The 6% Squeeze by Eddie Robson (Uncanny Magazine; Issue Sixty)
The 6% Squeeze by Eddie Robson was an uncanny and engrossing short story (no pun intended) with hints of absurd and horror, about a man—Miles—and the design of a product package, for a brand referred to as “Mr Zeb.” Seems pretty mundane right? Well, the story quickly took a turn, and the instructions for how to design the packaging read like a manual for a cult, as Miles discovers just who he’s doing freelance for. I liked this story. It had a great, eerie atmosphere, and the build-up toward the reveal and the end was tense.
The Music Must Always Play by Marissa Lingen (Clarkesworld Magazine; Issue 216 September 2024)
The next short story I checked out was Marissa Lingen’s The Music Must Always Play. This is the second story I've read from this author this year (the other one was And the Dreams That You Dare to Dream). This one was a first contact story set in Mankato, Minnesota, after an alien ship crash landed. The aliens were significant but also a small part of the story. They weren’t the focus, rather it was the aftermath of the crash, and a linguists, Maryam Mohamed’s, attempts to understand the clues they left behind. There was nothing dramatic, in terms of twists, due to how the emotional arc in this character sturdy was the point. I liked what Lingen did with Maryam. She was a complicated character, who was caught between her dedication to linguistics and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study an alien language and her desire to be closer to her family during her father’s illness. All-in-all, The Music Must Always Play was a good one.
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