The Otherling and Other Stories

The Otherling and Other Stories contains five short stories, two of them "The Otherling" and "The Skinner" won the Atorox Prize, Finland's oldest SF/F award, given to the year's best story.

These stories are true speculative fiction in that there's a bit of fantasy, a bit of science fiction and a smidgen of horror, mixed with a lot of clever ideas. A pre-industrial take on Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man," a love story in which an alien tries to convince a male human that he is its first encounter, and Schrodinger's cat in a mental hospital are the scenarios that the reader will encounter.

When I finished the collection, I realized that the stories reminded me of another writer. It took me a while to realize that it is Harlan Ellison. Now, these stories are not Ellison-sque in their poltical and aggressive tone, but they demonstate an ability (like Ellison) to create self-contained gems of stories that layer rich settings, allusions, characters, and plots in an economical amount of words.

If you writers like Karin Tidbeck or Margo Lanagan, you will enjoy these stories.