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I chuckle sometimes at how truly, truly difficult nuanced discourse is online.
A'ight, I'll start! I don't think this story from my 2020 faves got enough love, because it's not free-to-read:
Dare Segun Falowo's "Kikelomo Ultrasheen" was published in F&SF's March/April issue.
A'ight, I'll start! I don't think this story from my 2020 faves got enough love, because it's not free-to-read:
Dare Segun Falowo's "Kikelomo Ultrasheen" was published in F&SF's March/April issue.
Hair is everything in this story, & the magic that is wrought in this updated Yoruban folklore (one of a series, I think, set in this universe?) involves ideas set upon the protagonist, power given to the protagonist, & "small" acts of participation before choosing to walk away.
It's beautifully told in the 2nd person, which is a surprisingly common mode in F&SF stories--a "feint" of agency when the author is really in control of the whole experience. You're just along for the ride on multiple levels. It exists in one of our genre's most storied venues.
Heck, it exists in a venue with explicit guidelines that favour direct action (e.g. no slow-build openings) and no "info-dumpy" text. So even though F&SF's (longstanding!) in-house style absolutely veers toward traditional Western storytelling styles, variation exists even here.
(And SFWA voters for the Nebulas? Please do give the story a read-through in the archives, and consider it for your nominations! Gorgeous prose, excellent pacing, immersive storytelling context. It's going on my ballot under "Novelette" for sure!)
Still nothing? Well, how about Usman T. Malik's "City of Red Midnight: A Hikayat"? A nested story, one tale leading us to the next to unravel a whole history of folks with often limited agency. It even includes meta-commentary on storytelling *as* agency! https://www.tor.com/2020/10/21/city-of-red-midnight-a-hikayat-usman-t-malik/
Then there's Kristiana Willsey's flash fiction, "Tiny House Living" (Fantasy Magazine, December 2020), which is chilling precisely because its protagonist *thinks* they have agency in an economic reality where "making do" is presented as the moral option. https://www.fantasy-magazine.com/new/new-fiction/tiny-house-living/
I recommend pairing that last with Aimee Ogden's "Intentionalities" in January's Clarkesworld. It's about an economy with few options; & how the choice one woman makes to survive it makes her realize far too late what she should have protested all along. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ogden_01_21/
OH! And then there's Constelación's "My Mother's Hand" by Dante Luiz, from the first post-launch issue. It follows the child of a witch who needed to walk away from an abusive parent to be himself. Alack, the parent literally continues to control his body. https://twitter.com/constelacionmag/status/1353950636002390018?s=20
