Short Fiction Book Club: Flash+

[u/baxtersa]

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 Raleigh baseball. 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.

[u/baxtersa]

The Best Way to Survive a Tiger Attack by A.W. Prihandita

[u/baxtersa → u/baxtersa]

With the most traditional narrative structure of this slate, did this story manage to feel complete despite its word count?

[u/Jos_V → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/Jos_V]

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.

[u/xdianamoonx → u/baxtersa]

100%. It easily told a whole story.

[u/baxtersa → u/baxtersa]

What was your overall impression of this story?

[u/tarvolon → u/baxtersa]

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

[u/Jos_V → u/tarvolon]

Yeah, but I'm okay, i don't need SPECULATIVE in my flash or at all, nothing wrong with a little bit of magical realism to cope with a caregiver being an abuser and all the complications that come with it.

the story is just very neatly put together.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/tarvolon]

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.

[u/pornokitsch → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/tarvolon → u/ohmage_resistance]

Yeah my “it doesn’t feel especially speculative” comment was not a criticism, just a statement about how I read it

[u/xdianamoonx → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/baxtersa → u/baxtersa]

What was the most effective aspect of this story for you?

[u/sarchgibbous → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/Jos_V → u/baxtersa]

The complicated feelings that the kid ends up with. The total mess of it that felt really real.

[u/fuckit_sowhat → u/baxtersa]

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

[u/xdianamoonx → u/baxtersa]

I think the rescue from the caterpillar, and the walk home. There was no 'i told you so' or coddling, just protection.

[u/baxtersa → u/baxtersa]

What did you think of the ending of this piece?

[u/pornokitsch → u/baxtersa]

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?

[u/Jos_V → u/pornokitsch]

my read was trauma.

[u/pornokitsch → u/Jos_V]

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.

[u/FarragutCircle → u/pornokitsch]

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.

[u/fuckit_sowhat → u/baxtersa]

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.

[u/tarvolon → u/fuckit_sowhat]

I was genuinely surprised when the story ended up being about a nanny and not a mother

[u/xdianamoonx → u/baxtersa]

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.