Short Story Sunday 21: Jo Walton and Ted Chiang

I’ve been reading stories in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 for three weeks. I’m starting to get a bit tired of them, not because of the content necessarily as I’ve enjoyed these last six stories, but of their length. The very short length of these stories has limited their scope and depth. That changes today as one of the stories is technically the length of a novelette and it has the kind of deep storytelling that I was looking for and it’s tremendous. 

“On the Wall” by Jo Walton

Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)

Originally published in Strange Horizons (September 2001), edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj

This is my first time reading something by Walton but I’m already a big fan of her through her various non-fiction writing at Tor.com. I’ve been meaning to explore her body of work, but I simply seem to never get around to it. Because of that I welcomed the opportunity to get my first taste with this anthology.

Short Story Sunday 20: Gene Wolfe and Patrick O’Leary

I had a good time reading short stories last weekend so I decided to do the same again this week. I was hoping for some better stories. One of these confused me and I’m still not sure what to think of it. The other certainly delivered the goods.

“Queen” by Gene Wolfe

Read in Year’s Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (uncredited)

Originally published in Realms of Fantasy (December 2001), edited by Shawna McCarthy

I haven’t read much by Wolfe, but what I have read has blown me away. The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace are worth your time and will certainly stay with you for weeks after finishing them. That’s the effect they had on me. I’ve read a handful of his short stories and all of them read like they’ important and worth reading, even if they often leave me questioning what actually happened. That’s standard fare for a Wolfe story.