195 pages Edited by Susan Kaye Quinn (2024)

Read this if you like: Solarpunk, short speculative fiction, inventive worldbuilding

tl;dr summary: Collection of shorts that each imagine a hopeful future in a different way

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I recently started watching the new Star Trek series, Starfleet Academy, which I'm so far finding to be a very fun and unique addition to the ever-growing Trek universe. For those unfamiliar with it, it's set in the 32nd century, directly after the final season of Discovery, and it reprises some of that series' characters. I was excited to see snarky engineer Jett Reno (Tig Notaro) among the academy's faculty, and Admiral Vance (Oded Fehr) is back as Starfleet's commander-in-chief. They've also dipped back into the past and brought back The Doctor, who has added an aging subroutine to his program but is otherwise much the same wisecracking, opera-loving hologram I came to know and love on Voyager.

Starfleet Academy is a departure from past Star Trek series in a number of ways. The name is a clue to a big one: its primary focus isn't the crew of a ship or station, but cadets in the newly reopened academy. While there was some space galavanting in the first episode (and may be more in the future, since the USS Athena is on-hand as a “mobile classroom”) the second and third are set entirely on the Starfleet Academy grounds in San Francisco, making it the first Star Trek series to use Earth as its primary setting. The overall tone of the show is different from other series, too. It still has that trademark Star Trek utopian optimism, though that takes on a unique flavor in the post-burn world of the 32nd century. At this point in the timeline, the Federation is rebuiding after having been nearly destroyed during the Burn, a catastrophic event that made warp travel impossible for roughly 120 years. In Discovery and Starfleet Academy, we're seeing a humbled Federation, one that's rediscovering its purpose after a long disruption, which honestly feels like the kind of message the world needs right now: that a hopeful future is possible, even after everything seemed like it was ruined irreparably.

I love luxuriating in a well-built world. When I'm reading a sci-fi or fantasy novel, I'm always a fan of the cozier scenes when the characters are exploring their world, and I can absolutely get sucked into descriptions of the history or technology, even when they're not actively moving the plot forward. There's a energy in getting to know a fantastical world. It's a lower-key energy than what's generated by plot movement but it can still be enough to keep a reader invested in something like a novel, where you don't need the pace to be consistently quick. 

With short fiction, worldbuilding becomes more of a challenge, especially if you're using a completely secondary world. It's especially challenging when you're working at a flash length and really don't have any extra words to spare, though I would also  say there's one advantage to having an under-1,000 word constraint: you're less likely to have info dumps because there's simply not space for them. When you're working in the 3,000-8,000 word range, the temptation to info dump is strong. 

Susan Kaye Quinn 125 pages Self-published (2024)

Read this if you like: Solarpunk/climate fiction, Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson

tl;dr summary: Six stories set in near futures where we haven’t fixed shit yet, but we’re getting there.

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Oliver K. Langmead 223 pages Titan Books (2024)

Read this if you like: novels-in-verse, Ursula K. LeGuin, Jeff VanderMeer

tl;dr summary: Colony ship engineer wakes from stasis to learn she slept through a war and is one of the few experts left to complete their mission.

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Literary genres in general can be confusing to navigate, especially once you get into the convoluted quagmire of speculative subgenres or the oddly specific categories for romance. The “punk” subset of genres is one that I find particularly head-scratch inducing. I often think I understand a term only to see someone use it in a way that makes me question whether they (or I) actually know what it means. It doesn't help that “punk” takes on a different meaning when it's being used in a cultural, stylistic, or musical context. 

I have to give the usual caveat for a post like this, which is that genre definitions aren't set in stone. That's even more true with genres that were recently invented, like a lot of the punk subgenres. That being said, here's a run-down on the various literary flavors of punk, and how they relate to the term in a broader sense. So, to kick things off...

Adrian Tchaikovsky 388 pages Orbit (2024)

Read this if you like: unique alien ecosystems, Rick Claypool, Vernor Vinge

tl;dr summary: Political prisoners in an Orwellian dystopia are sent to a labor camp on Kiln, a planet where the life is aggressively symbiotic and potentially sentient.

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Leech Girl Lives Rick Claypool 307 pages Space Boy Books (2017)

Read this if you like: Philip K. Dick, high-tech dystopias, creature horror

tl;dr summary: Woman on far-future fungus-infested Earth gets leeches for arms, uses them to save humanity.

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Writing flash fiction in any genre is hard for me. I love a well-built world, a complex plot, a big cast of characters—all things that are tricky to fit into any short story length, much less in 1,000 words or less.

This is also what I’ve come to love about writing flash fiction, though. It’s a valuable exercise in focus and economy of language. Any flash story is condensed in some way, but that’s especially true for fantasy, sci-fi, or historical—any genre where you need to establish a world the reader doesn’t know yet. It takes a deft hand to immerse someone in a new reality, introduce them to a character they care about, and give them an actual plot to follow, without letting the story sprawl beyond a flash piece’s limited real estate.

Gustavo Bondoni 281 pages Guardbridge Books (2017) 

tl;dr summary: Intergalactic expats return to Earth to find its humans now live entirely in a simulation.

Read this if you like: The Matrix, Vernor Vinge, Ann Leckie

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