Skip to main content

Short Fiction Friday: The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu, Clarkesworld #55.

 [no synopsis provided]

I came across this story when I was look for World Fantasy Awards nominated and winning stories. The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees a WFA nominee back in 2012, it was further nominated for HUGO and Locus awards and won the Nebula award back in 2011. A whole lot of praise for E. Lily Yu, and it is well deserved. 

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees is a hard story to place in a category, the best suited post would be Science Fiction, not the general part but a niche of its own. I always keep on saying that this genre is made for the genre benders and E. Lily Yu is precisely one such author. Going the extra distance to deliver a stunningly original story. Going in to the story I didn't know what I could expect. Were the Wasps and the Bees purely a metaphor for something bigger? Well no.

The story of The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees shows the story of two sides one from the Wasps and the other from the Bees. There isn't really a protagonist that you follow, it is more told from a birdseye view and this directly produced a wonderful sense to the story. 

 It begins actually with a dire scene as a village discovers something in a Wasp nest which makes them terrified of them. The Wasps have carefully detailed the outlines their land and this scares them. Luckily a small band of Wasps manage to escape and start a new, but with so little to go on they exert their dominance and they enslave a nearby Beehive. The pressure and dominance that the Wasp colony shows on the Bees does leave it's mark on the long run. The Bees aren't stupid, they learn and adapt and well there you have it. One day an Anarchist Bee is born, and this Bee has one goal in mind... 

 I haven't encountered such a story before and when you look at the bigger picture, extrapolate and translate it, it makes a lot of sense and actually could be place in some historical events. 

 E. Lily Yu has written a many layered story with The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees. It's an amazing piece that you have to have read. It will chance how you look on some things. The best part of it is the ending, though the story is contained, the ending offers a nice perspective to think about the future. 

Be sure to read The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees on Clarkesworld
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short Fiction Friday: Selfies

Selfies by Lavie Tidhar "Selfies", by Lavie Tidhar, is a creepy little horror tale about the fate of a young woman who makes the mistake of a lifetime when she buys a new phone in the local mall. It is only a few weeks back that I read a different but very interesting short story of Lavie Tidhar, Dragonkin . I found this story directly to my liking, the synopsis and build up of the story was unique and got me excited by it's less is more writing style. In the end this story for me had so much going on that I hope to see Lavie Tidhar exploring it even further. That aside, now its time for Selfies . I think I can now safely say that Lavie Tidhar is an author to watch out for, his stories will get you thinking and will scare you twice over.  I have been thinking a lot of the current situation with always being connected on social media and the likes. It's unavoidable. One thing that is connected with all of this is of course your smartphone, yes no longer a cell...
Post a Comment
Read more

Author interview with John Gwynne

Author interview with John Gwynne Author Bio: I was born in Singapore while my dad was stationed there in the RAF. Up until he retired that meant a lot of traveling around, generally a move every three years or so. I live with my wife and four wonderful (and demanding) children in East Sussex. Also three dogs, two of which will chew anything that stands still. I have had many strange and wonderful jobs, including packing soap in a soap factory, waitering in a french restaurant in Canada, playing double bass in a rock n roll band, and lecturing at Brighton University. I stepped out of university work due to my daughter’s disability, so now I split my time caring for her and working from home - I work with my wife rejuvenating vintage furniture, which means fixing, lifting, carrying, painting and generally doing what my wife tells me to do... And somehow during this time I started writing. I’ve always told my children stories at bed-time, and they pestered long and hard for me to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Author Interview with Christopher Fowler

Author interview with Christopher Fowler. Author bio:  Christopher Fowler is an English novelist living in London, his books contain elements of black comedy, anxiety and social satire. As well as novels, he writes short stories, scripts, press articles and reviews. He lives in King's Cross, on the Battlebridge Basin, and chooses London as the backdrop of many of his stories because any one of the events in its two thousand year history can provide inspiration In 1998 he was the recipient of the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year, for 'Wageslaves'. Then, in 2004, 'The Water Room' was nominated for the CWA People's Choice Award, 'Full Dark House' won the BFS August Derleth Novel of The Year Award 2004 and 'American Waitress' won the BFS Best Short Story Of The Year 2004. The novella 'Breathe' won BFS Best Novella 2005. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Christopher, welcome over to The Bo...
Post a Comment
Read more