SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

Here is 2019 short story for fandom, for it is filled to the brim with references. So far it is on my nomination list

Gundark Island, or, Tars Tarkas Needs Your Help by MATTHEW CORRADI
link (incl. audio) http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic...

I just listened to it. What a lovely story! It felt like the old short fictions I grew up with. I liked the idea a lot, the nostalgia and the underlying melancholy. Quite relatable (and I got some of the references cause they were old enough XD)

For fandom, indeed! This story was only very superficially SF; it was really about SF and SF fans.

I'm fairly confident that the author is pretty much the same age as I am, since the protagonist reads the the same books and watches the same shows as I did as a kid. In pretty much the same order, as well.

There was another short story heavily borrowing from the fandom two years ago, which was nominated, Fandom for Robots

https://uncannymagazine.com/article/f...

I remember Fandom for Robots; it wasn't very good, and it very clearly only got nominated because the fans could relate to the protagonists.

Gundark Island, on the other hand, is well-written and has a solid emotional core. I liked it, though I felt like the DNA analysis bit at the end was the weakest point in the story: it felt like the author realized his story didn't actually contain any SF elements so he had to include SOMETHING. But I could live with that.

But there is one thing I wonder. When the protagonist starts to apply literary theory to his reading and starts to see the books through the lenses of postcolonialism and feminism, he loses the sense of wonder and only regains it when years later he returns to John Carter stories.

I felt like this was a good enough message about not losing the childlike awe and joy that attracted us to SF in the first place, but you could frame this as a sort-of pro-Puppies message, or at least anti-SJW. It's possible that'll hurt the story's chances.

You're right with that last observation, Antti. It shortly made me wonder myself, but I went for the first interpretation of it and a reproach against too much analysing of stories which happened to me as well last year and sometimes kills the joy.

I also noted this over-analysis and even planned to quote it. However, I don't think it will be used against it (as well as lack of mentioned female authors or mentioning Orson Scott Card, who is in a great disfavor of part of the fandom for his open anti-gay views) because I don't think that there was an attempt to make a point about 'proper' SF or some such