I (horrors!) still don't read SF&F except for research. There is, however, a magazine that I like a lot, one that seems to be the contemporary equivalent of The Venerable.
Lightspeed magazine is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine that I discovered as a subscription e-book that gets delivered to my Kindle monthly.
In the issue I'm reading (I've got a few back issues on my Kindle), I started with a short sci-fi story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I discovered her Retrieval Artist series through the library as an audio book. If you like detective stories set in a future that have alien colonies on the moon and corporate skullduggery, head in her direction. Her short story, "The Craters", is chilling. Although set in the future and not part of her on-going novel series, its concept is based in the past as well as the present, and challenges our ideas of who is expendable and how we justify our choices.
Given my penchant for fairy tales, it took a while for me to recognize the theme of "Her Words Like Hunting Vixens Spring" by Brooke Bolander. It didn't matter though. The flow of language, the energy of characterization and landscape, swept me along like a tumbleweed in a windstorm. I have a new favored author and want to hear more from her mouth.
The most recent read, and another fairy tale reference, is "The Mermaid and the Mortal Thing" by Chris Willrich. It's not your usual Little Mermaid retelling. Darker and with a twist that makes me smile, it's one I would probably rate as retellable.
For those of you with a penchant for podcasts, Lightspeed has one of those also. And, if you are like me and like someone to read to you while you are doing something else, you can have the story read to you.
I used to package medical samples with a couple of other women when I lived in San Francisco. That is where I discovered the wonderfulness of listening to books being read. Way back then, we tuned the radio to KALW which was a public radio station. We listened to The Spider's Web and a reading of Little House on the Prairie. That was it for me. I was hooked on the sound of radio and story. I credit that time spent in company, doing work, and being serenaded by story for my continuing chase of the podcast, the aural, the voice of story,.
When did you last enjoy someone reading to you? Do you have a favorite story to tell someone else about? What story can you still tell with delight?
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