Ten Recent SF/F Short Stories about Love

July 2, 2017 7:32 PM

"Upgrades" by Barry Charman (Daily Science Fiction, 2/14/2017): "The robots kept their rendezvous, and held hands beneath the bridge. This wasn't supposed to happen, they knew, but only the moon could see them, and it wouldn't tell."

Four-dimensional companionships

"Cyclical" by Tanya Breshears (Daily Science Fiction, 1/20/2017): "May returns to her familiar place to grieve, a moment she once spent on a sunny hillside, flat on her back with her face to the sky, fingers twisted in the grass like she might soon be flung off this spinning planet. She supposes it's telling that her most comforting moment is a human one."

"The Heart's Cartography" by Susan Jane Bigelow (Lightspeed, May 2017): "Jade was the sort of backwoods girl who had a map of the countryside tattooed on her heart, and she could feel it in her bones when the pieces of her world shifted. So when the new family moved into the house across the road that late summer, she felt ripples of wrongness radiating out from them and their too-bright clothes, their bizarrely old-fashioned wood-paneled station wagon, and their rolling words that felt just a little to the left of normal. 'Time travelers,' said Jade's brother, watching them from the window the day they moved in."

Heroes' journeys toward love

"Infinite Love Engine" by Joseph Allen Hill (Lightspeed, April 2017): "Beeblax beats its wings against a superlumic slurry of time and space, and the universe turns to liquid starlight in its periphery; inside rides Aria Astra—Stellar Champion of the Star Supremacy, Wielder of the Sister Ray, Spacetrotting Coolgal, and Humanity's Last Hope—nestled within a blob of translucent pink jellymeat, and it is totally cool and only a little disgusting." Joseph Allen Hill previously on MeFi.

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny, May/June 2017): "'The spirits in the sword. Great warriors. A barbarian priest bound them to the sword long, long ago. Draw the sword and they'll fight for you.' She scowled, and the deep lines around her nose grew deeper. 'They'll teach you to fight. I should have done, but I'm dying.'" Ursula Vernon previously on MeFi.

Moderately messed-up beginnings of romance

"A Heart, An Egg, A Lock of Hair" by Kelly M. Sandoval (Daily Science Fiction, (5/16/2017): "She'd done what any seventeen-year-old would do, with the world ending in every way that mattered. She made the pain stop. A trick she'd learned from her father. Cut down the center of your chest. Pull out your heart, feel it beating in your palms. Listen to the sound of it, the hollow thud of pain. Hide it, in the old way. An egg, a goose, a mountain, a cave."

"How Lady Nightmare Stole Captain Alpha's Girlfriend" by Kristen Brand (Luna Station Quarterly, March 2017): "The last time Sara had been held hostage had definitely been worse ... Today would probably be a close second, though, because this time her hostage-taker was a supervillain."

Happy families not all alike

"Home is a House That Loves You" by Rachael K. Jones (PodCastle, 3/3/2017; audio): "Before the war with Apsides, I wanted to be like my Aunt Martha, who at the age of forty five stepped into an abandoned lot near Aurora's city center, buried her toes in dirt, stretched up her arms, and became a skyscraper."

"The Waters and Wild of Winter Street" by Jessi Cole Jackson (The Book Smugglers, 6/27/2017): "If only Geoffrey and Matt had known, way back when. If they'd tuned into the clues that one of their precious baby girls was something other, something more, than the average baby girl. They might have done things differently, had they known. But they didn't know. They didn't know in the slightest."

"Lizard-Baby" by Benjamin Schaefer (Guernica, 3/20/2017): "Last year, while on vacation in New Mexico, I went on a vision quest with a South American shaman, met the Devil, and came home pregnant."

posted by Wobbuffet (8 comments total)

And another one, about family and love (and not a happy ending)...

http://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/robots-and-computers/lawrence-allan-pontius/if-you-build-a-robot

(Sorry, the link tool doesn't work for me any more.)
posted by Samizdata at 8:45 PM on July 2, 2017

Awwwwwwwww. :)
posted by eggkeeper at 9:01 PM on July 2, 2017

"How Lady Nightmare Stole Captain Alpha's Girlfriend" by Kristen Brand (Luna Station Quarterly, March 2017): "The last time Sara had been held hostage had definitely been worse ... Today would probably be a close second, though, because this time her hostage-taker was a supervillain."

This one was good. Sami likee!
posted by Samizdata at 9:50 PM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

This Ursula Vernon story, with the reluctant sword bearer, resonates with the one about buying a .22.
posted by Bruce H. at 10:03 PM on July 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Bookmarked hard for later reading.
posted by infini at 1:21 AM on July 3, 2017 [1 favorite]

Aiy-ya, "The Heart's Cartography" almost killed me. That is powerful and amazing.
posted by hanov3r at 11:24 AM on July 3, 2017 [3 favorites]

Great links, thanks.
posted by zardoz at 2:46 PM on July 3, 2017

The Vernon story is lovely and sweet, though it doesn't have the punch of some of her best like "Wooden Feathers".
posted by tavella at 9:29 AM on July 5, 2017