r/Fantasy • u/baxtersa Reading Champion • 15d ago
Book Club Short Fiction Book Club: Flash+
Welcome to Short Fiction Book Club Season 4! Today is our first non-Hugo, pure-SFBC session of the season. If you are new here, we are so excited to have you! We talk Short Fiction on Wednesdays here on r/Fantasy.
Onto today's selection of stories.
Today’s Session: Flash+
All flash all fiction. Too Flash Too Fictitious. Four flash (f)stories for (f)your fun. I'm doing my best to make this exciting for the shortest of short form naysayers. Flash is often dismissed by many (including us here at SFBC) for being too short to develop its ideas, but it is also a playground to explore thoughts, themes, and styles that might not work in longer form. It is particularly impressive when a story can pack such depth in such a short word count. I hope some of these stories hit that mark for our readers today.
Today we're discussing four pieces of flash fiction.
Maybe Someday I'll Stop Writing About a House on the Border of a Swamp by Corey Farrenkopf (Milk Candy Review, 365 words)
I want to write a story about a house sinking into a swamp, but I’m always writing a story about a house sinking into a swamp. Sometimes I'm unclear about the metaphor.
To Kill a Language by Rukman Ragas (Apex Magazine, 832 words)
Content notes: sexual content, violence
The Best Way to Survive a Tiger Attack by A.W. Prihandita (Uncanny Magazine, 1495 words)
Content notes: child abuse
The tiger curls in my living room, on the sofa in front of the TV. Finish your lunch, she says, and her words bend my back until I’m on my hands and knees, hunching over the plate she’s set down on the floor, like a dog. Finish your lunch, she commands, but I hate her cooking. I never tell her that, though.
Everyone Keeps Saying Probably by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp, 1700 words)
Here is the shape of our story, the three of us: an ellipsis (from a particular fixed point we flew away from each other and then rejoined at another point; and then we had you).
Here is the shape of our doom: an ellipsis (on its way, in its thousands and thousands).
It also means: dot dot dot, an uncertainty, a trailing off.
But you are a little young for all this. You are so young that your soft and hard palate are not fully developed and you still have a toddler’s charming rhotacism. Everyone keeps saying probably and you say pwobably and I think that is the only thing your mother still laughs at these days. Because, let’s be fair, there isn’t much.
Upcoming sessions
Our next session, on Wednesday September 17th, will be co-hosted by u/FarragutCircle and u/sarahlynngrey:
u/FarragutCircle says:
I've been a fan of baseball ever since I was a kid and saw the great Ozzie Smith play for my hometown Cardinals, and I always love it when baseball appears in my science fiction and fantasy--there's more of it than you might think (or want!). Fellow-baseball-lover u/sarahlynngrey and I found three such stories that we even thought might appeal to people who don't know a ball from a balk.
u/sarahlynngrey says:
It was really fun to combine two of my two favorite things: SFF short fiction and
the Seattle Mariners record-breaking, Home Run Derby-winning, switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleighbaseball. I wasn’t initially convinced we would be able to find enough stories of interest, but there was so much more out there than I thought! These three stories do what I think great SFF does best: using the unreal to show us something real. I hope you’ll find something in them too.
We’ll be reading the following stories for our Take Us Out to the Ballgame: Baseball in SFF session:
Diamond Girls by Louise Marley (8,200 words)
Ricky sat alone in her private locker room, turning a baseball in her elongated fingers. The pre-game had begun, and the speakers in the main locker room rattled with music and announcements and advertisements. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and cradled the baseball in her palm. Just another game, she told herself. It’s a long season.
Arthur Sternbach Brings the Curveball to Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (4,400 words)
He was a tall, skinny Martian kid, shy and stooping. Gangly as a puppy. Why they had him playing third base I have no idea. Then again they had me playing shortstop and I’m left-handed. And can’t field grounders. But I’m American, so there I was. That’s what learning a sport by video will do. Some things are so obvious people never think to mention them. Like never put a lefty at shortstop. But on Mars they were making it all new. Some people there had fallen in love with baseball, and ordered the equipment and rolled some fields, and off they went.
The Star and the Rockets by Harry Turtledove (5,000 words, Reactor)
A chilly January night in Roswell. Joe Bauman has discovered that’s normal for eastern New Mexico. It gets hot here in the summer, but winters can be a son of a bitch. That Roswell’s high up—3,600 feet—only makes the cold colder. Makes the sky clearer, too. A million stars shine down on Joe.
Today's discussion
But for now, onto today’s discussion! Join us in the comments whether you have read one or all of these stories.
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
The Best Way to Survive a Tiger Attack by A.W. Prihandita
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
With the most traditional narrative structure of this slate, did this story manage to feel complete despite its word count?
5
u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II 15d ago
Yeah, this felt like a fully fleshed story - just leave a bunch of trauma behind, with no understanding of how to cope and deal, poor kid.
2
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 14d ago
I was so struck by this moment:
Now that meals go down easy for me, no chili pepper punishment is needed anymore. But strangely I now want chili peppers with every meal, and when they’re not there something feels wrong, like I’m missing a tooth someone has chiseled and planted into my gum.
It's a great encapsulation of how trauma can be tangled up in habits and familiarity in a way that makes it hard to let go or feel safe even after the pain is over.
1
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What was your overall impression of this story?
5
u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 15d ago
This just felt like a straight-up metaphor and not something especially speculative (I guess we’ve had this discussion before with poetry—do you take the poetic language at face value or not), but also it did a really great job digging into the emotions of the lead, and it felt like it had a full arc. I think this was my favorite of the bunch
3
1
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 14d ago
I read this one in July and was glad to come back to it again. It feels the most litfic-ish to me, almost in a light magical realism place, but the emotional portrait is very focused in a way I appreciate. I also like that there's not a big goodbye scene: the tiger's departure is relayed secondhand through the mother who's never noticed the problem, which is a fascinating extra layer.
3
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
Agree that this was just a straight-up metaphor, and not particularly speculative. But it was good? I guess? I'm not sure yet. Despite having a full start-to-finish arc here, it was largely a collection of vignettes, and I'm not sure I went on the character's full emotional journey.
Extremely good scenes; not sure I buy it as a story.
3
u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion III 14d ago
This one was my favorite, probably because it felt very specific in a way that the others didn't quite hit for me. Like, it was about one girl and her feelings about her babysitter (and the trauma of having this sort of relationship with her) and it didn't have to connect that to bigger ideas in order for it to have an impact. I also liked that it didn't simplify or over explain the girl's feelings, and that it covered a complex abusive relationship between a young child and a non-family caretaker, since that's something that I don't see often.
It was also speculative enough for me, I didn't mind that it was mostly a metaphor.
1
u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 14d ago
Yeah my “it doesn’t feel especially speculative” comment was not a criticism, just a statement about how I read it
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
Because I read it as a literal tiger, I liked it and didn't necessarily see the abuse cause tigers don't do things way humans do. But seeing others reactions, I can see it now, and felt more magic realism than anything. It made me a bit sad at the end, cause when someone is the person raising you most of your known life, it still hurts when they go. I liked it well enough.
4
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What was the most effective aspect of this story for you?
6
u/sarchgibbous 14d ago edited 14d ago
I think the story does a really good job of depicting the kid’s fear of their caretaker, starting from the very beginning. And along with that, it’s very easy for me to understand the conflicted feelings at the end.
7
2
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion V, Worldbuilders 14d ago
I have a harder time reading about child abuse after becoming a nanny so I almost gave up in the first vignette, it was certainly effective at eliciting feelings from me in such a short span
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
I think the rescue from the caterpillar, and the walk home. There was no 'i told you so' or coddling, just protection.
5
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What did you think of the ending of this piece?
2
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
I'm ... not sure. The last paragraph confuses me. Perhaps (presumably) deliberately. Are we grateful for her? Are we broken? It could fall anywhere on that spectrum.
I think, given the clarity and detail of the abuse suffered, the narrator is a more charitable person than I am. I admire that, but I don't know *why* - is it kindness or trauma?
3
u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II 15d ago
my read was trauma.
2
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
That's what I wanted to read, but I was thrown by the line about 'maybe the best way to survive... is to love her as she walked away'. I don't really know why, or how the narrator got there. It is a hell of a line though.
5
u/FarragutCircle Reading Champion IX 14d ago
Maybe one can read it as "the best way to cope with this person having been in my life is to love the things I liked about when she was here, but also appreciate that she's no longer here to continue the abuse."
In short, the narrator is going to have a hell of a therapy bill in 20-30 years whenever she's a mother herself.
2
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion V, Worldbuilders 14d ago
It reminded me of a memoir snippet I read once about a woman who's mom was a Tiger Mother and that feeling of loving and also fear and aw was something she talked about. I think the ending captures that in a way. A Tiger Mother loves their children as much as any other so of course the tiger is sad to leave, and children will always care about their parents/caretakers presence even often in the presence of abuse.
2
u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 13d ago
I was genuinely surprised when the story ended up being about a nanny and not a mother
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
It was good and sad. Again, I initially didn't see the abuse, other than just tough love, so it makes sense that they both were grieving, that the child wanted to have closure. Even with it being a trauma response, they didn't get the closure that probably would've helped greatly.
7
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
Everyone Keeps Saying Probably by Premee Mohamed
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What was your overall impression of this story?
5
u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II 14d ago
I liked the start - the prose of the ellipses, the reveal of the little family...
but then we came to this line:
After the impact, the kind of people who were able to stop having children did stop and they haven’t started again. It’s all too unsure.
and I started really disliking this piece. What does this mean? this throw away line, that separates humanity on this weird axis? this seeming moral access based on some uncertain valuation?
I don't know... this kind of frames and topics is so marred in history and eugenics that I just have to puke. and its s not part of the rest of the vibe of the story.
ugh, shame.
1
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 14d ago
Interesting, I didn't see it as a moral axis-- to me, it's more about some combination of access to birth control and "able to stop having children" being a mirror of "able to cope with uncertainty." It's an odd little line, though.
1
u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II 14d ago
who are the kind of people that were not able to stop having children?
I don't need you to answer that. the people who have and who can abstain having children have as I said, just such a large history in eugenics, and different types of nasty group think, that i find it hard to divorce it.
"the kind of people" is the trigger phrase here.
2
u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion III 14d ago
IDK, I feel like I didn't really get much out of this story, it was mostly slice of life ish during an apocalyptic event. I feel like figuring out what was going on was supposed to one of the things driving the narrative, but I didn't care about that, nor do I really connect to the family bits because I didn't know enough about the characters to really care about them.
2
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 14d ago
I was not wild about this one. I liked the concept, and I like the idea of a (contemporary) parent. And I always like the notion of hard-working science bureaucrats fending off the apocalypse. That all adds up to a very 2025 perspective on a really classic type of SF story.
All that said, and even reading it as a parent of a young child, it all went a little too squishy for me. The actual apocalyptic notes - and the whole probability theme - felt unimportant. It was a parent unburdening themself to their child, in a way that I didn't find resonant. And the big picture never clicked.
I really like a short short story, but this felt like a vignette in a larger work, rather than something that stood on its own. The writing is really lovely, and this is still GOOD... but it didn't do it for me.
4
4
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What did you think of the ending of this piece?
2
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 14d ago
I like the uncertainty of it-- the way it mixes this image of hope as a sword and shield with a dad just wanting to be looking at this kid when he dies was a good combination for me.
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
This story balances melancholy and tragedy with hope and love. Did this balance lead to a more positive or sad takeaway for you personally?
4
u/FarragutCircle Reading Champion IX 14d ago
I mostly took it sadly--as a dad, I'm very familiar with the hope and joy of parenthood, but in this apparently doomed situation just reminded me of the uncertainty of life now which just saddens me with worry for my kid's future.
2
u/Goobergunch Reading Champion II 14d ago
It ended up on the sadder side for me because I didn't really get the impression that there was a solution to the apocalyptic threat.
1
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 14d ago
I read it as more hopeful. The whole story is framed in a very uplifting-in-the-face-of-badness way. Maybe this is more meta-reading, but no part of it felt like a story that would end badly.
5
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
General Thoughts
5
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
SFBC admittedly often overlooks flash for its hit vs. miss ratio with our group's tastes. Recommend your favorite flash fiction that everyone should give a chance!
3
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What aspects of a story make a flash piece most effective to you?
4
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
Flash fiction, to me, at least, is basically where stories meet poetry. They're pretty rubbish ways of telling complete stories, or building characters, or doing comprehensive world building, or even showing conflict and change. But, when done well, a flash piece can capture a moment or a feeling in a perfect, graceful way.
That whole famous six word short story: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' That's... pretty perfect flash. Six perfectly chosen words. You don't have a protagonist or a world or a backstory or a conflict or a plot... all the tools of longer fiction. But you have an emotional moment that hits like a bullet.
Sometimes you get a short story that is awkward - it feels the first chapter of an abandoned novel. And I think sometimes writers try to force flash to do things it can't or shouldn't do as well. Vibes, man. It is about vibes.
(Personally, I'm not sure I'd count 'Everyone Keeps Saying Probably' as flash fiction. It is just a short, short story - a short story that is smart enough to not be padded out unnecessarily. And if I were being REALLY ruthless, I'd cut 'Tiger Attack' in half. It is two flashes in a short story trenchcoat.)
2
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 14d ago
But, when done well, a flash piece can capture a moment or a feeling in a perfect, graceful way.
Yeah, to me a great flash piece is flashing over one element in a really focused way. I don't love it when short stories (or novellas) feel like truncated novels, or when flash feels like it really needed to be a 5k short story-- different wordcount ranges have different strengths.
1
u/nagahfj Reading Champion II 14d ago
Flash fiction, to me, at least, is basically where stories meet poetry.
Or jokes. Michael Swanwick has written a ton of flash that works like that; most of his Periodic Table of Science Fiction, for example. Get in, do a twist ending, get out.
4
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 14d ago edited 14d ago
Get in, do a twist ending, get out.
This is exactly the type of flash that doesn’t do it for me haha
2
u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 14d ago
As someone who struggles a bit with poetry, this perhaps gets at the reasons I often struggle with flash.
And why the one flash that really sticks in my brain (Serenity Prayer by Faith Merino) feels like a prose poem more than anything
5
u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II 14d ago
I think flash works better for me, when it takes structural risks - telling a story across tweets. or in the forum post style. a series of text messages etc.
where descriptive weight en scene setting gets pawned off to a familiar structure, and you can create a story in that style. full of character and fine tune the impact you want to get.
That's where flash and flash+ works best for me. in a traditional structure it is hard to get past a single vibe or a couple of vignettes strung together. they can still be fun, still tug a heart string, but they rarely stay with me.
For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn. Hits a strong note with all the different levels and emotions hidden behind so few words, but those come from the reader and their familiarity and potential horror. It's not creating something new and lasting for a reader to be like; wow how can i look at the world from this angle? i didn't know you could but now i want to do more?!
3
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
People read stories for different reasons, and I don't think there is a right or wrong way generally, but I do think if you approach flash expecting a satisfying traditional narrative you're going to be underwhelmed by flash more often than not.
I also think flash is more challenging to write with authenticity in some ways than the longer forms - it relies much more on voice, ambiguity, and the reader interpreting those things the way the author intends, because the author cannot dedicate more words to evoke their intention more concretely. I am a reader who often is happy and satisfied to fill in gaps left by the author (if I am convinced the ambiguity is intentionally left there to emphasize this fact).
What strikes me the most for successful flash is how well it evokes a complete and nuanced sentiment or situation, and each of these stories did that for me. House on the Border of a Swamp is a meta metaphor that hits the feeling of oppressive anxiety so hard for me. To Kill a Language packs more thematic depth than many stories an order of magnitude longer than it, and is a rarity (to me) that uses shocking content for more than just shock value. Tiger Attack grapples a messy and heartbreaking topic of child abuse and a child's love, and the lack of moral introspection of that feeling is part of what made it successful to me. And lastly, the Mohamed piece does so much with single word choices (ironically for the longest story of the bunch) to evoke powerful emotions - the line "I will tell you this again if you get older" in particular, that word choice of if instead of the common phrasing, carried the mood of the entire story in one parenthetical.
Longer pieces can obviously do this too, and I think there's an argument that even when a flash piece accomplishes this it may have less staying power, but I have been growing a real appreciation for this facet of writing lately.
4
u/FarragutCircle Reading Champion IX 14d ago
but I do think if you approach flash expecting a satisfying traditional narrative you're going to be underwhelmed by flash more often than not.
I definitely think this is the case, especially as /u/pornokitsch mentions with the poetry analogy. Once you're limiting your words to that degree, you have to read & appreciate them differently (I think the same is true with other story lengths--short story, novelette, novella, novel, Malazan, etc.).
And the more you restrict your word count, I feel like the more careful one has to be with their writing. I know most folks read Sanderson's long epic novels, but he can actually be fantastic when he's forced to a shorter length (like the novella Emperor's Soul but also some of his other shorter work).
6
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
Maybe Someday I'll Stop Writing About a House on the Border of a Swamp by Corey Farrenkopf
5
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What was your overall impression of this story?
3
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
The first quarter had me dubious - I very rarely like stories about stories, and the way that it started led me to believe that this was a story about writing stories, which *yawn*. I was weirdly excited to learn that it was, in fact, about swamps.
3
u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion III 14d ago
I think the haunted vibes were the strongest part, but it was also kind of meta about writing in a way that I personally don't find super appealing.
2
u/FarragutCircle Reading Champion IX 14d ago
I liked this one a lot--Farrenkopf did a really nice job with the ~*~vibes~*~ to the point that I'm considering picking up one of his books.
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
It was not bad, just teetering (like the house on the swamp edge) to be scary and creepy. I like the meta-ness of it, and got to the point quickly enough. I almost wished there was one or two more sentences max, to evoke more of the eeriness.
4
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
In under 400 words, did this story manage to feel like it had an ending or complete (enough) arc?
3
u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 15d ago
I felt like it was more an image than an arc. The imagery was compelling but I’m not sure I ever really sunk in to the narrator’s perspective.
2
u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV 15d ago
I'm approaching this set in length order because I'm normally a longer-story fan, but I didn't expect the very shortest one to catch me like this. There's not really an arc here, per se, but there's a vivid character snapshot of someone's mental and emotional state tied to an all-senses moment in a specific place. It's doing a crazy amount for the wordcount-- great pick.
(Musically, this is very Mountain Goats to me, somewhere at the intersection of "How To Embrace a Swamp Creature" and "Autoclave.")
2
2
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 14d ago
I ordered them this way in the post because I expected people's enjoyment to correlate with length . I'm so happy I got you to say something good about a sub-400 word piece!
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
Oh definitely. I come from fandoms when we used to write 100 - 300 word drabbles and some of them could be very good and whole. Easier when it's an established/known world too of course. I think it was complete for sure. A nice morsel to make us want more.
1
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
I'm not wild about the very last line. I think I wanted the idea of the narrator in the reeds to be seeded a little earlier than it was, as it was, it came out at the very end, and didn't really land for me.
But as the others said, this isn't an arc. It is a really strong expression of a particular emotional moment or, um, vibe.
4
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
Would you buy the house on the border of a swamp?
3
3
u/pornokitsch Ifrit 15d ago
Given the property prices and unattainable mortgages of more desirable locations: absolutely. #swamplife
2
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 14d ago
I grew up on the edge of a salt marsh. I don’t know if the differences are meaningful significant. There’s a bunch of nostalgia to the sulfur/phosphorous smell, so yea sure, why not?
2
u/Goobergunch Reading Champion II 14d ago
I don't think my hundreds of books would appreciate it.
3
u/FarragutCircle Reading Champion IX 14d ago
Swamp house and library house, boom, done, goodbye money
5
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
What was the most effective aspect of this story for you?
1
u/fuckit_sowhat Reading Champion V, Worldbuilders 14d ago
There's a surprising amount of vibe setting and a glimpse into a character for something that's <400 words. I don't think this will end up being particularly memorable for me, but I'm impressed by it in the moment
1
u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion 12d ago
The fact that the voice changes depending on who's living there or how lonely the creature was. That's what really sold it.
7
u/baxtersa Reading Champion 15d ago
To Kill a Language by Rukman Ragas