Reading Wednesday
Jan. 28th, 2026 07:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, edited by Dianna Gunn. There are enough good stories in here that I'd recommend it, but the general problems—earnestness, literalness—persist throughout many of the stories. Ah, author-led anthologies.
Neosynthesis, edited by Bryan Chaffin. Speaking of! This almost had the opposite problem, which is a bunch of stories where I actually didn't know what was going on at all and couldn't orient myself. But it's rescued by quite a few standouts—Rohan O'Duill's Cold-verse short stories, especially "The Lore of Seven," "Nova Domus," which is about a spaceship becoming a person, and "The Nexpat," which is about life extension and virtual existence.
I also flipped through the winter edition of "The Colored Lens," though I ended up just skipping ahead to J.S. Carroll's "Romeo Popinjay vs Iron Hans in the Beauty and the Beast Match You Won't Want To Miss," which was what I bought the anthology for, and which is 1000% worth the cover price. I want an entire novel of this short story. It's about an alternate universe where other hominids survive into more or less the present era, and feature in sideshows and pro-wrestling. Two heels—one human, one a wildman—end up forming a strange and touching friendship and rebel against their promoter. It's so so good.
Currently reading: I think next up is going to either be the rest of the aforementioned anthology or Changelog by Rich Larson, since that's what's sitting on the top of my TBR pile.
Neosynthesis, edited by Bryan Chaffin. Speaking of! This almost had the opposite problem, which is a bunch of stories where I actually didn't know what was going on at all and couldn't orient myself. But it's rescued by quite a few standouts—Rohan O'Duill's Cold-verse short stories, especially "The Lore of Seven," "Nova Domus," which is about a spaceship becoming a person, and "The Nexpat," which is about life extension and virtual existence.
I also flipped through the winter edition of "The Colored Lens," though I ended up just skipping ahead to J.S. Carroll's "Romeo Popinjay vs Iron Hans in the Beauty and the Beast Match You Won't Want To Miss," which was what I bought the anthology for, and which is 1000% worth the cover price. I want an entire novel of this short story. It's about an alternate universe where other hominids survive into more or less the present era, and feature in sideshows and pro-wrestling. Two heels—one human, one a wildman—end up forming a strange and touching friendship and rebel against their promoter. It's so so good.
Currently reading: I think next up is going to either be the rest of the aforementioned anthology or Changelog by Rich Larson, since that's what's sitting on the top of my TBR pile.
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Date: 2026-01-28 08:27 pm (UTC)