new short stories by Kelly Robson and Marissa Lingen

August 13, 2024 11:42 AM

Two short fantasy stories about journeys, meant to provide care, that go in unexpected directions. "Median" by Kelly Robson (published March 2024 in Reactor (formerly Tor.com)): a horror story in which "a professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers…" (Via Jason Sanford who said it "left me completely unsettled.") And "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" by Marissa Lingen (published May 2024 in Beneath Ceaseless Skies): "When I had taken leave from the Archives to go on this pilgrimage, no one had expected that a pilgrimage to the god of high places would cure me. Friends expressed shock that I would even try."
posted by brainwane (10 comments total)

These are great!
posted by panhopticon at 12:56 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

While I don’t always have things to say about the stories, I always enjoy these posts, brainwane. You introduce me to new authors, to stories that would never see otherwise, and usually give me satisfying little narratives of a length that I can fit into my busy day and my minor issues with reading text. Thanks so much for sharing them.

This time around, I appreciate the Lingen story, which falls into a category that might be called “Situations & Sensibleness,” where a generally sensible character is thrown into a fraught situation and sorts it out using unconventional “small” means. Eleanor Arnason and Becky Chsmbers fall into this — not “cozy fantasy,” exactly, but it’s related.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:57 PM on August 13 [7 favorites]

Oh, that first story is amazing. Saving the other to read on my break at work!
posted by maryellenreads at 1:01 PM on August 13 [1 favorite]

I should have mentioned: an audio version of the Lingen story is also available!.

And, GenjiandProust, thank you for the kind comment -- that means a lot to me. Glad to share.
posted by brainwane at 1:07 PM on August 13 [2 favorites]

Ah, that Median story is good stuff. I suspected about a third into it where it was going, it's not a very original overarching concept, after all, but the execution is great, and the original touches and ideas it brings are very nice.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:18 PM on August 13

Brainwave, I just started using a cane for balance issues and so that second story was an absolute fucking delight!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:14 PM on August 13 [3 favorites]

Was the character in Median dead and in hell? If I had a post for two self driving cars having accidents on a road I wouldn't have many posts but it would be weird that I had two.
posted by Comstar at 12:12 AM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Mod note: We love reading, so this post (and another by brainwane) has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:14 AM on August 14 [3 favorites]

Reading Median first followed by Pilgrimage was definitely the correct order. Median was unsettling while Pilgrimage was settling. (No seriously, it felt like ants crawling along my nerves reading Median without a comfortable resolution where the opposite was true for Pilgrimage. I could rest in that world.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:29 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Great recs, brainwane! I loved "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places." (Well, let's be honest, I love all of Marissa Lingen's stories. She has a knack for writing about emotions and happenings that seem very humble, not-at-all-flashy, and then drawing something very subtle and real out of them.)

Anyway, this story — like Lingen's protagonist, I'm disabled, and I really appreciated a story that was about the protagonist's relationship to her disability plus her mother's relationship to that disability. It was hard to read at times, because it felt Too Real™!
posted by fire, water, earth, air at 7:52 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]