This story begins somewhere in the middle of itself. I was online one day and saw an announcement for the 2nd Yuri Literary Short Story Contest on Pixiv, co-sponsored by Comic Yuri Hime. I bookmarked the contest site to read the stories and went on my merry way. In the middle of doing something else I suddenly thought, “WAIT! The 2nd Contest?” How did I miss that there was a first contest?!? I guess the first one wasn’t as big as the Second and Third versions were. You can see the larger list of sponsors on the contest sites.

In 2019, you may remember that I took a group of folks to Tokyo on the 100th Anniversary of Yuri Tour. At the end of that, I took a day to go back to a few places I hadn’t spent enough money time at. One of those places was the Shosen Book Tower in Akihabara. It has one of the  one of the best Yuribu, which contains manga and mooks and artbooks…and that year it had the subject of today’s review, the winners of the contest. It has taken me this long to read it, but the Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 2019 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション) is genuinely some of the most original work I have ever read in a short story collection. Sadly, this volume does not seem to be available online, but you can read the winners on the Pixiv site.

To be clear, I don’t like every story in this collection, but the stories I read are honestly so original that I’m excited to be talking about  this volume. I’ve written before about my contentious relationship with short story collections, so you might understand my delight at reading a book that is filled with things I have not read before! 

As I’m reading through the stories, I’m making notes on what the stories I enjoyed are about, or I absolutely would forget. The first story has a girl overhearing another girl’s confession to the girl she likes and a heartfelt conversation between them after that. A body swap story that wasn’t creepy, two women who meet at a flea market, a bunch of girls trying to make an aphrodisiac, two young women who meet on the train (trust me, it isn’t totally unoriginal), two girls who attempt to find students who have gone missing.

My so-far favorite is a wonderful story about the time in 1999 when the demons opened up portals to come to our world and sparked a “spot game” for humans to find those portals…and the tourist trade between the worlds. Our protagonist ends up having an overnight adventure in a mall with an elf girl she sees in the mall food court. Everything about this story was just fantastic, from the voice of the narrator, to the matter-of-fact world building. “Shopping Mall no Eruko to Watashi” by Pickles Ginger (ショッピングモールのえる子と私。 – ピクルズジンジャー), can still be read on Pixiv, and I recommend it for the sheer pleasure of reading a great short story. ^_^

Now that I have read most of this book, I’m genuinely looking forward to reading the next collection, Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 2 (百合文芸小説コンテストセレクション2) which is available on the Booth.pm store for Pixiv (or, possibly if it is on the shelves at Shosen, when I finally get back to Japan!)

Ratings:

Overall – 8

I’m so pleased at the originality of these writers and hope to see more of them in the future.

In 2019, Japan’s premier science fiction magazine, SF Magazine launched a special Yuri issue. It was an immediate best-seller and legitimized Yuri science fiction as a subgenre.  Following that issue, Hayakawa Publishing put out a volume of short stories that included the stories from that issue. Asterism ni Hanataba o Yuri SF Anthology (アステリズムに花束を 百合 SFアンソロジー) is that short story collection.

If you’ve been following me on social media, you know it has taken me approximately 3 months to read this book. This is not because the book was in any way specific way bad, but merely because, as I do most of my reading before bed, the combination of science fiction and/or horror in a language I can’t yet claim as my second, meant I was going slowly.  In the end, I am actually glad I made it all the way through. But if I were to ever revisit it, I would read the first two and last two stories only.

The back of the book begins with a definition of the term Yuri as a genre term. Hayakawa is using a broad stroke definition, much as we do at Yuricon. “[Intense] Relationships between women.” Which means that some of these stories might not fall under what you might consider “Yuri.” More damning, from my perspective, is that several of the stories didn’t fall under what I consider to be science fiction; for instance the one about a girl’s school for blood-sucking (not vampire) demons. Even stories I actually liked, I was often hard pressed to see them as both Yuri and science fiction, including my favorite story of the collection…and they often had other problems as well.

Of the four stories I liked, “49 Letters” by Morita Kisetsu had impressed me a great deal in the magazine. Sweet, melancholy, Yuri and SF, it was a great little, if sad, entry about communication with the afterlife. I enjoyed the opening story by Iori Miyazawa (creator of Otherside Picnic), “Kimi no Scope” but still, having read it twice now, fail to see it as Yuri. The last person on earth follows footsteps. 

The next to last story, “Colorless Green” by Riku Shuusa and Inamura Bungo was a great story about an intense relationship between women and had some great science fiction elements, but would, if ever adapted, instantly become a mediocre murder mystery. I would have love to seen that edited to be a bit more about Monica. The story was less “intense relationships between women” and more “relationships with an intense woman.”  But is had great linguistics stuff about AI and human communication. The final story, “Twin Star Cyclone Runway” was an excellent bit of science fiction world-building and was totally Yuri (if a little handwave-y) but then it included the new disgusting fetish fad in manga, kissing someone who has just thrown up and gleefully exclaiming “You taste like puke!” and I am already very done with this and do not need to ever see it again. The story had a Thelma and Louise vibe that suited it.

I was very glad to have read this collection – I’m super pleased  to see SF Yuri and…I’d also like to see it grow the fuck up a bit. ^_^ 

Ratings:

Overall – 6

I look forward to the 2nd Special Yuri issue.

If you’ve read any of this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Well, we’ve managed to make to August. Congratulations us! August is traditionally the time of year where I do kind of crash and burn, so reading a pleasantly fanficish story starring queer, black, female Holmes and Dr. Watson was absolutely 100% what I needed.  A Study in Honor, by Claire O’Dell was so exactly on point for me that I read it in a day and have the sequel lined up for tonight. ^_^

Dr. Janet Watson is a veteran of the New American Civil War and has no patience for the bullshittery of the VA. She wants her life back, but the emergency replacement of her arm with a part that’s too big and too clumsy to do surgery is only one of a dozen problems she’s got. She’s too Black, too female, too everything else an uncaring government and society attaches to those two words and she’s running out of options. When an old friend introduces her to the wholly, wildly, unreal Sara Holmes, Watson’s life becomes a study in perseverance, and of course, honor.

I loved this book. It has everything I needed in a Holmes fanfic, that is to say, an understanding of what makes a good fanfic, and a good story as well as a comfortable familiarity with the source material. And it has everything I want in good science fiction and in a good war story. The plot was comfortable and original in equal parts, the unreality of the tech balanced by the realness of the politics. I loved that Watson’s voice felt wholly grounded in the now, with attention to the kind of details that many white readers largely still don’t understand about being a Black woman in the United States. It helped me feel Watson’s daily, everyday discomfort and helped further to highlight her other levels of discomfort as a veteran, a disabled person, a queer woman.

This book is political, as well. Current politics are extrapolated into future politics, which blossom into the socio-political background radiation of this book, and create the scenario that allows the bad guys to do what must be discovered…and stopped.

It’s a rollicking yarn, as well, with chases, and gun fights and cyberish crime, all of which culminate in Newark, NJ. As you can imagine, this was the coup de grace for me. ^_^

Watson, in this iteration, is coming off a failed relationship and while no Mary Morstan appeared, it gave Watson room to develop the friendship with Holmes we’ve all come to know and adore. Holmes is a far less well-developed character and there is a great deal about Sara Holmes we’re left not knowing. Since the original Sherlock Holmes was a whole piles of handwaves in a suit, I’m content allowing the enigmas to exist without complaint. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 9

It was an honest, fannish joy to get the queer, Black, female Holmes and Watson we’ve always deserved.

Now, on to Hound of Justice!

I know you know, because I tell everyone, that I love my state. I love it with a deep and visceral love. I almost weep with joy at the loamy smell of the Northeast woodlands and the salt/tar/sugar/suntan lotion air of our much-maligned Shore. I love the hot burning smell of asphalt on summer days, the scent of wet snow about to bury us in the winter, the warm autumn days and the clarity of the air on autumn nights, the green of spring for a month before flowers show up. I love the traffic, the vulgarity of the people, the diversity, the everything.  

The thing is…I’m not alone. Our closest friends feel the same way. Sometimes, we’re stuck in traffic caused by poorly planned construction or at a Hungarian festival, eating sausages made by some old lady sold out of a cooler and we’re full of glee at the New Jerseyness of it all. We’ve all talked for years about how deeply rooted we are in this place, how much we honor our genus loci; the loud, dirty, impossibly beautiful place we live in and which is part of us.

The moment I opened up N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became, I felt that this was a book about those of us who love a place so deeply, so viscerally, that everything beautiful and awful about that place become a beacon of existence for them.

A man stumbles off the train to find he has lost who he was and has become, beyond belief, part of a city. An artist whose ancestry is traced back to the first people on the land and to many of the people that colonized that land after, a musician turned politician, a homeless person and a unloved woman find themselves drawn inexorably into an ancient battle as part of a Lovecraftian paean to New York City.  I didn’t want this book to end and I’m so very glad that there will be a sequel.

I loved this book. It’s angry and it’s hateful and it’s gorgeous and it’s beautiful and it is real. I do not doubt for a second that there are avatars of places, because as I said above…I know people whose roots run deeper than the sewer systems of their cities.

If you like MURCIÉLAGO, you will very probably like this book for many of the same reasons – eldritch horror, queer characters, creeping paranormality. This book also has characters you will believe in and root for, sometimes even when the decisions they make are the wrong ones for the worst reasons. They are immensely well-conceived characters and well-written. I can tell you nothing about them that wouldn’t be a spoiler. ^_^

Ratings:

Characters – 9
Story – 10
Queerness – 9

Overall – 10

This novel had the perfect climactic scene. Made me sit up and say, “Fuck, yeah…!”