Digest 07.28.23 - Stone Soup

Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

Hey friends! Gailey here! I’m on the road for the next couple of weeks, so I’ve invited some amazing guest editors to take over Stone Soup Digest. This week, I’m on the road to teach at Alpha! You can follow highlights (and, shall we say, “learning experiences”) from my trip here.

The utterly brilliant Malon Edwards, author of the short story you read this week, is stepping in for me. Malon has a collection of short stories coming out on September 12th. This collection is especially dear to my heart as it is coming from Fireside Fiction, home of some of my absolute favorite stories. You can preorder it here.

Also, in case you missed it, we sent out this essay from horror author Max Booth III. Max has a story coming up in Why Didn’t You Just Leave from Cursed Morsels. Check out the crowdfunding campaign to support this amazing book edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin. Don’t miss your chance to back the campaign!

Take it away, Malon!!

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Malon (MAY-lon) Edwards now lives in the Greater Toronto Area, where he was lured by his beautiful Canadian wife. Many of his short stories are set in an alt-Chicago future and feature people of color. In January 2020, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. His brain lesions do their best to stop him from writing, but he continues to fight them—and keep going.

Astro 101: Black Holes

Minister Faust, a sci fi/fantasy writer I follow on social media, dropped a link about the University of Alberta offering online courses for free. I took a look and, since my first 7-year-old academic love was astronomy, I fell down the rabbit hole into a black hole—the Astro 101: Black Holes course. In Module 1, Associate Professor Sharon Morsink talks about what Interstellar got right about black holes. I couldn’t help but watch Interstellar again and again, and probably will at least one more time to make sure I understand if it’s possible for a black hole to also be a wormhole or a time machine. If you ask Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain’s characters, they say yes, it is possible.

If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories from Fireside

“Electric Resurrection. Born again perfection. The six-zero correction.”

For the last decade, Malon Edwards has been spinning out a world where humans have conquered death but still haven’t bothered to take care of the living. Where resurrection is the ultimate commodity—if you’re rich enough, powerful enough, and white enough to buy in.

If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories collects 10 cyberpunk dispatches, including a brand-new, epic rap novella. On offer is a guided tour of an independent Chicago, a beacon of Black excellence that is done with the ever-hostile State of Illinois showing its ass.

Your guides are a little rough around the edges: hackers and assassins, thieves and grieving parents, elders and teenagers. Don’t fret. These people will take good care of you, so long as you mind yourself.

Welcome to the Sovereign State of Chicago.

Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto

A heroine, Wren, sets off on a quest to rescue a prince. No save-the-princess tropes here. And she’s a bonesmith who fights ghosts. And the undead. So much worldbuilding intrigue there.

Wolves & Girls & Other Dark Gems by Maria Haskins

Part of Brain Jar Press’s description of this short story collection (38 stories!) is that you can join the resistance fighting against a kaiju invasion and bring comfort to a captured unicorn. Sounds like a whiplash of tone between two very different stories and I'm here for that. And an introduction by one of my favorite editors in all the world, E. Catherine Tobler.

The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Gabriela Romero Lacruz’s website describes her novel as "a lush world inspired by the history and folklore of South America, a sweeping epic fantasy of colonialism, ancient magic, and two young women’s quest for belonging unfolds." One of the young women, Reina, has a grandmother who is a dark sorceress and helps her. The other young woman, Eva, knows secret magic of the dark god variety. Intrigue has reeled me in here as well.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

This was released earlier this month, but I admire Vajra Chandrasekera so much for recommending jurors to me for the A.C. Bose Grant when I was Grants Administrator for the Speculative Literature Foundation, and for a frank exchange we had in his role as Fiction Editor for Strange Horizons.

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera’'s debut novel, has invisible devils and anti-gods, and, according to the above, “junk email that hints at the arrival of a god”. I’m completely fascinated by the juxtaposition of a fantasy world with junk email technology. And not just fascinated. Intrigued. (There’s that word again.)

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

This book was released in May, but I have to talk about Cassandra Khaw’s work. Their Gods and Monsters series drew me in and totally awed me, and then their Hammers on Bone and A Song for Quiet books made me an everlasting fan. Enter The Salt Grows Heavy, which has mermaids with teeth. And a mermaid that partners with a plague doctor?! I think I can decidedly say this won’t be an “It's a Small World After All” ending. But then they don’t really write cutesy endings, which is quite all right with me.

Malon’s Reading: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

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—Gailey