Short Stories I Read In June

It’s the Twenty-Ninth of July. So it’s time to talk about the short stories, podcast episodes, and miscellaneous posts I read or listened to in June.

An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe by Megan Chee (Lightspeed Magazine; June 2024; Issue 169)

An Otherworldly Cat Tells You the Secrets of the Universe by Megan Chee is a delightful story about cats essentially being cats with a speculative twist. Told by a cat, as the title suggests, the narrative conveys, well, the secrets of the universe from the perspective of the felines who can move freely to all of its corners. That included everything from space faring to living alone on strange planets. I liked this one.

Loneliness Universe by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny Magazine; Issue Fifty-Eight)

The next and last short story I read in June was was Eugenia Triantafyllou’s latest, Loneliness Universe. I love this one. Initially, it’s about two people—former friends who’d grown apart—Cara, and the story’s narrator, Nefeli, attempting to meet at a bus stop. Things don’t go as planned, because even though they’re in the same place, they might as well be worlds apart. What followed was an incredibly tense and atmospheric story, as Nefeli experienced a puzzling and terrifying phenomenon. Despite the urban setting, there was a feeling of isolation, which further heightened the atmosphere I liked what the author did with this story as well as the commentary on the relationships between people, cherishing time and whatnot, in a story which showed how everyone was, in theory, still close together, but also alone in their own separate universes. So in that way, the title was very fitting. Loneliness Universe is a good one.

From around the web…

• Read an Excerpt From Jordan Ifueko’s The Maid and the Crocodile [Reactor Magazine; June 20, 2024]