michael

This covers August through beginning of November

At least one of the links was from coth; most I have no idea - some of them have been in my 'read later' for a very long time. There were also stories from All of Tor.com’s Original Short Fiction Published in 2022, which I'm guessing I've started working through before, but didn't remember what I'd read previously (18 short stories, 13 novelettes, 1 translation) (and didn't finish this time either)

Loved it!

• Smoke and Sweetness by Zhui Ning Chang, from Jan 2025 - gentle, sweet, slice of life with touches of whimsy and sadness, set in a floristry
• Fruiting Bodies - Kemi Ashing-Giwa, from Jan 2022 - very much body horror, in a far future on a different planet. Not quite zombies.
• The Chronologist by Ian R MacLeod, from Feb 2022 - atmosphere and character and kind of an apocalypse
• The Last Truth by Anamaria Curtis, from Feb 2022 - bittersweet, about how how losing oneself a memory at a time leaves nothing behind.

Not bad

• Bone by Karl Gallagher, from May 2025 - heavy on the science, clunky on the rest.
• If a Digitized Tree Falls by Ken Liu and Caroline M. Yoachim, from Sept 2025 (novelette) - snatches through time, as the ways in which the world is modelled by digital tech changes, and AI assistants evolved. I found myself distracted and unmotivated to finish, although it is beautifully written
• Model Collapse by Matthew Kressel, from Oct 2025 - very clever body horror about the AI takeover.

Not for me

• Saving the Gleeful Horse - K J Bishop, from March 2010. - creepy. But I managed to get distracted part way through, and then had to come back to finish it.
• Synthetic Perennial by Vivianni Glass, from Feb 2022 - normally I like myself some surreal / magic realism details, but I just found this one disorienting. Not for those with medical trauma.
• Hush by Mary Anne Mohanraj, from March 2022 - I get what this one is saying, but it is just a tad too real w.r.t fascism and racist supremacy. Unreliable narrator who thinks they are one of the good guys didn't help.
• The Long View by Susan Palwick, from April 2022 - this went too close to farce for me. Seemed to be both attempting to be Meaningful and Funny.

DNF

• Victory Citrus Is Sweet by Thoriay Dyer, from Sept 2022 - couldn't deal with the narrative voice
• Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man by Rich Larson - sometimes I'm in the mood for gritty noir cyberpunk, and today is not it.
• The Sisters of Saint Nicola of The Almost Perpetual Motion vs the Lurch by Garth Nix, from July 2022 - DNF - While I like Nix's novels, I often bounce from their short fiction, and this was no exception