Sunday, August 4, 2013

Found

Clarkesworld Magazine, ISSUE 83, August 2013.


"Found" is a gorgeous short story by Alex Dally MacFarlane, published in Clarkesworld Magazine, ISSUE 83, August 2013.  You may find it online here:
 http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/macfarlane_08_13/

The setting for this story is haunting and beautiful: A cluster of colonies on a string of asteroids, abandoned and forgotten by their homeworld.  A short story about belonging, memory, and identity told by a spice trader who goes from colony to colony bringing the one commodity they cannot make for themselves: flavor. Beautiful language, vivid imagery, and poignant undertones.  Not much can be said of this gem without giving away the story, so suffice it to say that it is worth the fifteen minutes it will take to read it, and the twenty minutes it will take to re-read it while savoring every nuance, treasuring every smell, and relishing the flavors in the writing.

About the Author (source: ibid)
Alex Dally MacFarlane lives in London, where she is pursuing an MA in Ancient History. When not researching narrative transmission in the Alexander Romance traditions, she writes stories, found in The Other Half of the Sky, Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer and Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages. Poetry can be found in Stone Telling, The Moment of Change and Here, We Cross. She is the editor of Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013) and The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (forthcoming in late 2014)