skygiants

The thing I like most of all, maybe, in speculative fiction, is when stories about the fantastical and the numinous have their roots in the deeply mundane and vice versa -- you can reach the stars, but you still need logistics, you still need plumbing, ordinary people are still going to have to make those things happen, and when they do that's maybe the most fantastical thing of all.

Iona Datt Sharma does this better than nearly anybody writing today. Their short story collection Not For Use In Navigation came out two weeks ago and it is absolutely chock full of stressed-out bureaucrats in space, among other themes (queerness; AI; infrastructure; mistakes and regrets and their aftermath; the way that humans succeed and fail at navigating difference; life as it is lived and goes on being lived after trauma and catastrophic change.)

Just about every story in this collection is a gem, but here's some favorites:

Light, Like a Candle Flame: all right so we're on the new planet, now where are we going to put the sanitation plant (says the stressed-out bureaucrat to her partner, the space ship)

Flightcraft: a nod to all those people who like WWII and women and planes (it's me! I'm one of those people!), but with magic and lesbians and the slow work of making a life after the war ends

Archana and Chandni: a lesbian Indian wedding, in space; full of aunties and sisters (one of whom is a spaceship) (but a spaceship that all the aunties love best!)

Nine Thousand Hours: not actually a horror story, but a premise that is deeply horrifying to me, personally, about a magical mistake with EXTREMELY SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES

Ur: daily life next to aliens; a community in limbo, waiting for a referendum on whether you get to stay and build

Quarter Days: the longest piece in the collection; a firm of magical practitioners navigate bureaucracy, complex magical infrastructure, and the people they've become in the wake of WWI

Akbar and the Crows; Birbal and the sadhu; Akbar's holiday; Akbar learns to read and write: Technically these are four different stories, interspersed through the collection, and every time I bumped into another one it brought me more joy -- folktales of an Akbar and a Birbal, a powerful ruler and her cleverest advisor running a vast intersteller empire

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sovay

and it is absolutely chock full of stressed-out bureaucrats in space

All right, fine, jeez, I'll pick up a copy!

Edited Date: 2019-04-06 04:15 pm (UTC)

skygiants

GOOD, there are so many grimly practical red-tape-mired individuals for you to love!

cahn

IONA DATT SHARMA!! I didn't know this collection was out! I have really loved everything I've read by her ("Light, Like a Candle Flame," "Nine Thousand Hours," and "Quarter Days" although there's probably at least one thing I'm missing) and I am SO EXCITED! Thank you!

You're very welcome, THEY'RE ALL SO GOOD. I'd read several of these before, but it was so much fun to read them all collected and trace themes and patterns!

(also fyi: Iona Datt Sharma uses they/them pronouns now!)

(ahh, thank you for letting me know!)

chestnut_pod

Well THIS looks up my alley.

STRONG RECOMMEND

kore

TWIST MY ARM WHY DON'T YOU

more than happy to >:D

And five bucks! SOLD

genarti

GOSH but this sounds delightful and straight up my alley :D :D :D

INDEED I SUSPECT IT IS

movingfinger

I looooove admin/management in fantasy (I just binged on a Narnia fanfic about accounting) and I shall be acquiring this forthwith. Thank you for the recommendation!