LINKDING

<blockquote>It feels like ghost stories should mean something, but it’s not at all clear what. I managed to get about a hundred pages out of the question, “What do these mean, anyway?” when I wrote my doctoral dissertation to get my PhD in Folklore, all without reaching an actual conclusion. My mother helpfully pointed that out when she read the manuscript. “If I give them a real answer, they’ll just complain about it,” I said. “So just tell me, Leah,” she said. “What do you think ghost stories mean?” “I think they’re the manifestation of people’s desire for answers about death and eternity,” I said. “But I could be totally wrong, especially since there’s a whole category of ghost stories that don’t seem to have anything to do with identifiable dead people.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The girl does not come to Mebuyen, so Mebuyen goes to the girl. She is standing ankle-deep in the river, looking down, her mouth open. Mebuyen notices, as she draws closer, that the child’s calves are skinny, her cheeks chubby, and her SpongeBob Squarepants sando has a bullet-sized hole above her ribs. Mebuyen frowns as she steps into the river, waiting for the girl to speak.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Ah yes, the ill-fated expedition of 2031,” he said, shaking his head. I was delighted to recognize in his heavily accented English the speech mannerisms of Bihar, the state in India where I am from. Biharis are not very common on the moon. But before I could say anything about my origins, he launched into the story behind the space-suit.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Constable Kershaw has not uttered any overrides, nor issued a warrant to access her memory logs, but Celia understands nonetheless that she is expected to stay, to sit and answer his questions like a suspect. It surprises her, this treatment. Like she’s human.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When Satan himself came to Lolly, she didn’t recognize him. She wasn’t on her guard—hadn’t been for years. Why should she be? Her immortal soul had long since drowned in rum and rotted under gobs of treacle toffee. If any scrap was left, it was too dry and leathery to tempt evil. But even the most pious of parsons wouldn’t have recognized the Devil in the guise of a dead woman floating face-down in the Mersey.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Two women who have been friends since they were children—one a recovering alcoholic brought up by parents who believe they’re alien abductees, the other an orphan with an eating disorder—contend with a secret that might doom their friendship.</blockquote>

<blockquote>When I finally went in she had cleared the table and pulled the carpetbag out from under the bed. It was grey with dust; even before Da died Mam and I weren’t supposed to touch it, though I used to open it when no one was looking. It’s the past, Da would say when I asked him about it. From when we thought we knew better than God. We came here to get away from that. The way Mam was laying things out, I knew I wasn’t the only one who had peeked inside. She didn’t even have to look, just put out the candles and the fancy drawings, and even the vials that I liked best. In your hand the stuff inside looked black, but when you held them up to the light you saw that it was really a dark, sweet red. Beside these Mam put a knife I had never seen before, with a thick handle and two round blades folded up like a flower. “I’ll show him,” she said. “I’ll show him my god-damned claim.”</blockquote> ➤ awful and ouchy and well-written and intense

<blockquote>“Our job is to make people happy,” she purred, raising a playful eyebrow. “Fulfill their requests. Help them make connections.” “Connections with their fellow eniyans,” I shot back, pointing at the Iyami Aje mission statement on my cube wall, engraved on a glittering obsidian plaque. “With their own fragile kind. I don’t work like you, Bola.” I fiddled with the ergonomic levers of my swivel chair. “I don’t just ignore the hazards of getting entangled.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>The five other fairies scowled at her. They too were all drunk and well fed, and the meal in their bellies was taking on the sour heaviness of an unpaid debt. They had all brought trinkets for the baby, of course, all the gifts that could formally be expected by a low nobleman—which was why six of them had been invited in hopes of getting at least one blessing—but the feast had also exceeded what could formally be expected for their having deigned to grace the occasion. They could hardly refuse the cake, either—and didn’t want to—and would have a lingering sense of a favor owed.</blockquote> ➤ eyyy I like this

<blockquote>Whispers said this new girl was officially called Brenda, but that was just as stupid as all the other Agency names, and the girl wouldn’t remember it after Processing anyway. At first I said we should call her Dishrag or Milkbreath, but even Flash thought that was too mean, and Flash is as nasty as hot sauce and lye. She’s the one who named me Ghost, on account of I’m small and shadow-dark and she thinks I creep around too much in the night. She got her name ’cause that’s how fast fosters send her back after their cat turns up dead and they realize the devil has blond hair and dimples.</blockquote>

<blockquote>HiQIRR rates this highway U/UR: unsafe/urgent repairs needed. HiQIRR rates most highways U/UR. Two hundred four point eight miles ago HiQIRR rated a highway DC/6: degraded/check again in six months. HiQIRR experienced unexpected procedural harmony. Krace says that means HiQIRR is happy. Krace says to use round numbers like two hundred.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Scarlett accidentally wakes the dead in the bottom of a coat closet, with a half-naked boy pressed against her and a bottle of tequila she’s too drunk to drink. That’s all it is, in the end: flesh against flesh, and a few whispered secrets. A ghost story she swore she would never, ever tell.</blockquote>

<blockquote>On the first day of Sara's appointment as Magistra Descendant to the Assembly of Terravine, Public Works decided they needed grassroots support for the plant. "I mean, I agree in principle," Sara had tried telling him, as he gestured at his hand-annotated wallcharts. "But for one thing, I'm supposed to be neutral, and for another thing, people might be eating!"</blockquote> ➤ aww yeah sentient spaceships are the best

<blockquote>It had been the most desperate moment of Angelo Neumann’s life so far, and you were certain to live through many such moments if you lived for the opera. When he closed his eyes, he could still picture his friend of so many years and partner in so many troublesome events, wildly running away from the new opera house and crying: “Can’t get me in there again! I’m done! Hear me?! Done!” Which were the most articulate parts.</blockquote> ➤ a world where opera houses as a matter of course all need to hire exorcists

<blockquote>“Your majesty—” Leita began.  Queen Sveta laid her hand on the dressmaker’s arm. “I could not, of course, condone anyone breaking our kingdom’s laws. However, my daughter needs a dress almost like magic. Very like magic indeed.” Leita held her counsel, thinking quickly.  She avoided the queen’s gaze, and looked up at the Princess Aina who had slipped off her stool. She cradled a bolt of rose silk, swaying slightly to private music. Over the years, Leita had come to feel affection for the queen and her awkward daughter. She understood the queen’s desperation. She, too, had once borne a child she’d have done anything for.</blockquote>

<blockquote>At first, the murder is universally mistaken for a run-of-the-mill political assassination.</blockquote>

<blockquote>George had only ever taken one trip without Millie, in the fall of 1951. A letter had arrived from the army asking him to fly to New Mexico.</blockquote> ➤ part 2 http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/in-joy-knowing-the-abyss-behind-part-2/

<blockquote>Once, I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.</blockquote> ➤ In which Sarah finds connections to an alternate universe where she was born a cis woman (Sarah's a trans woman) and has a kid. Sarah is ultimately happy with the universe she's in because she has her partner Janet

<blockquote>Grandma Harken lived on the edge of town, in a house with its back to the desert. Some people said that she lived out there because she liked her privacy, and some said that it was because she did black magic in secret. Some said that she just didn’t care for other people, and they were probably the closest to the truth.</blockquote>

<blockquote>“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik is a fantasy novella about a disenchanted young Pakistani professor who grew up and lives in the United States, but is haunted by the magical, mystical tales his grandfather told him of a princess and a Jinn who lived in Lahore when the grandfather was a boy.</blockquote>

<blockquote>"And so it's good-bye to New Earth and <BINK> hello to Creche." Inter-World Vac/Lines is such a mind-slogging Mom-And-Pop outfit that they think their good-bye/hello trick is cute.</blockquote> ➤ one of the stories from Gardner's short story collection

<blockquote>Once upon a future time, in a spindle-tower held high by antigravity and the will of engineers, a woman slept, a poisoned trap for princes.</blockquote>

<blockquote>a dark fantasy about a young girl on the cusp of womanhood who yearns to leave her village and go to sea with her best friend, a boy about her own age, despite natural and supernatural dangers.</blockquote> ➤ I wouldn't call it "dark" - none of the main characters die or are injured or anything and they end the story happily

as the author says on his lj: <blockquote>This is an Ohio story all the way through, as it was inspired by a visit to a bed-and-breakfast where the owner was one of the first doctors to own an X-Ray. It was an incredible, miracle machine when it all started, something that nobody could have imagined, and by the end of his career the X-Ray was barely even noticable in the welter of changes that had happened since then. And Blockbuster was closing at the time, and I realized the little video shops were the same thing: this technological spasm that had started on a ground level as hobbyists, enabled a brief cottage industry of do-it-yourselfers, and then consumed.</blockquote> ➤ or: a mom-and-pop teleportation shop

<blockquote>This is a story about a ray-gun. The ray-gun will not be explained except to say, "It shoots rays."</blockquote>