2024 Retrospective and Award Eligibility

written by David Steffen

We have been publishing the annual Long List Anthology since 2015. Last year at this time we hadn’t been able to run the Long List Anthology yet because the nomination statistics had not been published yet. This was extremely unusual since WorldCon 2023 had been in October and they usually publish the stats before they end. When they finally published the statistics in January 2024 there were various issues with the statistics that we didn’t feel it would be possible to produce an anthology from the list at that time.

In last year’s eligibility and retrospective we said this might mean that 2024 is another two-anthology year, so that turned out to not be true. And then, although WorldCon was back in its usual month of September, we are working on a new edition but decided to give ourselves more breathing room and fundraise and publish it in early 2025. So, instead of two Long List Anthology volumes in 2024, there have been zero, with the second one planned for early 2025. More information soono!

In 2023, we published 24 original stories in Diabolical Plots.

This year we renamed some of our staff positions to better reflect the nature of the work. I had always called myself “Editor” but now I am officially “Editor-In-Chief. And what we had previously called “Assistant Editor” we now call “Editor”. In addition, we have also started adding editor credit to all the stories for the particular editor(s) who worked with the author on the individual story.

This year we bid farewell to editor Kel Coleman, as well as Chelle Parker, and we wish them both the best! We also welcomed new editor Amanda Helms to join Ziv Wities and Hal Y. Zhang on the Editor team.

Diabolical Plots opened for general submissions in July. We read more than 1300 submissions and accepted 23 stories from the window. We updated some practices, including adding an optional “Content Note” box to the submission form as well as a suggested list of content notes that we would like to see when they apply if possible. We also added a formal “Rewrite Request” process, something which we normally just handled outside of the system in previous years.

It is never not a busy year in my personal life, but (crossing fingers) we are on the verge of having finished a calendar year without one of our dogs passing away, after losing one both of the prior years. Our dog Mabel had a crappy diagnosis this year, but so far she’s been doing well with treatment.

The rest of this post is award eligibility, suggesting categories for major awards, as well as a full link of stories with snippets.

Magazine/Anthology/Editor/Publisher

Diabolical Plots is eligible in the Hugo Best Semiprozine category or the Locus Magazine category with our team of First Readers as well as our Editors.

David Steffen is eligible as Editor-In-Chief of Diabolical Plots. Editors within this year were Ziv Wities, Kel Coleman, Hal Y. Zhang, Chelle Parker, and Amanda Helms. I’m not really sure how to interpret the eligibility rules for editor for Hugo for an online publication–supposed to edit four issues, we count the monthly pair as an issue, does it only count if the same editor edits both stories? Hugos allow multiple editors in a nomination, as is shown by editors of Uncanny for instance, but I’ve only ever seen two editors nominated that way, I don’t know how it works for a larger team, etc.

Diabolical Plots, LLC is eligible for Locus award for Publisher.

Related Work

Sole entry for this this year was: The Secret Origin of Hestu. If you like that, check out the related artwork!

Fan Artist

Is cross-stitch eligible for anything? Maybe fan art? LOL probably not. But check out this giant cross-stitch that took me almost two years to finish anyway!

Short Stories

A Descending Arctic Excavation of Us
by Sara S. Messenger

The surface of the iceberg has long had its taste of bitter cuisine: shimmering snow, wriggling bacterial filament, microplastic granules from the stolen boat you steered across the choppy Arctic waves. But this is new: the woody whisper of your matrilineal family map. The iceberg leeches the warmth from the paper, like sucking air through teeth, trying to latch on— but you bend, shake the map, and tuck it back into your pocket.

They Are Dancing
by John Stadelman

When they woke it was in what little pocket warmth they’d accumulated between their bodies in the night, clinging together in a sleeping bag as if without the other they would forget how to breathe, or why. When Nash cracked his eyes open to take in this reality it was to Vicky watching him, her face as beautiful as everything behind it, a moment of naked love in which they both wished that they could remain lying here like this, frozen in stasis. Neither needed to say it.

But time moved on. Inexorable, mechanical as a wave in the ocean, as the dissolve of light into dark. They knew it was time to go when Vicky mumbled that he needed to brush his teeth, and Nash said that she’d had too much to drink last night.

BUDDY RAYMOND’S NO-BULLSHIT GUIDE TO DRONE-HUNTING
by Gillian Secord

Hey, kid. Ol’ Buddy here, your favourite underground, pamphlet-writing canuck. I hope, whoever and wherever you are, you’re well. Keep the generator full, the firewood chopped, and the contraband hidden.

Yeah, I said the next guide was going to be about rainwater collecting, but this topic is pretty fucking overdue for a pamphlet. File a complaint, if that bothers you. (Too bad this is real paper, asshole! No comment section!)

The Geist and/in/as the Boltzmann Brain
by M.J. Pettit

Lem had existed for all of ten nanoseconds (give or take) when she realized she was a Boltzmann brain pulsing away in the otherwise nothingness of space. She consisted of a conglomeration of particles that had randomly bounced off one another until they spontaneously formed into a structurally-sound and fully functional human brain. Lem came complete with a full inventory of false memories detailing a richly lived life back on a place called Earth. Entities like herself were absurd. That was to say highly improbable, statistically speaking, but no more so than the evolution of intelligent, organic life in the grand scheme of things. Given the unfathomable expanse of all of time and all of space, it was conceivable for a nice Boltzmann brain like Lem to randomly form then quickly dissipate innumerable times at various spots across the cosmos, the general tendency towards thermal equilibrium notwithstanding.

Level One: Blowtorch
by Jared Oliver Adams

Usually Friend gives me three food pouches after sportsgames, but today only one. He spits it out of his chest slot, and I kick off the bulkhead to snatch it before it gets caught in that jumble of wires over by the vents. When I grab the nearest handhold and swivel in the air for the next one to come, Friend just floats there with his slot closed and his metal arms at his sides.

“Did I do wrong parameters?” I ask.

“Naw, Graciela,” says Friend. “You were grumper to the leez! You sealed your suit with no mistakes, and you dodged all the obstacles on the course. Nineteenth time in a row!”

The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds
by Renan Bernardo

At this age, on the planet of Orvalho, Alberto is conjoined with the ship called The Offer of Peace Between Two Worlds. They’re engulfed in the Mezelões’ unifying mix, a tank where a swirling brackish secretion flows through their pores and recesses, nanoscopic spidery bots tying their espírito together—parts and limbs, yottabytes and nucleotides, ship and captain, physically separated, spiritually united.

Ten Easy Steps to Destroying Your Enemies This Arbor Day
by Rachael K. Jones

1. Raid the army surplus warehouse, NASA’s scrapyard, and Aunt Diabolica’s volcano lair for parts. On the way home, swing by CatCo to buy more Fancy Feast for Mr. Wibbles.

Six-Month Assessment on Miracle Fresh
by Anne Liberton

Miracle Fresh is a soft drink produced by Spirits & Co. since 2027. The original pitch described a holy club soda blessed with droplets of blood from our devoted Messiah, something the average person could drink on the go, après-exercising, or even at [insert holy building of choice] without requiring long tiresome religious proceedings. This idea was abandoned shortly after the company realized a soft drink would appeal to a greater audience, and after considering the lawsuit filed by the parental association Guardians of our Holy Youth (GHY), who worried the club soda would be used as a component of alcoholic mixed drinks. Associating our devoted Messiah with sugar and adding a clear appeal to children did not seem to faze any of the naysayers.

Ketchōkuma
by Mason Yeater

My name is Yasuko Nagamine and I work for the employment bureau. There’s a monster destroying the city. It used to be the mascot for the organ rental service, Sensation. I guess it still is but I don’t think it’s doing much for their bottom line anymore.

How to Kill the Giant Living Brain You Found in Your Mother’s Basement After She Died
by Alex Sobel

[Guide]
Welcome to this interactive guide! I understand from your About Me profile that you have an issue with a brain that needs killing. I’m here to help!

[graciegirl2006!?]
I can’t believe I found this.

[Guide]
Actually, we are the top search engine result for the keywords in your query!

This Week in Clinical Dance: Urgent Care at the Hastings Center
by Lauren Ring

Brigitte Cole presents with lower abdominal pain, nausea, and a long-sleeved black leotard. She has a well-developed appearance and does not seem to be in acute distress. Her accompaniment for the evening is pianist Roy Weiss, a fixture of the local music scene whose minimalist style pairs well with the bold choreography of clinical dance. As the house lights dim and the spotlights focus down on Cole, stoic and poised, one cannot help but notice that a stray lock of hair has fallen out of her sleek bun. Such composure, such strength, and yet—disarray.

Hold the Sea Inside
by Erin Keating

Among the crags of the mountains weeps a cascade of salt water. In the pool beneath, stiff-peaked foam drowns careless men and sickens parched animals. The menfolk say it’s devilry to find salt water so far from the shore, but we know better. It’s no devil’s work but woman’s grief.

Eternal Recurrence
by Spencer Nitkey

The deepfake is nothing like you. Its smile is all wrong. It’s recorded your dimple as an artifact and smoothed it over. Your smile is too symmetrical. It’s shortened your beaky nose. It winks at me from the computer screen with the wrong eye. It doesn’t squint when it smiles. It doesn’t dance like it’s missing a few tendons. It sings entire songs instead of its favorite couplet over and over again. It doesn’t tell me I should eat something, or remind me to call the landlord and fix the icemaker, or tell me about the article it just read on the intersections of Nietzche and Oscar Wilde’s philosophies.

Phantom Heart
by Charlie B. Lorch

The widow wants to talk to her husband.

She has been warned: It is not her husband. It is ADRU. (ADRU-93, if you must know, but really the full name does the opposite of what it should: It shows it is one of many.) ADRU stands for Artificial Death Reconstruction Unit, and all it knows is the moment the husband died.

But it doesn’t matter. It never does, not to the living.

In Tandem
by Emilee Prado

I’ve known her for four summers now, so I don’t believe Sephina when she says we’ll return the bicycle before anyone knows it’s missing. Eventually, I say okay, but it’s not like I have a choice. My mom is always telling me that Sephina puts bad stuff in my head; Mom has no idea. I glance once more at the empty porch and curtained windows, but Sephina is already off, tugging me with her, gripping the handlebars and jogging toward the road.

Dreamwright Street
by Mike Reeves-McMillan

The shop fronts glitter along Dreamwright Street, where all the best people come to buy their dreams. Sunlight winks off polished glass, clear as crystal; off the lovingly applied varnish of the wooden window frames; off fragments of mica embedded in the very cobblestones.

The customers, too, sparkle. Light leaps from the gemstones they wear, from their polished shoes, from the braid on their servants’ livery. Clear eyes reflect the dancing light, and their bright teeth send back radiance as they smile. The customers of Dreamwright Street sleep well in their high mansions, and they sleep deeply, and when they arise, their minds are clear and scintillating as a wellspring.

Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade
by Sarah Pauling

Dear Mr. Kaur,

I’ve attached scans of the student letters per my conversation with Anthony Noble at the White House Teacher’s Dinner. To be honest, we’re all enormously starstruck by the Secretary’s offer. We’ve guarded our Pilgrim Letters jealously through the years—our own little time capsule—but it’s not every day your elementary school gets to participate in cultural diplomacy.

Note that the earliest letters date back to 1967, a mere five years after Beacon Day. While they were assigned only as creative writing exercises—the technology to reply to the first Beacon transmissions didn’t even exist when Ms. Barbara Kirby came up with the idea—I’m sure the children who wrote these letters all those years ago would be ecstatic to learn that their words would one day reach the stars.

Batter and Pearl
by Steph Kwiatkowski

The sun’s almost down over the boardwalk, that time of day when everything’s dark but the sky’s still lit up, when townies drive past the lake on their way to Gary and say gosh it’s pretty out here by the battervilles, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

The air’s thick with marina noise and mosquitoes eating up my shirtless chest. I’m pouring my jug of fresh-caught batter into the shuddering funnel of the change machine, even though I know in my heart there’s not enough to buy Ecker the smallest size of honey-glazed crispies. The line for the chicko joint is starting to wind down the boardwalk. Everyone’s yelling, a bunch of sunburned lake-slick battermags pissed I’m taking too long during the dinner rush. But I can’t let it go, not tonight. Ecker is leaving tomorrow to go back to vocational school, and he’s standing at the order window with his hands in his pockets like he’s embarrassed.

The Gaunt Strikes Again
by Rich Larson

“My friends, I apologize for pulling you away from the festivities,” the Duke said, shutting the heavy oak door behind him, “but I believe our lives to be in danger.” He turned to his guests and drew a deep breath. “It seems the Gaunt has decided to attend our soiree.”

The Beldam, fashionably attired in the skin of a flayed heretic, clapped her beautiful hand to her beautiful cheek. The Raconteur, already flushed and tousle-headed, wine staining his doublet, guffawed. The Corporal, a shard of obsidian in military dress, narrowed her flesh eye while its clockwork neighbor roved about the room.

Bone Talker, Bone Eater
by D.S. Ravenhurst

Mama’s bones scream as the writhing mass of beetles cleans her skeleton. My fingers bury themselves in my ears against my will, trying to block the shrieking no one else can hear and the squish of macerated flesh they can. I don’t know which one’s worse.

Song For a Star-Whale’s Ghost
by Devin Miller

Captain Ruby Tauda of the whale-ship Balentora strapped down a crate of medicine and hurried across the star-whale’s mouth. She and her crew had always used the mouth as a cargo bay, but this wasn’t their usual cargo. They weren’t thieves.

The Lighthouse Keeper
by Melinda Brasher

I’m not supposed to talk to the locals, but that’s not a problem because there don’t seem to be any. Not as far as the eye can see. Not in the endless blue I can’t look away from. Not along the windswept bluffs high above that crashing, ever-changing vastness that makes me feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. And yet bigger. More alone. And less.

I must keep the light burning at all times.

And I must never, never climb down to the beach.

St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test
by Mary Berman

Herewith I present to Your Holiness Clement IV the proceedings regarding the phenomenon at Santa Sabina.

On the 25th day of the month of March in this year of our Lord 1265, I was ordered by the Most Holy Father to the Studium Conventuale di Santa Sabina all’Aventino to evaluate the existence, or lack thereof, of a soul housed within a Wooden Likeness of a Man, the Likeness having been constructed by Father Antonio di Cassino, a friar serving in that place.

Margery Lung is Unstoppable
by Lisa Cai

The first time Margie raised the dead, it was to prove she didn’t eat her dog. As Harold hadn’t been walked around the neighbourhood recently, her classmate Brenda assumed Margie’s family devoured their dog and caught SARS.

DP FICTION #115A: “Letters From Mt. Monroe Elementary, Third Grade” by Sarah Pauling

edited by Chelle Parker

SUBJ: Mt. Monroe Elementary

Dear Mr. Kaur,

With sincere gratitude,

Brianna Wen

Principal, Mt. Monroe Elementary

***

“If you could write a letter to the Pilgrims on their ship, what would it say?” Barbara Kirby’s third grade class, 1967.

Dear Pilgrims, my name is Patricia but people call me Patty. Miss K says you’re going to be flying in outer space for a very long time! You will fly for your whole life and my whole life and my baby brother’s whole life and Toothpick’s whole life (he is my puppy). But maybe my daughter will meet you if she gets VERY old. Please make friends with her when you get to Earth. She will live in Michigan like I do and she’ll cook you onion soup.

— Patty Ward

Hello aliens, I am scared of you so please turn around. I know you made a mistake because when you left home we didn’t have radios yet so you listened and listened and you thought Earth was a big empty, but now you know we lived here first. So you should go home. Maybe you can figure out how to turn around if you really really try.

— Linda Jimenez

Dear aliens, my dad says Johnson’s going to bungle everything ! ! Yesterday people sat in the Capitol and said they would not move until the government invented blasters to fight you. Please write back soon because Miss K says right now it takes 12 years to get your messages and everybody’s really confused over here. (P.S. have you heard the Beatles on the radio yet?)

— Kenneth MacInnes

***

Donald Levias’s third grade class, 1974.

Dear The Pilgrims my uncle says you’re fake because it doesn’t make sense how you picked our planet out of all the other planets because how come aliens just happen to breathe oxygen same as us and why do you have radios and math and stuff same as us. And so he thinks the government made you up like the moon landing. But Mr. Levias says you picked Earth because you breathe the same air as humans or else you wouldn’t have picked Earth so we would’ve never met you. But my uncle says that’s a circle argument. And then my mom said you’re real but actually you just want to grind us up and feed us to your chickens. The end.

— Armin Cox

Hello, my neighbor went to Michigan State to learn about lasers so she could help talk back to you guys. She says it’s a big funky puzzle we are all solving together and that it means we’re learning to talk to outer space really fast. Do you like puzzles? I like playing games on road trips. I drew hangman so you can play it on your road trip to Earth.

— Steve Rascon

Dear Pilgrims, you shouldn’t come here! There isn’t enough room! People are still angry at you and the computer that gives you orders! It’s hard to be angry because you won’t be here for more than one hundred years! But people will try to stay angry!!!!

— Angie Zielinski

Dear Pilgrims, the four Beacons you have sent so far didn’t say anything about your biology. I read that some scientists think you have a hard crab shell but others think that your brain would never be able to get big enough to invent interstellar space flight that way. You need to provide more information.

— Jessamine St. John Hall

Hi aliens, I live at 25881 Warren Lane and I have a lazy old dog named Toothpick. I like to swim and play the recorder. I have a big sister named Patricia but people call her Patty. She doesn’t want to talk to you anymore because you didn’t answer her letter. She used to really like aliens but now she thinks it’s stupid to write letters to somebody we will never get to meet. Even though she has a pen pal in California.

— Donovan Ward

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 1986.

Dear Pilgrims, Miss Patty says we don’t have to write letters because it’s a sad tradition. You are far away and you are not getting to Earth until our class is dead already. But my mom says the 3rd graders used to write letters, so I will still do it and Miss Patty will put it in the folder.

They tried to put a teacher in space last week to teach kids how we’re sending our own Beacons back to you. But the ship exploded and we watched on TV and I cried and Miss Patty cried and everybody cried. It feels like we are stuck on Earth. But I want to tell you it used to take a whole year to walk to China. And people still wrote letters and traded rubies and tea and silky clothes. So it’s okay that our first answer message won’t hit you guys for ten years. We will be patient. And we will think up new things to tell you in the meantime. And the road will get shorter and shorter. And then you will be here.

— Poppy Jimenez

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2000.

Dear Amnid Thorn, my favorite are social studies lessons about you and your supercomputer. What is it like to be in charge of all the Pilgrims??! What is it like doing what the computer says all the time? What is it like to be born in space and die in space and never see the Earth and still have to make sure everybody does their jobs anyway? I would freak!!!! (P.S.! My mom said to tell you Deut. 34:4-5)

— Teresa Nowak

Dear Pilgrims, a scientist came to talk to us about how all the plants on your ship keep you alive her name is Jessamine St. John Hall and she used to go here so Ms. Patty even let us write letters to you guys because the scientist said it was her best school memory she made everybody so excited and she told everybody’s parents to call their senators about making room for you guys since ninety years is not a long time.

— Ryan Moreau

Hello Pilgrims, I want to say SORRY. Ms. Patty read us a poem about the FOIBLES of MAN. She says our brains don’t work right when a problem is too big or too far away. So even though everybody WANTS to make plans for when you get here, because you will need houses or maybe you will need to go to prison, nobody KNOWS HOW to make a plan stick so far ahead. It’s like GLOBAL WARMING. Ms. Patty looked SAD.

— Dylan Pham

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2013.

Dear Pilgrims, do aliens fall in love? I know you can’t marry whoever you want because the computer has to say yes, BUT I found a book in my mom’s car where a lady in Texas was trying to stop her evil husband from taking over her ranch but then a Pilgrim met her in disguise when she was out riding her horse and when they started kissing all the rain turned into space diamonds that let them read each other’s minds. Do you think that will happen a lot when you get here?

— Pacifica Carmine

Dear Amnid Thorn, I’m sorry you’re not the leader anymore. I would have said sorry sooner except it took us eight years to get the news. I am glad the Pilgrims are still coming here. The new Beacon did not say what you’re doing now after everybody did a mutiny to you but I hope you’re not in jail and you are building a deck to chillax on like my grandpa did after he retired. I love you.

— Shaina Feldman

Dear Pilgrim peeps, can you tell me who is right my mom or my dad? My mom says you are not real and the government made you up to make us pay more taxes. My dad says nobody can keep a secret that big for 50 years SO you are real BUT your new president will start a war with Earth or maybe crash the whole ship, AND you did 9/11. Who is right?

— Arjun Bakshi

Dear Pilgrims, I remember what it felt like ~~to write you a letter~~ ~~to pretend to write~~ to talk to you like an imaginary friend. ~~That was a long~~ Sometimes I worry. If you were to face disaster, we wouldn’t know for many years. Perhaps a regime change was inevitable on a voyage of your length, but I hear about what’s happening there (what happened there is what I mean), and I watch our ineptitude unfold here, and I worry that you’ll never

— unattributed

***

Patty Ward’s third grade class, 2024.

Dear Pilgrims, a famous biologist (Dr. St. John Hall) Zoomed with our class about how humans are sending instructions to help the plants in your ship make better air. This is the first time we ever gave you advice. Do you think we’re bossy? I have another good advice: don’t go out in space because your eyes will explode.

— Nyla Ehlmann

Hi Pilgrims, do you guys feel okay without the computer making you follow the rules anymore? Do you get enough food? We zoomed with a scientist who says you guys had bad times after the Mutiny, and it could have got worse and worse and worse. But what’s important is everybody works together and does lots of brainstorming. So the ship can get changed around. So there’s lots of food and air so you can make your own choices even if they are mistakes sometimes. I will study biology when I grow up, too. Or maybe firefighting.

— Jayden Goddard

Hello Pilgrims, my name is Olivia but everybody calls me Liv. I love video games and my favorite books are about a Pilgrim teenager who solves mysteries on your ship. I am really really excited to meet you!!! I will be 76 years old when you get here. I will show you all over Michigan but especially Mackinac Island where you can ride the horses. Please please please visit me. Welcome to your new home! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

— Liv Liu

Dear Pilgrims, my dad does not like you. He thinks you are going to trick us and trap us, but he says it’s so far away nobody can do anything about it. Maybe if you tell me a little bit about yourself I can explain to him? I can explain you just wanted to travel somewhere new like when we moved from South Bend. If you visit me in 2090 I will go fishing with you. Because that is how my dad makes friends.

— Matt Wojcik

Dear Pilgrims,

I’m ashamed of our social rhythms: we back-bite and haggle and fail to think in the long term.

I thought you might be the same, but instead you incorporated your revolution and hobbled on. Your last Beacon said your sociologists even planned for it. I find myself disturbed and comforted in equal measure.

Can we learn to think that way? Should we?

I knew I wouldn’t get to meet you; some friends stay imaginary. But I thought maybe I’d make it closer than this. I start treatment in the spring, which is as good a reason to retire as any.

I didn’t have a daughter who could make you onion soup. Instead, I’ve taught a thousand bold and brilliant children, some of whom would very much like to meet you. Their long-term thinking is both better and worse than mine. An hour’s wait bothers them, while a hundred years does not.

They’ve written you some beautiful letters. I’m trying to learn from them: the road will get shorter and shorter, and then you’ll be here.

— Patty Ward

2084 words

Author’s Note: Plenty of fiction has been set aboard generation ships; I wondered what that timescale would feel like from the outside. Would the experience rhyme in some ways? Would we even be capable of effective planning that far ahead? As for the voices I chose to tell this story with: Kids handle certain things better than adults do. That’s just facts.

Sarah Pauling spent several years sending other people to distant places for a living as a study abroad advisor in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She’s now in Seattle, graciously sharing her home with two cats and a husband. A graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop, her stories have appeared in places like Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and Clarkesworld. She can occasionally be found at @_paulings on Twitter, nattering on about writing, tabletop gaming, comics, and books.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

DP FICTION #113A: “Eternal Recurrence” by Spencer Nitkey

edited by Chelle Parker

***

The ChatBot is nothing like you. I gave them everything: emails, texts, your conference papers, every page of your meticulous diaries, the vows you’d written. Everything. It all comes out as pastiche and cliche. I had hope when it started its first message with a long ‘ummmmmmmmm’, but it’s all form, no content. It ends sentences without a period like your texts, and it asks trivial questions with three question marks and important ones with one. But when the conversation slows, it doesn’t change the subject so deftly that I don’t even notice. It “accidentally” produces internal rhymes at four times the rate of the average speaker, like you, but it doesn’t pause everything to think through the exact word it needs with me. And don’t get me started on its metaphors. It’s too short-winded. I asked it how its day was and it said, “Wonderful.” One word. I closed the browser and read a paper you’d written on literalizing the metaphors in Nietzche’s writing, and wished you were there to explain it all to me in a way I could understand but just barely.

***

The Voice Box is nothing like you. It has every voicemail I am lucky enough to have saved, every memo you recorded of yourself reading short stories so I could listen to them while I fell asleep, and your kitchen singing voice I recorded from the other room. The voice is right, but the inflections are all wrong. When it tells a joke, it doesn’t whisper the punchline. When it’s excited, it shouts, but it’s all crescendo and no build-up. It sings entire songs instead of its favorite couplet over and over again. You told me once, while we were staying up too late recounting petty childhood shames, that you bought a Tamagotchi from a flea market as a kid. You turned it on at midnight, when you were supposed to be asleep. It blasted music and you couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, so you ran to the garage and hit it with a hammer until it stopped beeping.

***

The robot is nothing like you. Its skin is too smooth. Its eyes are the wrong shade of blue. It doesn’t walk like you, popping onto the balls of its feet and stepping on tiptoes when it gets nervous or excited. It doesn’t get nervous during sunsets. It makes crafts too quickly, without pausing for an hour to consider which shade of green would be best for the resin lamp. It doesn’t stare up and to the left when it is lost in thought. It doesn’t get lost in thought. It doesn’t stop me midsentence and ask me to repeat myself because it wasn’t listening well enough. It’s not listening at all. It’s worse with it here than it was without you, and I thought nothing could be worse than being without you.

***

The holographically projected memory of you is nothing like you. Nothing it does surprises me. It will never get really into country music for three months because it heard a Dolly Parton remix in a nightclub. It won’t come home from a pet store with a chameleon because “just look at him; we can call him Hamlet.” My memories are nothing like you, either. They’re all incomplete or incorrect, and each time I conjure one, it loses more fidelity. You get smaller and simpler every day. I wake up in the morning and switch it on, and I can see, in reality-perfect resolution, how much of you I have lost since yesterday.

***

The 3D-bio-printed clone of you with implanted memories is nothing like you. It doesn’t tell me a story if I’ve already heard it. It doesn’t know that I don’t care how many times you’ve told me. It doesn’t ask me for anything. It doesn’t snore. It falls asleep too slowly and wakes up too quickly. It’s shaped like you. It feels like you when it hugs me while I cry. It tastes like you when it kisses me. It smells like you when its hair perfumes my pillow. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hug me asymmetrically with one arm always higher than the other and its hand on the nape of my neck. It doesn’t murmur for fifteen minutes when it first falls asleep. It never taps its forehead for a second kiss after the first one.

***

Your Frankensteined corpse is nothing like you.

***

The you pulled from a parallel universe where you didn’t die is nothing like you: She’s alive and likes Elvis.

***

The better deepfake with your dimple intact is still nothing like you.

***

Your ghost, which I imagine sacrificing a crow to summon, is nothing like you. Move on, you mouth to me silently, translucent and pitying. I don’t want to.

***

The pictures of you are nothing like you. The voicemails are nothing like you. The cat you got us two years ago is nothing like you. We both miss you. I cry, and she sits on my chest and paws at my collarbones. The empty half of our bed is nothing like you. The video of our wedding ceremony—the first one, on the beach with just our siblings, on that perfect, clueless Tuesday—is nothing like you. There is nothing like you. Oh god, there is nothing like you.

***

The kettle sang today, and for a fraction of a second, I thought it was your voice coming from the kitchen. I didn’t throw the kettle out, which I think is what my therapist would call progress.

***

I saw the first clear pictures of the Cosmic Cliffs from the James Webb telescope today. I don’t know why, but I thought of you. It’s a place in the universe where stars come churning to life. It’s light-years wide, and they look like mountains—ethereal, twinkling mountains. I wish you could see them, and they remind me of you.

***

I went to the aquarium today, for the first time since you died. The sleeping octopus they said had just escaped its tank last week reminded me of you. I didn’t look at the eagle rays, because they were your favorite, and I’m not ready. But I thought of you in all that blue, and it made me smile.

***

The scenic overlook at the end of the hike I went on today reminded me of you. I could see far enough to spot the line where the trees turned to streets, roads, and freeways. I thought of you because there was a stroad—one of those ungainly half-road, half-street banes of urban planners that you ranted to me about when you got really into urban planning that one summer. You set up a whole table in the garage to plan your “Unreal Utopia”, and you made foam buildings and read like a million books, and you told me you refused to have even one stroad in your utopia. When I asked what a stroad was, you started to explain, then asked if you could show me instead. I drove us down Route 82, and we slowed in the spots where the streets were eight wide lanes but they’d tried to line them with storefronts and a tiny empty sidewalk, too, and you said, “See? Stroad!” A month later, you tried to spray-paint your city and the paint melted the foam. The whole utopia dripped from the table and covered the ground. We laughed for months at random times, just thinking about it, and when we saw spray paint at a hardware store, we laughed so hard that the cashier asked us to leave. You quoted Nietzche in the car while I burned red with embarrassment. “Those who were seen dancing were thought to be crazy by those who could not hear the music.”

***

My bare-feet summer callouses remind me of you. A stand-up comic told a joke about Jersey girls, and it reminded me of you. The Asian grocery store had lychee, the kind you buy still on the branch, and I thought of you. I ate it on the couch. A police officer’s horse broke its leg near me on my walk, so I thought of Nietzche, so I thought of you.

***

The turnip bulbs rising from the earth again every spring remind me of you.

***

The couple at the movies who won’t stop whispering remind me of us.

***

The person who left anonymous flowers at my door is a bit like you, whoever they are.

***

Your mother’s laugh is a lot like yours. I finally visited her for coffee, and we laughed and cried and laughed until it was dark outside.

***

The deepfake company keeps emailing me, saying they really have it this time, and they’re willing to give me a 75% discount as an early adopter. I’m still saying no. You’re everywhere, really, except for the places I look hardest. So I’ve stopped trying, and I let you visit me when you can. I like it this way. I miss you all the time. I look at the scrapbooks of our trips—Paris, Chiang Mai, Florence, and Cusco—when I need something like your simulacrum.

***

There is nothing like you.

***

You are everywhere I look.

***

You colored the whole world. You chose the perfect shade, of course. You told me that the most important question Nietzche ever asked was about eternal recurrence. It was his test for whether someone actually loves life. The question goes like this: If a demon came to you and told you that you would have to live every single moment of your life over and over and over again, forever—each day, each second, each thought, each tragedy and laugh, each trauma and beauty, each stroad and inside joke, each diagnosis and bite of lychee, everything, always, again and again and again without change or adulteration—would you desire it? It’s a simple question, really, but it’s hard to answer.

I think about this all the time these days. If this all had to happen again, would I cry or celebrate? My answer, of course, is both. Do I desire it? Yes. I think so. I got you. I got so much of you, really. And after the end of everything, and at the beginning of everything, and in the middle of everything, and for all the endless recurrences that rise and break like perfect waves, I can say this with certainty: There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like you.

Author’s Note: This story was written in a strange way—even for me. My wife and I went to a coffee shop for a writing date, which involved sharing a coffee and then sitting at separate tables to write for an afternoon. I put Bon Iver’s song “Re: Stacks” on repeat and spent 3 hours in a kind of fugue state, thinking about my wife, love, and its shadow—loss. I’d just read an article on Nietzsche that morning and had been thinking about the paucity of tech simulacra like chatbots, ‘AI’, and the like. All this melded together, the language gathered some momentum, and poof, I walked out of the coffee shop dazed but with the first draft of this story in hand.

Spencer Nitkey is a writer, researcher, and educator living in New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Apex Magazine, Fusion Fragment, Apparition Lit, Weird Horror Magazine, and others. He was a finalist for the 2023 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. You can find more about him and read more of his writing on his website, spencernitkey.com.

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Announcements! (Submission Window, First Reader Applications, Staff Changes)

Submission Window: July 8

We are delighted to announce our next general submission window!

Submissions will be open for two weeks, from July 8 through July 22, via our submission portal. We consider one story per author, with a wordcount of 3,500 words or less; we pay 10c/word; and simultaneous submissions are fine. See our Submission Guidelines for full details and more information!

Call for First Readers (BIPOC now, everyone May 27)

We are now looking for volunteers interested in being First Readers for Diabolical Plots!

First Readers are a crucial part of our submission windows, helping us navigate through the many hundreds of stories we receive every year, and making sure every story gets consideration and the spectrum of opinions and viewpoints we need to make our choices well.

Reading submissions is also a fantastic learning experience for anyone who loves reading, writing, or editing. It’s an opportunity to sample an incredible range of writing, from every style and every level of professional expertise. It’s also a way to get ‘behind the scenes’, see how the magazine is run, and get involved in bringing stories to the world. If you love short stories, we suspect you will have a blast.

At Diabolical Plots, we see First Readers as an opportunity to offer mentorship and new connections! We’ll walk you through everything that First Reading entails; we’re always open for conversations about reading, writing, and publishing; and we’ll hold regular discussions and exercises, specially aimed at new First Readers, highlighting all kinds of different ways stories can work (or not work!) for us, and what goes into submission reading and the magazine process.

Diabolical Plots offers a small honorarium to all First Readers who participate in a submission period. We recognize that it is not commensurate with the tremendous amount of work our amazing First Readers put in, but we feel it’s vital to provide what compensation we can, and it is important to us to show our appreciation.

It’s always important for us to maintain a diverse First Reader team with a wide range of identities and experiences; we are immediately open to applications from people who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or people of color). We will open to First Reader applications (at the same link) from all demographics on May 27. The applications for all will be open through June 3.

A Farewell and a Welcome

After a fruitful year here at Diabolical Plots, Chelle Parker will be stepping down from the editorial team this summer. A professional freelance editor, and previously copyeditor and then managing editor at Fireside Magazine, as well as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, Chelle has been wonderful to have as a member of our team. They’ve weighed in on acquisitions, dev edited and copy edited stories, developed our in-house style guide in collaboration with David, advocated for First Readers and fellow editors, assisted with our 2023 Hugo Award Nomination List project, been a veritable fountain of knowledge on language and grammar, and so much more—we’ve gained and grown immeasurably from their time and efforts with us.

As Chelle departs, we are pleased to welcome Amanda Helms, who will be stepping into the vacant editor role! Amanda is a biracial Black/white fantasy, science fiction, and sometimes horror writer whose stories have appeared in or are forthcoming from FIYAH, Uncanny, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other fine venues. Amanda has been with the Diabolical Plots team since 2021, where she has been among our most prolific First Readers—her many insightful comments and gift for getting to the heart of a story have helped steer acquisitions, and we have tremendous respect for her taste and work ethic. Her background as a former editor in educational publishing is a major asset, and she’s eager to apply those skills in working with Diabolical Plots authors. Two of her stories have previously been published in the magazine: “The Efficacy of Tyromancy over Reflective Scrying Methods in Divining Colleagues’ Coming Misfortunes” is a great example of speculative academic fiction, and has the distinction of being our first unTweetable story title—at the time it was published, Twitter still had the 140-character limit— while “Midwifery of Gods: A Primer for Mortals” is a great example of the kind of ‘format story’ that Diabolical Plots loves to publish. Welcome, Amanda!