There was no update yesterday, so today I offer three reviews – read about stories by women authors from all over the world!

The Map by Nazli Eray (a Turkish woman) – also available in Turkish

from Words without Borders (Dec 2011, “The Fantastic”), translated by Robert P. Finn

This is one of those hard-to-categorize stories – you can call it magical realist, slipstream, or you can even pretend it’s regular literary fiction. Two young women buy “a General Map of Man with a special interpretation” from an old bookseller, and then proceed to use the map to figure out their boyfriends. Strangeness ensues.

It’s a quick fun read, but one that stays with you. The general idea of “interpretative maps” of continents, countries and even people really charmed me, I wish there was a similar map of Hungary *chuckle* – the only thing I can think of along those lines is the Subjective Atlas of Hungary, unfortunately the official website seems to be down at the moment… but even that’s not exactly the same. Probably good for all of us – “interpretative maps” seemed quite dangerous in the story!

(By the way – Lamb by Elham Eshraghi and The Mirror by Soheila Beski from the same issue of the magazine are also interesting reads, but I think they do not contain any speculative element, so I’m not reviewing them.)

The Fox by Malinda Lo (a Chinese-American lesbian woman who is also an immigrant)

from Subterranean Press (Summer 2011, YA special issue)

Malinda Lo has two novels out – and more forthcoming -, but this is her first published short story. The protagonist also appears in her novel Huntress, which I haven’t read yet – the author says this story should stand on its own, but it might contain minor spoilers.

It is a lesbian romance story featuring a shapeshifter. The setting is kind of bland and nondescript – maybe it’s better fleshed out in the novel. There is a human king, a fairy queen, a chosen one, a magical object… all well-trod high fantasy terrain, except with lesbian romance.

The Fox might possibly be the only lesbian YA SF story available for free in the Hugo 2012 crop – it’s definitely the only one I’ve seen, comment if you know of others -, but beyond that it’s not particularly interesting.

Tloque Nahuaque by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (a Mexican woman)

from Future Lovecraft

The Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world as we know it – we’ve heard this from alarmists the world over, but finally someone wrote a good story about it too. In sharp contrast to the alarmists, García-Rosas knows what the LHC actually does, and she can also write in sweeping Lovecraftian style. The end result is much appreciated.

The story is set in Mexico, where some people have an unsettlingly clear idea what to do if a sleeping Aztec deity awakens… There are some juicy Mythos parallels in there. I wonder about my own religion (BTW – there is a Lovecraftian Bible story in She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Horror, but it’s not really what I have in mind here.)