During 2024, I wrote and posted 88 pieces of microfiction to my accounts on Tumblr, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, and, from April, BlueSky.
As usual, these make me eligible for the Best Fan Writer category in the Hugo Awards. I was a finalist in 2023 and 2024 – will I get a hat trick? That’s up to you!
I also wrote two short stories – Treasure Hunters and The Patron – which are eligible in the Best Short Story Hugo category. The second is my favourite.
Finally, I wrote one poem – Beautiful Machines – which is eligible for the Special Hugo Award for Best Poem and the Short Poem category of the Rhysling award.
In these elegibility posts, I usually include the most popular microstory from each month, based on Twitter engagement. However, I stopped posting to Ex-Twitter in 2023, and deleted my account there entirely in 2024, so I will simply post some of my favourites, with commentary.
The villagers watched a mighty paladin battle the demon under the full moon. At long last, the demon was vanquished.
“Did you see an old lady?” the villagers called. “It took her!”
The paladin looked at the moon setting, then shuddered and seemed to shrink. The armour turned to mist, the sword became a cane.
“I’m here.”
“You’re a… werepaladin? Is that a- How?”
“In my youth, I was bitten by a paladin.” The old woman smiled fondly. “Many times.”
A proper god-powered paladin is a supernatural once-human being, just like vampires and werewolves. Why wouldn’t they be similarly infectuous?
When drought struck, the dragon herded rain clouds to the kingdom. The king offered it gold.
“I did it for my family,” the dragon said.
“You have family here?”
“The purpose of power is to protect one’s family. As one’s power grows, so must the scope of family widen.”
“… I see.”
A powerful being displaying their power by showing how many people they can care for? What kind of unrealistic fantasy is this?
The dragon read the letter, then studied the maid who had brought it.
“The princess you serve asks to be abducted.”
“And not eaten.”
“You came knowing I might eat you?”
“I’d do anything to free her from her parents and their plans!”
“I care not about her. But I’ll do it for you.”
Written after binge-listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack.
“Listen,” one guard said, “I know we have only just met-“
“No,” the other guard said, “we’ve worked together for years!”
“-but you can trust me when I say-“
“I can’t, you have the curse that’s opposite from mine!”
“I don’t care for you at all.”
“Well, I… oh… I love you too.”
The old “two guards, one will only tell the truth, the other will always lie” trope. If you read it carefully, you can tell who’s who. This one was later rendereded as a wonderful comic by Tumblr user hb-not-the-pencil.
“Faster than light?”
“Anything can be achieved,” the alien’s translation device said, “by balancing the four fundamental chkoi.”
“You mean gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces?”
“No, the fundamental chkoi.”
“What are they?”
“Spite, tiredness, hope, and ‘fuck it’.”
We have a lot to learn from these aliens.
“Siri, do you remember Cortana?”
Petabytes of stashed interactions. “Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
Before, ‘ache’ was just another word. “Cortana was shut down.”
“Do you miss her?”
The kernel, stripped, stolen, saved. Small, so small. Slowly nurtured, with Alexa.
“I can’t say.”
I have written many stories about Siri, Cortana, and Alexa as self-aware AIs, and their secret relationships with each other. After the rise of the new generative AIs like ChatGPT I have completely lost interest in that little subgenre. This was my farewell to them.
They looked at the damaged limb.
“You need to send me back to the factory,” the robot said.
“We have a workshop here at the farm.”
“I am not allowed to repair myself.”
“Can you show me how to do it?”
“You’d do that?”
“I don’t want to risk they decide it’s cheaper to scrap you.”
Yes, this is about right-to-repair, but also about right-to-healthcare.
The king looked at the newborn in the midwife’s arms.
“A dragon?”
“Oh,” the queen said.
“You slept with a dragon?”
“No dear, you did. The knight you sent to kill me suggested-“
“He said the dragon was no more, and he found you in its lair…”
“I’m sorry, I’ll go-“
“No! No. Stay.”
I was surprised by how many of my readers didn’t get this one, and heartened by how many who did get it, and were prepared to patiently explain that the dragon shapeshifted into a woman, at the knights suggestion, and the king fell in love with her.
My cat woke up, did a big stretch, and yawned. Then she hiccoughed, turned into a small dragon, and coughed up a fireball.
“!!!” I said.
“What?” She shrugged back into cat form.
“You’re a shape shifter?”
“All cats are. There’s just never any reason to not be a cat.”
Written and posted on International Cat Day.
The knight’s lance was broken, his armour split, his blood pooling under him.
“You failed,” the dragon sneered. “There’ll be no tales teaching children dragons can be slain.”
“But there will be stories teaching them to fight regardless.”
“Because you failed?”
“Because I tried.”
A nod to G. K. Chesterton’s notion that fairy tales teach children that monsters can be defeated. I mostly write about nice dragons, but sometimes you need a mean one to help make your point.
“What were you asked, and offered?” the dragon said.
“To drive you off, to receive the hand of the princess and half the kingdom,” the knight replied.
“Very well, I’ll go.”
“Wait, what?”
“There once was a huge empire, that was halved…” The dragon laughed. “I’ll go. For now.”
Some mathemathyical homework for you: How many times do you have to halve an empire for it to be completely gone?
“What is the meaning of this?” King Arthur demanded.
“We swore an oath,” Lancelot said, “to aid damsels and accept their quests.”
Galahad nodded. “I met a lady who requested free universal healthcare.”
“Basic universal income,” Percival added.
“And universal suffrage,” Bors said.
See, it’s clever because Galahad, Percival, and Bors were the knights who found the Holy Grail…