Category: Short Stories

If We Cannot Go At The Speed Of Light by Kim Cho-yeop

translated from the original Korean by Anton Hur. The only odd thing about this otherwise terrific collection of short stories, to me, is the fact that they led with the two weakest stories in the bunch instead of any of the strongest. Sure there are only seven stories in this collection, and perhaps other folks …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/21/if-we-cannot-go-at-the-speed-of-light-by-kim-cho-yeop/

Hugo Awards 2026: Best Novelette

Ooh, boy, is Doug gonna be surprised when he reads my voting slate for this year’s Hugo Awards nominees for Best Novelette! Presented, as usual, in descending order of preference. Top of my list this year is Catherynne M Valente’s When He Calls Your Name. Perhaps oddly, it is one of the two nominees on …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/07/08/hugo-awards-2026-best-novelette/

Hugo Awards 2026: Best Short Story Nominees

Getting a much earlier start with this year’s slate of Hugo nominees than I did last year’s, go me! And, as with last year’s short story slate, my favorite comes from Isabel J Kim, with her diabolical Wire Mother. Perhaps diabolical isn’t the best description, but after reading the bland obviousness of most of the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/06/09/hugo-awards-2026-best-short-story-nominees/

Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones

I’m gonna be so for real with y’all, idk if I would have picked this up had I known it was a reprint from 1994. Which I also only realized after riffling through the Contributor’s Notes at the back of the book and finding that the authors here are, as far as I could tell, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/05/20/shadows-over-innsmouth-edited-by-stephen-jones/

River of Bones And Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse

Alright, I’m going to straight up admit that I haven’t read any of Rebecca Roanhorse’s Sixth World novels, so I was definitely not as invested in what is likely to be the biggest draw of this book for fans of hers: the novella that closes the collection and gives it its name. River Of Bones …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/25/river-of-bones-and-other-stories-by-rebecca-roanhorse/

Head Of Household by Oliver Munday

God bless short stories for how easily digestible they are, having stripped away so much extraneous matter to properly capture a mood and make a point, at least, tho not exclusively, in the literary genre. Oliver Munday’s new collection of ten short stories exemplify this, almost to the point where I wanted more from several …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/09/head-of-household-by-oliver-munday/

Wandering Souls and other stories by Philip Caputo

I tend to read a lot more female authors than male, which apparently puts me in the minority of readers worldwide. It’s especially unusual for me to read “serious” fiction by men, and while there’s a touch of the supernatural in each story collected here, this is still very much the kind of literary writing …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/22/wandering-souls-and-other-stories-by-philip-caputo/

Black Friday: Short Stories From Africa by Cheryl S Ntumy

And now for a little counter-programming… (she says, having already bought a huge stack of gifts online.) Subtitled Fantasy and Science Fiction from a Powerful African Voice (and with a foreword by Eugen Bacon,) this collection definitely functions as both a critique of capitalism and other exploitative systems, as well as a celebration of Ghana …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/28/black-friday-short-stories-from-africa-by-cheryl-s-ntumy/

Hugo 2025 Chat

“There are no cast-iron rules about short-story writing, even on word count. Author A.L. Kennedy … asks, ‘Where do you draw the line formally between a novella and a long short story and a short-short story and a literary letter?’ The enduring blurring of boundaries of the short form exhibit themseleves in ranging award rules on word count on what posits as sudden fiction, shorter fiction or a novelette. “I am exhilarated today to see the short story, perhaps more so in speculative fiction, pulsing with vigour and accessibility, and with no mind to perish any time soon.”

Doug Merrill: Hi everyone! Emily Lauer: Hello! Doug: Hi Emily! Doreen Sheridan: Hello, all! I can confidently say that I’m happy they started a poetry category (and that my favorite won, lol) Doug: I’m glad that there’s a poetry category, too, and glad that it seems to have gone over well this year. Now to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/09/hugo-2025-chat/

This Skin Was Once Mine and other disturbances by Eric LaRocca

I have recently remarked on how my reading brain seems to have pivoted away from classic/cozy murder mysteries to punchy short horror stories as a sort of mental palate cleanser between books, likely due to the shift of my literary consumption to a minimum of three mystery novels per week. So Eric LaRocca’s This Skin …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/09/08/this-skin-was-once-mine-and-other-disturbances-by-eric-larocca/