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A review by coolcurrybooks
Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction by Irene Gallo
4.0
I’ve been generally impressed with Tor.com’s fiction, but I’m always running behind on their short stories. When I saw this “Best of” anthology up on Netgalley, I thought it was the perfect chance to catch up. And so far, Worlds Seen in Passing is my favorite short fiction anthology of 2018.
I was already familiar with some of the stories in the collection, either from anthologies collecting “best of the year” stories or from reading them on Tor.com’s site. For the most part, I didn’t reread them in Worlds Seen in Passing, but I did like most of the stories I already knew!
One such story was “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, where the spirit of New York City is about to be born. A homeless young gay man is selected as the midwife, and it’s his job to defend the city from predators. I don’t love the story as much as some of Jemisin’s novel-length works (how can you beat The Fifth Season?), but it’s still a solid tale.
In another, “Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang, a futuristic society depends on separating queer women and having them create a connection across planets through song. It’s as wonderfully written as you would expect from any story by JY Yang.
I originally read “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys as an extra at the end of her book Winter Tide. The story takes place before the novel, and it introduces Aphra, a daughter of Innsmouth who lost almost her entire family when the government placed them in an internment camp far from the ocean. When an FBI agent comes asking for her help with an investigation, Aphra is naturally reluctant.
“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri remains one of my all-time favorite time travel stories, and back when I was doing short story lists for Queership, I featured it there. I don’t want to say too much about the story… but it’s about the protagonist discovering himself and his troubled relationship with his mother, who refuses to accept her son’s gender.
“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu is another story I’d featured on Queership. When you tell a lie, water starts falling on you. If it’s a minor bending of the truth, maybe you just get a little mist. If it’s a flat-out whopper, you get completely soaked. This makes life awkward for Matt, who’s not out to his traditional Chinese parents but is having dinner with them and his boyfriend.
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong is as lovely and powerful as any story she’s written (if you haven’t read Alyssa Wong, you need to change that NOW). The story centers on two sisters who can jump from reality to reality, but no matter how many times Hannah tries, she can’t save her sister.
On the whole, I like Max Gladstone’s novels more than his short stories, but “A Kiss with Teeth” remains the exception. It’s a vampire story about marriage and fatherhood, and I like it enough that I’ve read it at least twice before.
I read “The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo as part of her collection The Language of Thorns, where it was my favorite story of the collection. Nadya and her brother live with their father, a carpenter, in a small village in the woods. Then their mother dies, local girls begin to go missing Nadya’s brother leaves, and her father remarries. It’s a super dark story, and I loved the creeping sense of unease that permeated it.
There was really only two stories I’d already read that I wasn’t wild about. No matter how much I read by Kai Ashante Wilson, I’ve never really loved any of his stories, and that includes “The Devil in America,” the story of a family with supernatural powers that lost the knowledge of how to use those when they were enslaved and shipped to America. I’m in a similar boat with Maria Dahvana Headley’s work, and I think it’s just a case of authorial style not matching up with the reader. In any case, I wasn’t a fan of “The Tallest Doll in New York City” the first time I read it, so I felt no qualms about skipping it here.
While I’d already read the stories I mentioned about, the majority of the collection was new to me. That includes stories by authors I’m familiar with but just hadn’t gotten around to yet. For instance, I’m a huge fan of Yoon Ha Lee, but I’d never before read “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel,” which describes several alien species and their forms of space travel. I’ve seen stories of a similar style, and I think they may make up their own subgenre? For instance, it reminds me a lot of “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu or “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang. This type of story is more focused on ideas and descriptive language than the plot structure of a traditional Western short story.
I’m also a huge Kameron Hurley fan, but I can never keep up with all her short fiction! “Elephants and Corpses” is a characteristically gritty fantasy story that will appeal to fans of her character Nyx. The protagonist can jump into dead bodies, but he’s in a pickle when he fishes the wrong body out of the river and suddenly someone’s trying to kill him.
Charlie Jane Anders story “Six Months, Three Days” deals with the theme of fate vs. free will when two people who can see the future start dating. Is it worth going through a relationship you know will end badly? Are the good times worth the bad? How much control do you really have over your own future? The story doesn’t have answers, but it raises some interesting questions.
I’d recently gotten into Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, and while I knew they started with a Tor.com short story, I’d never read it. When I got to “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” I discovered that it followed a couple of characters I was already familiar with… but when they were near the end of their lives. It was a very bittersweet story, because, on one hand, they’re dying, but on the other, I now know that Elma accomplished much of what she wanted in life.
“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw just reinforces how much I love her work. It’s a fairy-tale type piece, about a woman who’s stepping into the role of an “evil” stepmother but still gets her happy ending. It’s so great.
In a similar vein, both “Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan and “Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes are reenvisioning older fairy-tales and myths. In “Daughter of Necessity,” Penelope’s weaving isn’t just a trick; she’s literally weaving different possible futures and unraveling them until she finds the ending she wants. “Among the Thorns” deals with an incredibly anti-Semitic fairy tale where a man with a magic pipe straight up murders a Jewish peddler and is still somehow the hero of the tale??? Anyway, Schanoes creates a new story following the peddler’s daughter who is out for vengeance.
I spent the summer interning for Apex books, which is creating an anthology of SFF stories about resistance. When I read “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly, I felt like it fit with that theme perfectly. In a fantasy kingdom with a cruel king, a cook makes food that has you relive memories. His wife is forced to be the food taster for the king, and the memories her husband is showing her tells her that something big is coming.
“In the Sight of the Akresa” by Ray Wood is another medieval fantasy type story, but I wasn’t as fond of this one. The protagonist, Claire, is simply horrible. At least I think she’s supposed to be horrible? She’s a noblewoman who starts a clandestine relationship with a former-slave girl whose tongue was cut out. I started getting “Claire is bad news” vibes earlier on when she hurts an animal as an excuse to see the girl she’s attracted to. Anyway, it’s also a queer tragedy so FYI, I guess.
This review is getting ridiculously long and I’m ridiculously busy, so I’m going to highlight a few more stories before wrapping it up.
“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin was absolutely delightful. A young girl wants a pony but her parents give her a pet demon instead.
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson is about a little girl who actually has a pet pony, who has wings, a horn, and talks. This is completely normal, and every girl has a pony like this. What’s also normal is having parties where ponies are ritualistically mutilated to fit in with the crowd. It’s a strange and macabre story about the costs of fitting with the crowd… and the costs of going against it.
“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny was a great story that I liked a lot. The protagonist is an angel, only she’s basically stuck working the prayer phone lines and can’t actually help anyone. Plus, she keeps getting in trouble from her boss for not being efficient enough.
“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica was ridiculously cute. It’s this super sweet story about lesbian moms taking care of a baby werewolf and I love it so much. The moment I finished reading it I sent a link to my best friend telling her she had to read it RIGHT NOW.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky is another story I linked my best friend to, but that’s mostly because she’s obsessed with robots. A robot sets out to find himself, leaving the human wife who had long lobbied for robot rights.
My least favorite story of the collection was Jeff VanderMeer’s “This World Is Full of Monsters,” but it’s also 100% a Jeff VanderMeer story. By which I mean that it’s weird as all get out and full of squishy biological things.
I’m going to run through the rest of the stories super quickly. Ready?
“Damage” by David D. Levine is about a spaceship in an abusive relationship (pretty good story).
“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn shows that first contact can actually be quite boring (okay, probably wouldn’t reread).
“About Faries” by Pat Murphy has a depressed woman hired to help design a virtual fairyland for children (wouldn’t reread).
“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall (Tw: miscarriage) is as creepy as all get out. I might reread it someday.
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap has a woman meeting a kappa (probably won’t reread)
“Reborn” by Ken Liu asks big questions about identity through a conquering alien species that is constantly erasing memories (might reread).
“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson asks if you could make yourself never have existed… would you? I probably wouldn’t reread it, but the concept has stuck with me.
“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov has the protagonist baking his deceased husband into a ritualistic cake (wouldn’t reread).
“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout is obviously influenced by Superman and asks whether or not immortality is actually that great (wouldn’t reread).
“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine is a haunting story about a fashion house and a model who disappears. It’s really stuck with me, and I might visit it again in the future.
“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey has drugs, parties and the end of the world (wouldn’t reread).
“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das has Krishna finding a dead body and the dead walking again (might reread).
“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar is about people going to Mars to die (wouldn’t reread).
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill follows the relationship between a woman and a Sasquatch and how the town views it. It was one of my least favorites of the collection, and I won’t revisit it.
“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan isn’t specifically science fiction but was a decent enough story.
Okay, so I realize I was moving fast at the end, but this review is already over 2,000 words! Anyway, my end analysis would be that while there’s of course some middling stories and stories I didn’t care about, Worlds Seen in Passing also has an impressive number of stories that I really liked. Probably a higher than average ratio. There’s also a fantastic author line up.
If you’re looking for a short story collection that includes some of the best stories of the past ten years, you don’t need to look much further than Worlds Seen in Passing.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
I was already familiar with some of the stories in the collection, either from anthologies collecting “best of the year” stories or from reading them on Tor.com’s site. For the most part, I didn’t reread them in Worlds Seen in Passing, but I did like most of the stories I already knew!
One such story was “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, where the spirit of New York City is about to be born. A homeless young gay man is selected as the midwife, and it’s his job to defend the city from predators. I don’t love the story as much as some of Jemisin’s novel-length works (how can you beat The Fifth Season?), but it’s still a solid tale.
In another, “Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang, a futuristic society depends on separating queer women and having them create a connection across planets through song. It’s as wonderfully written as you would expect from any story by JY Yang.
I originally read “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys as an extra at the end of her book Winter Tide. The story takes place before the novel, and it introduces Aphra, a daughter of Innsmouth who lost almost her entire family when the government placed them in an internment camp far from the ocean. When an FBI agent comes asking for her help with an investigation, Aphra is naturally reluctant.
“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri remains one of my all-time favorite time travel stories, and back when I was doing short story lists for Queership, I featured it there. I don’t want to say too much about the story… but it’s about the protagonist discovering himself and his troubled relationship with his mother, who refuses to accept her son’s gender.
“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu is another story I’d featured on Queership. When you tell a lie, water starts falling on you. If it’s a minor bending of the truth, maybe you just get a little mist. If it’s a flat-out whopper, you get completely soaked. This makes life awkward for Matt, who’s not out to his traditional Chinese parents but is having dinner with them and his boyfriend.
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong is as lovely and powerful as any story she’s written (if you haven’t read Alyssa Wong, you need to change that NOW). The story centers on two sisters who can jump from reality to reality, but no matter how many times Hannah tries, she can’t save her sister.
On the whole, I like Max Gladstone’s novels more than his short stories, but “A Kiss with Teeth” remains the exception. It’s a vampire story about marriage and fatherhood, and I like it enough that I’ve read it at least twice before.
I read “The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo as part of her collection The Language of Thorns, where it was my favorite story of the collection. Nadya and her brother live with their father, a carpenter, in a small village in the woods. Then their mother dies, local girls begin to go missing Nadya’s brother leaves, and her father remarries. It’s a super dark story, and I loved the creeping sense of unease that permeated it.
There was really only two stories I’d already read that I wasn’t wild about. No matter how much I read by Kai Ashante Wilson, I’ve never really loved any of his stories, and that includes “The Devil in America,” the story of a family with supernatural powers that lost the knowledge of how to use those when they were enslaved and shipped to America. I’m in a similar boat with Maria Dahvana Headley’s work, and I think it’s just a case of authorial style not matching up with the reader. In any case, I wasn’t a fan of “The Tallest Doll in New York City” the first time I read it, so I felt no qualms about skipping it here.
While I’d already read the stories I mentioned about, the majority of the collection was new to me. That includes stories by authors I’m familiar with but just hadn’t gotten around to yet. For instance, I’m a huge fan of Yoon Ha Lee, but I’d never before read “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel,” which describes several alien species and their forms of space travel. I’ve seen stories of a similar style, and I think they may make up their own subgenre? For instance, it reminds me a lot of “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu or “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang. This type of story is more focused on ideas and descriptive language than the plot structure of a traditional Western short story.
I’m also a huge Kameron Hurley fan, but I can never keep up with all her short fiction! “Elephants and Corpses” is a characteristically gritty fantasy story that will appeal to fans of her character Nyx. The protagonist can jump into dead bodies, but he’s in a pickle when he fishes the wrong body out of the river and suddenly someone’s trying to kill him.
Charlie Jane Anders story “Six Months, Three Days” deals with the theme of fate vs. free will when two people who can see the future start dating. Is it worth going through a relationship you know will end badly? Are the good times worth the bad? How much control do you really have over your own future? The story doesn’t have answers, but it raises some interesting questions.
I’d recently gotten into Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, and while I knew they started with a Tor.com short story, I’d never read it. When I got to “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” I discovered that it followed a couple of characters I was already familiar with… but when they were near the end of their lives. It was a very bittersweet story, because, on one hand, they’re dying, but on the other, I now know that Elma accomplished much of what she wanted in life.
“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw just reinforces how much I love her work. It’s a fairy-tale type piece, about a woman who’s stepping into the role of an “evil” stepmother but still gets her happy ending. It’s so great.
In a similar vein, both “Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan and “Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes are reenvisioning older fairy-tales and myths. In “Daughter of Necessity,” Penelope’s weaving isn’t just a trick; she’s literally weaving different possible futures and unraveling them until she finds the ending she wants. “Among the Thorns” deals with an incredibly anti-Semitic fairy tale where a man with a magic pipe straight up murders a Jewish peddler and is still somehow the hero of the tale??? Anyway, Schanoes creates a new story following the peddler’s daughter who is out for vengeance.
I spent the summer interning for Apex books, which is creating an anthology of SFF stories about resistance. When I read “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly, I felt like it fit with that theme perfectly. In a fantasy kingdom with a cruel king, a cook makes food that has you relive memories. His wife is forced to be the food taster for the king, and the memories her husband is showing her tells her that something big is coming.
“In the Sight of the Akresa” by Ray Wood is another medieval fantasy type story, but I wasn’t as fond of this one. The protagonist, Claire, is simply horrible. At least I think she’s supposed to be horrible? She’s a noblewoman who starts a clandestine relationship with a former-slave girl whose tongue was cut out. I started getting “Claire is bad news” vibes earlier on when she hurts an animal as an excuse to see the girl she’s attracted to. Anyway, it’s also a queer tragedy so FYI, I guess.
This review is getting ridiculously long and I’m ridiculously busy, so I’m going to highlight a few more stories before wrapping it up.
“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin was absolutely delightful. A young girl wants a pony but her parents give her a pet demon instead.
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson is about a little girl who actually has a pet pony, who has wings, a horn, and talks. This is completely normal, and every girl has a pony like this. What’s also normal is having parties where ponies are ritualistically mutilated to fit in with the crowd. It’s a strange and macabre story about the costs of fitting with the crowd… and the costs of going against it.
“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny was a great story that I liked a lot. The protagonist is an angel, only she’s basically stuck working the prayer phone lines and can’t actually help anyone. Plus, she keeps getting in trouble from her boss for not being efficient enough.
“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica was ridiculously cute. It’s this super sweet story about lesbian moms taking care of a baby werewolf and I love it so much. The moment I finished reading it I sent a link to my best friend telling her she had to read it RIGHT NOW.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky is another story I linked my best friend to, but that’s mostly because she’s obsessed with robots. A robot sets out to find himself, leaving the human wife who had long lobbied for robot rights.
My least favorite story of the collection was Jeff VanderMeer’s “This World Is Full of Monsters,” but it’s also 100% a Jeff VanderMeer story. By which I mean that it’s weird as all get out and full of squishy biological things.
I’m going to run through the rest of the stories super quickly. Ready?
“Damage” by David D. Levine is about a spaceship in an abusive relationship (pretty good story).
“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn shows that first contact can actually be quite boring (okay, probably wouldn’t reread).
“About Faries” by Pat Murphy has a depressed woman hired to help design a virtual fairyland for children (wouldn’t reread).
“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall (Tw: miscarriage) is as creepy as all get out. I might reread it someday.
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap has a woman meeting a kappa (probably won’t reread)
“Reborn” by Ken Liu asks big questions about identity through a conquering alien species that is constantly erasing memories (might reread).
“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson asks if you could make yourself never have existed… would you? I probably wouldn’t reread it, but the concept has stuck with me.
“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov has the protagonist baking his deceased husband into a ritualistic cake (wouldn’t reread).
“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout is obviously influenced by Superman and asks whether or not immortality is actually that great (wouldn’t reread).
“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine is a haunting story about a fashion house and a model who disappears. It’s really stuck with me, and I might visit it again in the future.
“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey has drugs, parties and the end of the world (wouldn’t reread).
“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das has Krishna finding a dead body and the dead walking again (might reread).
“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar is about people going to Mars to die (wouldn’t reread).
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill follows the relationship between a woman and a Sasquatch and how the town views it. It was one of my least favorites of the collection, and I won’t revisit it.
“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan isn’t specifically science fiction but was a decent enough story.
Okay, so I realize I was moving fast at the end, but this review is already over 2,000 words! Anyway, my end analysis would be that while there’s of course some middling stories and stories I didn’t care about, Worlds Seen in Passing also has an impressive number of stories that I really liked. Probably a higher than average ratio. There’s also a fantastic author line up.
If you’re looking for a short story collection that includes some of the best stories of the past ten years, you don’t need to look much further than Worlds Seen in Passing.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.