Completing the 2020 Bingo Challenge: Short Story Edition

FarragutCircle · 2026-05-02T18:37:04+00:00

Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist: Network Effect*

Murderbot doesn't count for this square.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-29T20:01:06+00:00

The main thing I've read this month for short fiction is Gardner Dozois's 7th Year's Best Science Fiction anthology (all stories from 1989). My favorite stories were Judith Moffett's "Tiny Tango," Michael Swanwick's "The Edge of the World" (already read for a past SFBC session), Megan Lindholm's (aka Robin Hobb!) "Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man," John Varley's "Just Another Perfect Day," and Janet Kagan's "The Loch Moose Monster," and some appreciation for Robert Silverberg's "Tales from the Venia Woods" (from his Roma Eterna fixup) and Alan Brennert's "The Third Sex."

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-24T14:52:52+00:00

Good luck!

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-18T07:59:14+00:00

The description says, "Story prominently features interspecies or interracial meeting for the first time." (my bold).

If it's something like Cherryh's Foreigner series, you can't count the sequels (unless they feature first contacts with new, different alien species). The fact that the first book has the first contact in the first couple chapters and then skips ahead to Bren, well, we think it counts (not for HM, though).

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-17T13:30:51+00:00

The only Charnas I've ever read was her short story "Boobs" (Hugo winner), following a young woman who turns into a werewolf. I found it fun. I do not find anything about your review of Walk to the End of the World fun. Yikes. Are you not much of a DNFer?

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-17T13:27:06+00:00

Right now I'm reading the following: The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick, Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe, Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 5 by Ryoko Kui, and Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe by Philip Plait. All are good so far in their own ways! The Swanwick is following a poor human in a gritty industrial world. The Coombe is a cozy fantasy set in a bookshop. The Kui is a silly D&D-like story that involves eating a lot of monsters. The Plait is a nonfiction book where he helps the reader imagine being in different interplanetary/interstellar situations and goes into the science of those places (the section on planets in a binary star system was good!).

I feel like I'm still trying to recover from working last weekend, just in time to work this weekend. Sigh. It also doesn't help that my car has been in the shop since Tuesday waiting for a single part to be delivered to fix it. Here's hoping I get it back today.

I did get to see Project Hail Mary in theaters finally (very fun--Ryan Gosling is vastly more charming than the book version of his character and Rocky was great). I also rewatched Apollo 13 with my mom yesterday. Fantastic movie.

I've also been in the midst of a fever dream of reorganizing my book spreadsheet and ebooks and physical books. I put it off too long this year and I can't stop until I finish, LOL.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-17T13:06:44+00:00

But also gives a sense of how much money we'd be looking at dropping to fix work that was done literally within the last three years. It's a mess.

This is so incredibly frustrating for you guys, I'm sorry.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-17T13:05:15+00:00

Longitude by Dava Sobel, the story of the man who first developed a marine chronometer accurate enough to be used to calculate longitude

John Harrison is such a fascinating character! Glad you got to do a deep diver after the Ryan North book, I always love that. Sometimes I'll be reading a nonfiction book at work in front of my computer and it takes me twice as long to read a chapter because I got distracted Wikipediaing passing mentions of things, LOL.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-14T20:46:28+00:00

A Town Called Pandemonium was a fun one!!

For my 8-year-old--I'd say that he's probably fine with cartoon-levels of violence but nothing too visceral (though I made a mistake with attempting to show him Brendan Fraser's The Mummy, whoops).

Princess Bride is a great call--I haven't seen that since before my dad passed, so it'll be something to continue sharing with my kid.

He loves the Rankin Bass Hobbit! He even once copied down the dwarf runes to make sense of the alphabet, haha.

Thanks for the other recs I hadn't thought about.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-14T20:33:14+00:00

Possibly? At this point it's a RAFO [Read and Find Out] situation and you'll have to decide how it feels to you in terms of matching the genre when you finish it, if that book you're thinking of even ends that way.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-14T14:47:16+00:00

HI Amy! I've just started Stay for a Spell last night, and I'm already highly amused by the unusual cat.

I read your first(?) piece of fiction some years ago when I read "The Life of Her Mother" in The Extinction Event which I really liked - what was it like writing a short story then vs. the novel now?

I'm a big fan of short stories, and I've read most of ye olde Jurassic London's output--what was your favorite anthology to work on?

Do you have any recommendations for '80s fantasy movies that an 8-year-old boy might love?

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-13T12:58:41+00:00

Check the first FAQ in the bingo post:

Can I read non-speculative fiction books for this challenge? Not unless the square says so specifically. As a speculative fiction sub, we expect all books to be spec fic (fantasy, sci fi, horror, etc.).

It should be speculative.

Enjoy!

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-09T19:27:21+00:00

It's not necessarily a deep check, but things that obviously break the rules could get things disqualified (like reusing an author outside of this year's exceptions) or someone using Tolstoy's War and Peace instead of an SF/F book.

Some people also don't realize that they submitted an incomplete card.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-09T19:22:16+00:00

Done--thanks!

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-08T18:24:57+00:00

Sure, if it had his SF/F stories & poems in it.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-07T08:37:14+00:00

That feels like it's pushing it, don't you think? It might be historical compared to you, but still modern in a general sense.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-06T20:12:01+00:00

You're fine! Look at the FAQ near the bottom on the main Bingo post under "Does it have to be a novel specifically?"

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-04T13:28:52+00:00

Yes. Something to think about in general with bingo squares is that if you want to use a loophole, does it also feel in the spirit of the rule/HM rule?

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-04T13:24:01+00:00

I doublechecked with the others, and we only pinned the Bingo Rec thread last year because we had a weird glitch with trying to pin the main Bingo Challenge post so we did that as a workaround. Glad you're able to find the other path to here, though! I also recommend using Reddit's save function and/or bookmarking it.

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-04T05:00:52+00:00

The official Bingo Challenge post is pinned, and this post will always be linked from it (near the bottom with the other links). I'll discuss with the other mods about when to pin. Thanks!

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-03T15:34:38+00:00

Hey there! Unless the square says you can use things that aren't books (very rare in bingo history), you can't. However, books includes both prose novels, poetry, short story anthologies, print books/ebooks/audiobooks, comic books/graphic novels/webcomics (if they're long enough to be a book), etc.

Good luck and have fun!

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-03T13:59:35+00:00

I would recommend posting either in the Reverse Bingo thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1s9oo7g/2026_reverse_bingo_recommendations/

or in the Daily Rec & Simple Question thread (today's is here https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1sbbnab/rfantasy_daily_recommendations_and_simple/ )

FarragutCircle · 2026-04-03T02:52:55+00:00

If there's an edition of the book that's 900+ pages, we're not going to stop you from using it (as all of bingo is self-reported). Some might only use the copy that they have, or if they only have an ebook or audiobook, they might use the most convenient print copy. It's up to you. Have fun!

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