Uncanny Magazine Issue 47: July/August 2022
John Chu
** spoiler alert **
I am rating only the story "If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You".
I read this because it won the 2023 Locus Award for best novelette. Honestly, I just don't understand why. My impulse was to rate it two stars, but then I decided I would bump that up by one star since it's clearly just not my kind of story, and I don't want to be unfair.
The story is about Carl, who is a superhero (or god -- hence the title), and about a romance between Carl and an ordinary human body-builder, Steve, who is also an actor and musician and the first-person narrator. The story consists mostly of two kinds of scenes: Carl and Steve at the gym, pumping iron together, and Carl doing his superhero things, flying around, protecting innocent people, and being superhumanly strong, and impervious to bullets, missiles, and lasers.
I am obviously missing something. There's a lot of technical discussion of body-building, a subject I have no interest in. The romance between Carl and Steve has some charm, but not what I would have thought was award-winning charm. So, OK, I admit -- I don't get it.
This story can be read for free at https://www.uncannymagazine.com/artic... .