This month’s discussion ranges across a number of stories in both magazines, but particularly highlights and recommends Lavie Tidhar’s excellent “The Bookseller”, from Interzone. You can subscribe to Interzone and Analog: Science Fiction & Fact online. Please consider supporting these worthy short story publications.

Next month: TBA

The stories discussed are:

• “The Fairy Enterprise” by Jeffrey Ford
• “From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvelous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)” by Genevieve Valentine
• “The Memory Book” by Maureen McHugh
• “Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells” by Delia Sherman
• “Briar Rose” by Elizabeth Wein
• “The Governess” by Elizabeth Bear
• “The Unwanted Women of Surrey” by Kaaron Warren
• “Mr. Splitfoot” by Dale Bailey
• “Phosphorus” by Veronica Schanoes
• “We Without Us Were Shadows” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “The Vital Importance of the Superficial” by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer
• “The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown” by Jane Yolen
• “A Few Twigs He Left Behind” by Gregory Maguire
• “Estella Saves the Village” by Theodora Goss

You can purchase a copy of the anthology at your preferred book dealer retailer – we highly recommend it.

Work is commencing on the next episode, where more of the Last Short Story team will discuss new short fiction.

Next month: TBA

• “Watching the Cow”, Alex Irvine
• “The Blue Celeb”, Desmond Warzel
• “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel”, Ken Liu
• “This Is How You Disappear”, Dale Bailey

You can subscribe to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction here. Please consider supporting this fine short story publication.

Work is commencing on the next episode, where more of the Last Short Story team will discuss new short fiction.

Next month: Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

After three “pre-season” episodes, where Last Short Story podcasters discussed Asimov’s, After and The Future is Japanese, Ian Mond and Jonathan Strahan sat down to discuss the December 2012 issue of Clarkesworld and the January 2013 episode of Lightspeed, and for the most part were impressed. The stories discussed are:

Clarkesworld #75, December 2012

• “Your Final Apocalypse“, Sandra McDonald
• “The Wisdom of Ants“, Thoraiya Dyer
• “Sweet Subtleties“, Lisa L. Hannett

Lightspeed #32, January 2013

• “With Tales in Their Teeth, From the Mountain They Came”, A.C. Wise
• “Purity Test”, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• “Lifeline”, Jonathan Tofert
• “The Sounds of Old Earth“, Matthew Kressel

You can subscribe to Lightspeed here and to Clarkesworld here. Please consider supporting these important short story publications.

We’re currently working on the next episode, and will advise shortly on what we’ll discuss in February.

Next month: TBA

As we did in episode two, we restricted ourselves to discussing just five stories from this interesting anthology, each of which either rank amongst the year’s better stories, or were otherwise worthy of discussion:

1. “Mono No Aware” by Ken Liu
2. “The Sea of Trees” by Rachel Swirsky
3. “One Breath, One Stroke” by Catherynne M. Valente
4. “Golden Bread” by Issui Ogawa
5. “The Indifference Engine” by Project Itoh

These are only a small sampling of the thirteen stories in the book, but they proved to be the jumping off point for what we think made for an interesting conversation.

Next month: TBA

As part of the pre-season for the podcast, we continue to refine the format. This time we accept that we’re not going to get through nineteen stories, however fine they may be, in an hour podcast, so we restrict ourselves to discussing these six stories, all of which rank amongst the year’s better stories, and several of which are clearly amongst the best:

1. “The Segment,” Genevieve Valentine
2. “Valedictorian,” N.K. Jemisin
3. “Blood Drive,” Jeffrey Ford
4. “The Easthound,” Nalo Hopkinson
5. “Fake Plastic Trees,”  Caitlin R. Kiernan
6. “The Marker,” Cecil Castellucci

These aren’t the only good stories in the book, by any means, but in the collective opinion of the podcast panel they easily justify the time spent reading the book.

Next month: The Future is Japanese, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington eds.

Welcome to the first episode of Last Short Story.  Several years ago members of Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus founded Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth, a reading group that took on the seemingly impossible task of reading every single new short story published in the science fiction and fantasy genres with a view to broadening their knowledge of the field, and discovering exciting new writers and works of fiction.

Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth has been running for several years and its become increasingly clear that the one thing the group hasn’t fostered is actual discussion between group members and the community at large on short fiction. Given that discussing great new short fiction was arguably the point of the group, that seemed a problem.

And then a proposal arose. A podcast would be started where, each month, a rotating roster of Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth participants would discuss a single issue of a magazine or a collection or an anthology, something that everyone had read and was ready to discuss.  That proposal was warmly endorsed and plans were set in motion to debut the new podcast in 2013.

A fine plan, except that some of the group members (i.e.  Jonathan) were eager to get underway, and so the idea of  launching the new podcast with a pre-season arose. Two members of Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth,  Ian Mond and Jonathan Strahan, would record a series of episodes, refining the format and getting things started, between August and December.  The podcast proper would then launch in January 2013.

This is the first of the pre-season episodes. Here Ian and Jonathan discuss the August 2012 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.  The contents of the issue are:

NOVELETTES

• “Weep for Day” by Indrapramit Das
• “Heaven’s touch” by Jason Sanford
• “Joining the High Flyers” by Ian Creasey
• “The Bernoulli War” by Gord Sellar

SHORT STORIES

• “Beautiful Boys” by Theodora Goss
• “View Through the Window” by Ted Reynolds
• “Starsong” by Aliette de Bodard
• “Stamps” by Bruce McAllister

POETRY

• “My House of the Future” by G.O. Clark
• “The Big Bang’s Backstory” by Marion Boyer
• “Cassandra Moments from ‘The Official Guide to Time Travel’” by Robert Frazier
• “The Music of a Dead World” by Bruce Boston

DEPARTMENTS

• Editorial: The 2012 Dell Magazines Award by Sheila Williams
• Reflections: Big Endians/Little Endians by Robert Silverberg
• Next Issue
• On Books by Paul Di Filippo
• The SF Conventional Calendar by Erwin S. Strauss

Coming up in the next podcast, for those who like to read along is Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s new YA dystopian science fiction anthology, After.