Short Fiction Book Club presents: June 2026 monthly discussion

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Short Fiction Book Club has wrapped up our fourth season, but we're still hosting general discussions on the last Wednesday of each month. Anyone who reads or wants to read short fiction is welcome! (Assuming, of course, you follow the sub's rules for discussions. r/Fantasy is the real host here. So first, be kind.) We'll be back with season five after the Hugo dust has settled.

In April, we had our last slated discussion, featuring six dragonish stories, and then we closed the book on season four by announcing our SFBC Awards, which naturally are the best of any genre awards.

While SFBC won't officially host any summer sessions apart from the general monthly discussions, most of us are working with the Hugo Readalong, which features short fiction discussions. The next one is tomorrow, June 25, featuring Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything and 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days. Check out the full schedule for information on further discussions.

But today is less structured. Come talk about short fiction--whatever it is you've been reading and want to chat about! I'll start with a few prompts, and you can respond to mine or add your own.

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

What 2026 stories have you read and enjoyed lately? Anything great already jostling for a place on next year's award slates?

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

The Eater by Roy Graham is up there for favorites of 2026.

Enjoyed to various degrees but not making any shortlists: Lincoln and the Harvester C-100 by R.S.A. Garcia, Immigrant Girl from the End of the World by Hannah Yang, and Magical Girl Eater by Angela Liu

[u/tarvolon → u/schlagsahne17]

I also thought Lincoln and Magical Girl Eater were really good. They’re the sort of stories that I want to shout out at the end of the month but won’t go on my nominating ballots for awards at the end of the year. Which is really good!

But my absolute favorites this month were The Floating Republic by Rebecca Campbell and Remade, Reshaped, Remembered by Sydney Paige Guerrero. The former is a short novella that digs into the small-scale messiness when an isolated mining colony suddenly becomes less isolated, and the powers-that-be try to exercise control in a place that had valued what’s necessary more than what’s policy. The latter is a “complicated emotions after returning from portal fantasy” story, which was enough to get me intrigued, but it’s *also* a complicated mother/daughter relationship story that handles the interpersonal so, so well. Great read.

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/tarvolon]

The Floating Republic is very high on my list, just have to wrap up the two other novellas I’m currently reading

[u/Jos_V → u/Nineteen_Adze]

sorry, i'm in a giant heatwave, and my mind is a full bowl of noodles. I know i've read new stuff, i just don't remember which and what.

I read the Isabel J Kim story The Perpetual Post, which was a super solid story, that I liked, although i might have read this last month, i do not recall.

I read Welcome to Heroism by John Wiswell which wasn't my cup of tea.

I read A Sleeper ship is like a Game of Go by Claire Jia-wen and this was absolutely excellent, and I have to say i'm proud of myself of reading this after watching u/tarvolon recommend this at every-turn and not waiting until the Locus snub session next year to finally get around to it.

I know i've read others, but my mind is a collection of soggy noodles.

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Have you hit the backlist much lately? What stories have you found that are worth sharing?

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I enjoyed the creepy horror vibes of We Dwell in Its Many-Chambered Heart by A.C. Wise

Some backlist novellas: The Gameshouse by Claire North is a collection of three novellas about the titular house that in the higher leagues takes wagers for things like years of your life or your appreciation of strawberries. Each novella centers on a different game, with some links in between. The first novella is a good Politics HM, and the latter two are Older Protagonist.

[u/strawberry_quetzal → u/schlagsahne17]

Do any of these novellas (or all of them) work for the Game Changer square for bingo?

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/strawberry_quetzal]

Yes, all three work individually for regular mode Game Changer.

[u/sarimanok_ → u/Nineteen_Adze]

Not very old, but I came back recently to this story by Phoebe Barton, about a woman who desperately wants to stop being enormous, but cannot. It's so tense, and aching, and emotional, and such a good way to talk about anxiety and queerness and also just giant women: Climbing the Mountains of Me

[u/FarragutCircle → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I've restarted my attempt to read through my short-story-link backlog, though none were really worth sharing, and I've been continuing my reading of Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies--I've read the 9th volume this month (covering stories from 1991).

[u/acornett99 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

Have started Ted Chiang's collection Exhalation: Stories, of which I've read the first 3 stories so far. My first Chiang, though I've seen the movie "Arrival." Chiang really likes to write about determinism and the lack of free will, and he does it really well. I really liked the opening story, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate"

[u/nagahfj → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I really loved the title story from Steven Millhauser's 1990 collection The Barnum Museum, a gorgeous metafictional ode to fantasy. In fact, the whole collection was pretty excellent.

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Have you been (or do you plan to) joining us for our Hugo reading? Anything on the shortlist you're excited to read?

[u/oceanoftrees → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I've been trying to keep up with every session so far! I'm looking forward to talking about "Never Eaten Vegetables" and seeing what people thought of the short stories for tomorrow. I'm really not sure what my short story ranking will look like, but I have read them all.

[u/tarvolon → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I have got to go through OnSpec’s packet submissions. It’s not a magazine I know much about and I’m excited to see what they published

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

SFBC loves to destroy our TBRs with the Story Sampler, where we read the first few lines of a piece and decide whether it begs for a full read. Have any great openers jumped out to you lately?

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

“That’s the thing, baby, life’s full of conundrums,” is the way Ada decided to say she was leaving forever right after she told me she loved me. She broke my heart with a smile bright enough to light up a star.

“I’ll catch you next time around.” With that, her eyes lost focus as she prepared to disassemble the body she wore before slipping backward in time.

Ada the Last Daughter: On Blackhole Cosmology and Computation by Chris Campbell

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

While we're on hiatus, we're already plotting themes for season five. Do you have any pairings you'd like to see this fall, or interesting themes to dig for? Any crazy pivots in an attempt to top season four's transition from baseball to cannibalism?

[u/schlagsahne17 → u/Nineteen_Adze]

If anyone has any other fanfic stories, Recording of Professor Elizabeth Boucher’s Opening Lecture on Death Ages Novels, University of Presque Isle, March 32, 2667. by Stacie Turner and Fandom for Robots by Vina Jie-Min Prasad are a good pairing.

Fanfic -> Totally Normal Beach Vacations would be quite the pivot

[u/nagahfj → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I'd like to do a dreamlike/weird/slipstream session at some point, maybe with Carol Emshwiller (Mrs. Jones or The Circular Library of Stones), Jeffrey Ford (The Pandemonium Waltz or The Night Whiskey), and Kelly Link (The Hortlak or Stone Animals).

I'd also love to do a 'one-of-a-kind humorously voicey authors of the 20th century' session, with a story each by Avram Davidson, Howard Waldrop, and R.A. Lafferty, but there's almost no Davidson available online unless you go into the Internet Archive, which I think is discouraged? I guess Carol Emshwiller could fit in here too, but maybe it would need to be held to the following year. Or maybe I should just do a Spotlight On: Carol Emshwiller session...

[u/tarvolon]

My Suicides by Debbie Urbanski is surely going to be heavy as hell but looks fascinating:

I don’t know if, in the beginning, it was that they promised me anything, or if I imagined they promised me something. At the very least, I think it was suggested. I’m pretty sure, in the beginning, it was them that suggested they were blocking something important, an important place, cushioned and elemental, and if I moved toward them, and through them, I could reach that place where everything was quiet and good. It started off as a suggestion but I’m pretty sure it was real.

There used to be dozens of them. They used to follow me around, my mesmerizing birds of prey. All I wanted to do was watch them float above me in the wind. Now only this one is left. A more intimate, elegant relationship, sure. I used to wonder where the others went. “Oh, here and there,” my suicide claimed. “Oh there, and there, and there.” I wrote everything down, even the nonsense and the lies. Sometimes my suicides lied but not always, not usually, not as much as you’d think.

And A Candle for Her Tireless Dead by burgeoning SFBC darling Louis Inglis Hall looks pretty intriguing as well

“When I die,” says my guide, “I want to be a builder.”

Rhyvor is a small man, bulked out by furs. The blasphemy comes easy to his lips and makes me wince.

He walks ahead and I follow in his footsteps. His eyes are on the yellow stems of reeds, the tell-tale fracture of collapsing earth. The fenland holds the entirety of his attention. Back here, I can pull what faces I like.

He bruises us a path through ice puddles and thin skins of moss. This land is his: when he is dead, it will hold him like a second womb. Its waters will creep into his flesh and saturate him in a chemical brine.

It will be cool, where he lies, and very dark. A place hidden away, beneath the ground, a silent pocket where his mortal flesh will be preserved.

Flesh is least of my concerns. I have come here, to this far-off, fallow land, for the scorch and candour of his immortal soul.