Autistic Book Party, Episode 48 and a half: Short Story Smorgasbord

Kerrie Seljak-Byrne (writing as Kerrie McCreadie), “The Knight’s Inn” (The Spectatorial, Issue 5, June 2016)

[Autistic author] A poem about search engines, sexual assault, triggers, and memory. Like the poems in Augur Magazine (which Kerrie edits), this is at heart a realistic psychological poem but with myth and monstrousness constantly flickering in its peripheral vision. If you can handle the subject matter, it’s well-done. [Recommended-2]

*

Raphael Ordoñez, “Salt and Sorcery” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, August 2016)

[Autistic author] A mysterious, not-quite-human girl is marooned when her airship crashes in an unmapped salt flat. This adventure story has a bit of an anime feel to me. The visual descriptions are beautiful and unsettling by turns, and the plot is full of both charming and frightening surprises. .[Recommended-2]

*

A.J. Odasso, “The Devil In Boston” (Barking Sycamores, June 2017)

[Autistic author] Elegant and menacing like a lot of the best poems about devils, Odasso imagines the devil adapting themself to East coast hipster culture. [Recommended-2]

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A. Merc Rustad, “For Now, Sideways” (Diabolical Plots, August 2017)

[Autistic author] A gritty, bittersweet story about mech-suit soldiers in the aftermath of war. I like the way the characters carefully, hesitantly support each other; like some of Merc’s other stories, the importance of that kind of support is drawn poignantly and in sharp strokes. [Recommended-2]

*

Rose Lemberg, “Pollen” (Mithila Review, September 2017)

[Autistic author] A small, gorgeous poem about flowers and spaceships. [Recommended-2]

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Yoon Ha Lee, “The Starship and the Temple Cat” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2018)

[Autistic author] The ghost of a cat is called on again to protect her dead space station from an impending attack. Extremely adorable, and terribly sad. [Recommended-2]

*

Bogi Takács, “Four-Point Affective Calibration” (Lightspeed, February 2018)

[Autistic author] A story about using neurological technology to try to communicate with aliens, packed with semi-autobiographical detail. There’s a lot going on in a very short space here, but in part, this is a meditation on the non-universality of thoughts and emotions, and on an autistic character’s fear that their mind on a very basic level will not meet the standards of their own experiment. The ending is happy, though. [Recommended-1]

Vintage Autistic Book Party, Episode 11 and three quarters: Short Story Smorgasbord

(First published Jan 27, 2014.)

W.H. Pugmire & M.K. Snyder, “The House of Idiot Children” (Weird Tales, Jan-Feb 2008)

An Orthodox Jewish man doing Facilitated Communication with autistic children discovers that the children are capable of seeing extra, magical letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This one is wince-inducing, not because of the magical powers per se, but because the magical powers are used to exoticize the children without humanizing them one bit. They are, as the story’s final paragraphs say, “more angelic than human,” and never once does their apparent enlightenment give them anything to say about their preferences, their desires, the way they are treated, etc. This is actually a very common kind of fail, and one of the kinds that can be mistaken for an inspiring story by well-meaning NTs. (As if the title wasn’t already warning enough.) But fail is what it is. [Not Recommended]

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Ryan Leeds, “Updates Available” (Expanded Horizons, March 2011)

[Autistic author.] An autistic narrator writes to their only friend, a robot, just before being forced into “cure” surgery. Very short, but good. [Recommended-1]

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Erika Hammerschmidt, “Furnace” (This Is How You Die, July 2013)

[Autistic author.] Far-future archaeologists discover a Machine of Death long after the end of our present civilization and proceed to comically misunderstand its purpose. Autism as such isn’t mentioned, but the archaeologists seem to have some autistic traits; in particular, there’s an adorable scene of the two main characters melting down together after something goes wrong. [Recommended]

*

Conor Powers-Smith, “The Day” (Lakeside Circus, January 2014)

I’m not sure if the protagonist in this flash fic is supposed to be autistic, but his sensory defensiveness in the opening paragraphs is instantly recognizeable to me. (Seriously. I use my iPod that way all the time, though not actually at max volume, and usually with bands I enjoy.) Unfortunately, we never get much sense of his emotions or thoughts apart from his immediate sensory experience. I don’t think this intentionally comes from a place of ableism; I think it’s just sloppy writing. [Not Recommended]

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Malisha Dewalt, “Misery Is Not a Virtue” (Stone Telling #10, January 2014)

[Autistic author.] Okay actually it’s a visual/prose poem, but it deserves to be on this list anyway because it’s very much about autism and people’s social expectations. Apart from the general theme I must admit I found it hard to understand. But readers who enjoy stream-of-consciousness work more than I do should definitely check it out. [YMMV]