The Best Small Fictions honors fiction of 6 to 1,000 words published in a calendar year. As we are eligible to nominate up to 5 pieces for inclusion in their 2018 anthology, we have selected:
“Picnic” by A. E. Weisgerber (560 words), from our Spring 2017 issue.
“Mission Concept” by Peter H.Z. Hsu (716 words), from our Summer 2017 issue.
“Left Behind” by Kaj Tanaka (512 words), from our Summer 2017 issue.
“Drought” by Kim Coleman Foote (390 words), from our Fall 2017 issue.
and “X-Ray”by Rosie Adams (474 words), from our Winter 2018 issue.
Best of luck to all our nominees, and thanks as ever for contributing your extraordinary small fictions to our weird little zine!
We have submitted our nominations for the 2017 Best of the Net anthology, which honors literary work that originally appeared on the internet between 7/1/2016 & 6/30/2017, and they are:
Our Summer 2017 issue, FLAPPERHOUSE #14, is sure to be a deep-flying, head-flipping odyssey. The issue launches next Wednesday, June 21, but in the meantime we’d like to offer a sneak peek of what to expect with Peter H.Z. Hsu’s trippy & unearthly flash fiction “Mission Concept.”
The astronaut sometimes leaves the Earth to travel to the Moon. The Moon is very far away. Sometimes the astronaut travels further away than the Moon, much further. On these trips, the astronaut stays away for a very long time. The astronaut sometimes does not return.
The astronaut is sometimes a fighter pilot. The astronaut is sometimes a geologist. Sometimes an astronomer. Sometimes an electrical engineer. Sometimes the astronaut has a job specific to being an astronaut such as mission specialist or payload specialist or mission commander or administrative services manager. Sometimes the astronaut has a job that is not specific to being an astronaut. Sometimes the astronaut is a high school history teacher, an ordinary person making an extraordinary impact.
Sometimes the astronaut is an actor in a science fiction movie where he goes alone on a 40-year mission to a far-away solar system. When the astronaut returns, he walks a long, grey corridor to meet his lover. He is surprised at what he finds. The astronaut has grown old, but his lover has stayed young. This is scientifically inaccurate, yet this is what happens.
The astronaut touches his fingertips to his lover’s face. He stares. He recognizes her in her young face, her old eyes. He wants her. She is all he wants.
She says, “All is well. My lover has returned.”
He looks at his hand, still on her cheek. His hand is grey and dry like bone. His hand looks like a dead person’s hand, like a ghost hand.
FLAPPERHOUSE 