Cool Story, Bro: Short Works I Loved In May and June

These past two months I have been MIRED VERY DEEP in the last stages of my PhD thesis’ first draft. (Finished Friday morning! WHEEEEEEEE!) I kept up with my reading and read many good stories, but the ones that were really able to take root in my heart during this time were ones that appealed to my most basic drives. Either sex, or DELIGHTFUL FLUFFY CUTENESS. You’ve been warned.

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Marissa Lingen, “My favourite sentience” (Nature Futures, April 25)

This is just so darned cute. Like, I find AI cute already, and NOW THIS?! It’s also a great example of worldbuilding by getting deeply into a viewpoint(s), rather than zooming out.

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Toby MacNutt, “Batholith” (Twisted Moon, Issue 3, May)

This is the second time in a row I’ve had one of Toby MacNutt’s erotic poems in my bimonthly recommendations. Okay but they are just REALLY GOOD, though. The heat in this one is so physical and palpable. The intimacy that occurs feels elemental, more primal even than animalism, like a force of nature itself.

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Melody Watson, “celestial objects” (Twisted Moon, Issue 3, May)

ASDFGHJKL; – and then there’s this one, which is not just elemental but cosmic, a dance of life and death and longing on the largest scale. Yes.

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John Wiswell, “Buyers’ Remorse and Seven Slain Cause ‘Adorable’ Robot Dinosaur Stock to Plummet Tuesday” (ROBOT DINOSAURS!, May 25)

BAHAHAHA THIS IS SO ADORABLY HILARIOUS. I giggled the whole way through and so will you.

Research Lab Electricity Usage Timesheet Reporting

…And speaking of DELIGHTFUL FLUFFY CUTENESS, my contribution to ROBOT DINOSAURS! went up this weekend.

“Research Lab Electricity Usage Timesheet Reporting” is a flash fic about a professor and her pair of hyperactive robot raptors. Enjoy!

BTW, “experimental robots that could learn from their embodied experience through means analogous to human child development” are an actual thing, and are quite trendy in some corners of AI. I’ve never worked on one, though. And, to my knowledge, none of them have ever jumped onto a professor’s desk and demanded cookies.