8 Story Collections That Inspired Samantha Mills’s Stunning Speculative Fiction
The novelist and Nebula Award winner's debut collection, Rabbit Test and Other Stories (Taychon, Apr.), gathers 13 genre-spanning tales of abortion access, climate disaster, and intergenerational exchange
About 10 years ago, I decided to get serious about writing short fiction—specifically science fiction and fantasy. I learn best by example, so to get started, I picked up three collections by authors whose longer works I already loved. Those collections (the first three listed below) were mind-bending in their skill and creativity. Immediately, my imagination began to spark with all the things a short story could do. I was hooked! From there, I discovered online SFF magazines and an entire world of authors who specialized in short-form storytelling, crafting intense experiences in remarkably little space.
The collections I’ve included here have inspired me in different ways. Some overlap my work in theme—I touch frequently upon motherhood, complex familial relationships, bodily autonomy, and other topics you’ll find here—while others cemented my love of experimenting with form. All of them demonstrate the breadth and joy of short fiction.
At the Mouth of the River of Bees
The gamut of style in this collection is truly remarkable, and it’s no wonder that so many of the stories in it were award-winning when first published. There are folklorish and allegorical pieces, contemporary stories infused with the surreal, a viscerally shocking bit of science fiction (if you know, you know), and some very good dogs. “The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles” is a delight, “Ponies” is a perfect little horror, and the title story made me cry. I immediately learned that when it came to short fiction, I did not have to restrict myself to a particular style or subgenre in order to produce work that is distinctly me.
Falling in Love with Hominids
I first read Hopkinson in college, when I was assigned her wonderful novel Brown Girl in the Ring for a literature class, so I was delighted when I discovered this short story collection. Hopkinson is fantastic at blending the magical with the everyday, and her imagination has no bounds. Humans turn into flesh-eating plants. Chickens breathe fire. Bluebeard gets a bloodthirsty new bride. These stories move seamlessly between sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and historical fiction, often drawing on Hopkinson's Afro-Caribbean upbringing and always exploring the strengths and weaknesses of humanity with an unflinching eye. Lesson: get weird, get specific, go wherever inspiration takes you.
The Melancholy of Mechagirl
Valente’s work is always lush, emotional, almost desperate in its desire to connect, and this collection is no different. It contains 13 stories and poems inspired by her years of living in Japan as a deeply lonely Navy wife. The prose is relentlessly beautiful; the stories themselves are inventive, self-reflective, strange, and sad. I learned so much about sentence-level writing from this collection, and about infusing stories with depth of feeling and personal experience. Valente taught me that genre prose does not have to be transparent—it can be the heart of the work.
Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories
Maria Haskins is both brilliant and prolific, with over 150 stories out in the world and two collections published so far. Six Dreams About the Train contains some of my favorites. The title story is one of the most gutting bits of flash fiction I’ve ever read, featuring a mother dreaming the potential fates of her troubled child. “Cleaver, Meat, and Block” is a chilling and original zombie tale taking place after the plague has ended, when the formerly ravening hordes have been uneasily reintegrated into society. I could pull out examples all day. No matter the subgenre, Haskins always writes with exquisite prose and piercing insight into human nature. Her work is a master class in utilizing the fantastical to convey heartbreaking depths of emotion.
Her Body and Other Parties
Machado is a bold, mesmerizing voice in short fiction, and I devour everything I find of hers. Her fantastical memoir, In the Dream House, is a tour de force, and the threads underlying that book—complicated queerness, domestic abuse, using metafictional narrative to unpack personal experience—are also present here. These stories directly confront the horrors visited upon the female body through wild experimentations with form. “The Husband Stitch” retells the legend of the girl with the green ribbon through the lens of losing personal autonomy in marriage, while “Especially Heinous” is a feverish, bizarre tale of doppelgängers and ghosts told through summaries of Law & Order: SVU episodes. Machado showed me how to be brave, honest, and raw.
Stories of Your Life and Others
Though Chiang hardly needs any introduction in the world of short fiction, I’d be lying if I didn’t shout out Stories of Your Life as one of my foundational texts. Chiang has an amazing ability to combine big sci-fi questions with grounded, emotional throughlines that make his concepts hit harder. These stories range from the alien to the superhuman to the biblical. There are ruminations on mathematics, ruminations on Heaven and Hell, a golem-based alt-history industrial revolution, and, of course, a beautiful merging of linguistics and love in “Story of Your Life,” the basis for the film Arrival. Chiang taught me to take my time and think deeply about the ramifications of every new idea.
Skin Thief
A goth superstar of the short fic world, Palumbo wields horror and dark fantasy with confident ferocity. Her stories weave the supernatural with the very real, ably grappling with themes of racism, patriarchy, immigration, queerness, and monstrosity. This collection is arranged brilliantly, evolving from Canadian English to Trinidadian dialect, reflecting Palumbo’s own evolving relationship with her background. Two of my favorites include “Apolépisi: A De-Scaling,” in which a mermaid’s lover is slowly losing her scales and must soon leave the ocean (and narrator) behind, and “Douen,” about a dead child trying to make contact with her mother. Palumbo inspires me not to shy away from painful topics.
The House of Illusionists and Other Stories
Fogg is another fantastic author I discovered early in my short fiction exploration, so I was delighted when her first collection came out last year. Her work is subtle and moving, at times wistful and bittersweet. I love the range of tones in this book, from the tongue-in-cheek fun of “Fanfiction for a Grimdark Universe,” in which the residents of said universe realize their lives are being written about in another world, to the quiet horror of “Sweetness,” in which the shade of an abandoned child lures other children into the clutches of soul-devouring monsters. Fogg taught me to find the beauty in small moments, to be genuine and thoughtful and still find room for fun.