Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction: April 2021

This month I bring you an eccentric mix of short speculative fiction stories. Necromancy and ghosts, trauma and chronic pain, power and identity, sentient fruits and killer security units. Come for the weird, stay for the even weirder. “Mysteries of Visiocherries | Misteri Visiceri” by Rio Johan What a weird, out-of-the-blue story! Kwodvide is “one of the senior fruit engineers in the Bio-Corporation” who inadvertently develops a sentient fruit. The investigators discover a series of mysterious clues he left behind before his lab burned down and he disappeared in a fit of madness. The text is rather straightforward, and examples of Kwodvide’s codes are interspersed throughout. This is part of a forthcoming collection of short stories, Rekayasa Buah (Fruit Engineering), all about, well, fruit engineering. Color me intrigued! Samovar (April 26, 2021)