Sunday Short: Ursula Vernon's Jackalope Wives

This week's Sunday Short was the 2014 Nebula award winning short story, Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon, published in Apex. It was also listed in io9's list of what the Hugo ballot this year could have been.

by Lauren Marx

This story begins with a young man in a town who has a touch of magic and a heap of brooding about him. On moonlit nights, this town can hear the wild music of the jackalope wives, who slip out of their jackalope skins and dance. The young man decides that one jackalope wife in particular that he would catch:

She danced farther out from the others and her horns were short and sharp as sickles. She was the last one to put on her rabbit skin when the sun came up.... She danced a little apart from her fellows, as he walked a little apart from his.

The story then takes off as he catches her and throws her skin in the fire. The jackalope wife screams, he realizes the wrongness of what he is doing, and he rescues the skin half-burned from the fire. She tries to put it on, but it doesn't transform her back into a jackalope. The young man goes to his grandma for aid.

I thought it was a beautiful story -- an interesting mash-up of the selkie fairytales and 'modern folktale' of the jackalope. The character of Grandma Harken made it shine, and the ending was delightful. This flavor of magical realism in fantasy/folktale is wonderful, especially in the short story format. This story is definitely worth a read in my book -- 5/5 stars!

Favorite line:  
Perhaps he thought she might understand him. Perhaps he found her as interesting as the girls found him.

Perhaps we shouldn't always get what we want.

Alicia at the blog Cyborg Knight will be reading along and sharing thoughts on the upcoming short stories I am featuring in September.  Look out for a post this week for more information about the upcoming short stories, in case anyone else is interested in reading along.

Next week's short will be the 2014 Nebula nominee The Breath of War by Aliette de Bodar, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 

thoughts on introducing kids to fandom

Another blog post? Only a day after the last, which was only a day after the last? I guess everything that happened this past weekend at WorldCon has gotten to me. And I have THOUGHTS.

There is a facebook post making the rounds post Hugo awards. Michael Rothman took his two sons the watch the Hugo awards after they'd all read and voted on them, not explaining the conflict that surrounded them this year beforehand, and they all left feeling left out when puppygeddon happened. The original post can be found here, but Brad Torgensen (one of the Sad Puppies leaders) also posted about it here.

I think if I had a chance to talk with Rothman’s kids, I would first sit us all down and watch Wil Wheaton’s speech to a newborn captured on YouTube as “Why it’s awesome being a nerd,” which you can watch below or find here: 

Find the things that you love and 

love them the most that you can.

That video always hits me in the feels.

Then, after we watched the video, I’d tell them that there will be times in fandom and in life that others don’t love the same exact thing that they love and that is OK. We all have had our own experiences, I am sure, of being told how weird it is to love the geeky things we do. Growing up geek was an incredibly lonely experience at times for me (as I imagine it was for many many others). We can’t control what other people do, and we can’t let adult conflicts (such as the Hugo awards) dictate how we love the things we love. I think that is a very important lesson for all of us to learn at some point. 

In this Hugo awards conflict, it is disingenuous to continually just say that the other side needs to make it better, be better, for the next generation. We ALL need to be better. I have sort of entered late into trying to understand everything going on, but I see issues in how things have been handled on ALL sides. 

My daughter (who is only 2, so a little ways off from fandom... although you could probably call her a Curious George / Sophie the First fangirl) will probably not like the same things as Rothman’s kids. She probably will not geek out about the same things as me, either. 

I can hope my mommy hope that she never ever experiences rejection and disappointment for her geeky loves, but it is going to happen at some point and there is nothing I can do about it unless I want to raise a bubble-child. Instead, I hope I can raise her in a way that she knows she can geek out about almost anything and find someone else who loves it too… and also probably find others that DON’T love it too.

Fandom/civilization/life isn’t composed of this homogeneous crowd that will celebrate the same things that I love, and that diversity of opinions and viewpoints isn’t a bad thing.

If it were me, I wouldn’t have brought my kids to the Hugo awards as an introduction to fandom. I’d find out what exactly they most want to see / do at WorldCon outside of the awards ceremony (that was only ever going to be some level of controversy) and make sure we did that instead — be it meet an author, attend a talk on something awesome and weird, go to ballroom/regency dancing lessons, check out the cool art on display and maybe bid on something original and unique, find a geeky pride shirt, learn to shoot a bow and arrow from the local LARP group, etc. I didn’t attend WorldCon this year, but those are the type of events that I’ve seen and participated in at my local cons and loved. And that is where I think cons shine as a way to introduce kids to fandom.

read more short fiction!

So, some may have noticed that I haven't said anything in regards to the Hugo Awards / nominees this year. Last year, I kicked off my Sunday Shorts feature reading the nominations for short stories - the slate got me interested and excited in the short speculative fiction field in general, and inspired me to start advocating that people read more short fiction!!!

The Hugo Awards were held this past weekend at WorldCon. The whole process this year was sad, but I am not going to get into it (George RR Martin has been a very well spoken voice through the whole process - most is captured with his blog tag puppygate). After the awards were given out (No Award winning in many a category), the full slate of nominations from the first round were released - giving readers an idea of what the nominees could have looked like if a group hadn't decided to nominate a slate for *reasons* and not because they read, loved, and thought them the absolute best the genre could produce last year.

io9 has posted on what the nominees would have looked like and it was oh-so-good . Frankly, it has me sad again and maybe a little bit mad. This list of nominees included stuff I read / recommended last year and a ton of new picks that I would have loved to explore prior to voting. What could have been....

I am hoping I can channel my mad to regularly read / review the shorter selections and post about them on the blog with more regularity. So, look forward to more regular and recent Sunday Shorts (some borrowed from the could-have-been-2015-hugo-nominees list!) to come in the next few months!

This Sunday, I'll be reviewing the Nebula award winning short story, Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon published in Apex. 

For anyone interested and wanting to add to their reading list, places I have found to seek out recommendations for short sci-fi/fantasy stories:
Clavis Aurea (Charlotte Ashley's short fiction review in Apex)
Rich and Strange (Amal El-Mohtar's regular feature on short stories)
io9's newstand feature

Sunday Short: Seanan McGuire's The Myth of Rain

Sunday Shorts are back this week with a story published originally in Lightspeed and soon to be released as part of an anthology Loosed Upon The World.



I have been thinking about the future a lot recently. I think it is partly hormones (I'm pregnant with #2, due in January), and partly just a normal part of adulthood. What will my generation's impact be?

So, when I read Seanan McGuire's short story The Myth of Rain this week... it caught me in the gut. Is McGuire's future what my daughters have to look forward to? I have friends who work on climate change issues. I live in southern California, in the midst of the deep drought. I am from the Pacific Northwest and hope my family can make it's way there in the not too distant future. Because I know where I live / how things are going isn't entirely sustainable and may already be too late.

In McGuire's short, we follow a biologist who is helping to capture owls to save before a new development takes over their protected habitat. She is trying to capture one more female spotted owl for an ark. Her musings on the topic of climate change (from a historical perspective versus our in-the-moment perspective) are a bit heart wrenching. I love science fiction for its speculative nature, but sometimes I don't always love what it gets me speculating on.

But overall, this story is crafted in a way I've truly come to appreciate of Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant). She tackles interesting science in her fiction (short and long forms) while targeting interesting moral topics. This short story isn't fun nor optimistic, but maybe we need more stories like it to truly do something. I'm definitely planning on picking up the anthology this story will be apart of when it comes available. And maybe lose more than a few nights sleep after reading it.

Naomi Novik's Uprooted

Disclaimer: I received this book as an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

It is probably no surprise to anyone who has seen my reading list that I am a sucker for epics. I can't say no to stories that span hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of pages, where an author can take his/her time to introduce us to the characters and their relationships, construct complex mysteries and politics, and develop interesting and intricate magic / fantasy systems. I can't help but see big books (and the worldbuilding they promise) and sometimes get a little giddy -- hello new world, I want to devour and delight in you! 


But there is something delightful to me about finding a standalone novel that satisfies my epic fantasy hunger. And Novik's latest novel Uprooted does that so well!

Uprooted follows the story of Agnieszka, who has lived her entire life in the shadow of The Wood, a malevolent and corrupted forest miles from her valley home. We meet her just before she is chosen by the Dragon, a wizard who serves as the noble lord for her valley (and protects it as best he is able alone). The Dragon takes a girl from the valley aged 17 every 10 years, and the girls always return changed.

Within Agnieszka's story, Novik develops a complex world of sorcery and magic, with interesting characters and complex mysteries... all in under 500 pages. I couldn't put the book down once I started it; even when pesky things like child rearing and work made me do other activities, I was thinking about this story.

I loved Agnieszka's relationship with Kasia, her childhood friend. I loved the fact that there was a love interest in the story for Agnieszka, but that it wasn't the central facet of her story/development. I just plain loved Agnieszka; she was a bit stubborn but also often right about things despite everyone else's doubts. The pacing of the story was fantastic, and the plot moved unexpectedly enough that I wasn't certain where it was going to end up. 

As much as epic-loving me would love to revisit the world Novik has built here (maybe following a few other characters' tales), the ending was satisfying to me. I am definitely going to recommend this to friends/family/anyone who ever makes the mistake of asking me for an interesting story to read in the coming months! Five out of five stars.