{"id":5888,"date":"2018-11-06T05:46:32","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T05:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=5888"},"modified":"2018-11-06T05:46:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T05:46:32","slug":"reviews-of-short-fiction-october-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=5888","title":{"rendered":"Reviews of Short Fiction: October Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each month, Daniel Haeusser reviews short works of SFT that appear both online and in print. He is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Canisius College, where he teaches microbiology and leads student research projects with bacteria and bacteriophage. He\u2019s also an associate blogger with the American Society for Microbiology\u2019s popular\u00a0Small Things Considered<\/a><\/span>. Daniel reads broadly\u00a0in English and\u00a0French, and\u00a0his\u00a0book reviews can be found at\u00a0Reading1000Lives<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or Skiffy & Fanty<\/a><\/span>. You can also connect with him on\u00a0<\/a>Goodreads<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Twitter<\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"\u201cThe Facecrafter<\/a>\u201d<\/span> by Anna Wu, translated from the Chinese by Emily Jin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clarkesworld<\/i> #145,<\/i> October 2018<\/p>\n

Nuclear war has driven surviving humanity into underground shelters divided by professional specializations, with individuals mostly connecting through a cyberspace world of escape, aptly named Eden. Ling Xi\u2019s job is oversight of a collection of surviving art work, and when some pieces go missing she has to discover what has happened. There is some interesting mixture of the mythological with science fiction speculation here, but from the beginning this story disappointed in its matter-of-fact language, which when not clunky, could serve as an illustration of why the writing adage states: \u2018show, don\u2019t tell\u2019. I had to work hard to finish this one, and I regret that I did. Clarkesworld<\/i> really needs to take a look at broadening the diversity of its translations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cOur Lady of the Scales<\/a>\u201d<\/span> by M\u00e9lanie Fazi, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin<\/strong><\/p>\n

World Literature Today<\/i> 92 (6),<\/i> November 2018<\/p>\n

Technically, not November, but I couldn\u2019t leave with the bad taste that Clarkesworld<\/i> provided. This excellent short story effectively combines multiple themes into an atmospheric, gothic fantasy built of rich, poetic language. Its plot is simple. A woman navigates the emotions and biological consequences surrounding a hysterectomy performed to remove cancer from her body. Both before and after the procedure, a statuary garden at her lover\u2019s family\u2019s home attracts her with its stony beauty and invulnerability. The entire story serves as a type of siren\u2019s call pulling the reader into empathy with the woman\u2019s despair and yearning. It also poignantly relates the complexities of the lover\u2019s struggles to support her, and augmenting senses of powerlessness in the face of biology. I am excited to find more to read from Fazi, whether in French or in translation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each month, Daniel Haeusser reviews short works of SFT that appear both online and in print. He is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Canisius College, where he teaches microbiology and leads student research projects with bacteria and bacteriophage. He\u2019s also an associate blogger with the American Society for Microbiology\u2019s popular\u00a0Small Things Considered.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[690,9,131,51,274,411,83,135,695,295],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5888"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5894,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5888\/revisions\/5894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}