Uncanny Magazine Issue 36 September/October 2020

“Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher. 💥 October 10, 2021: this free short story from Uncanny Magazine is the 2021 WSFA Small Press Award Winner! Read it posthaste you must and stuff! 💥 I'm not a huge fan of Space Thingies or AI Thingies, but I decided to read this one because T. Kingfisher tends to write Slightly Very Good Stories (SVGS™). (This is me being full of fish once again and pretending that Paladin's Strength never happened, just so you know.) A bloody shrimping good decision this proved to be, too *joyously pats herself on the exoskeleton*. “Lying. Lying was something like error, which she understood. It was always possible to be in error, and to learn that one was in error, and correct oneself. Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error to others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice.”This is a clever little tale about two sentient beings/robots/whatever—two of the most engaging characters I've read about in a loooong time. Which is slightly very ironic considering they're not even human—and the eternal conflict between good and bad. This could have made for a simplistic, been-there-read-that type of story, but T. Kingfisher wrote it, so it didn't. HA. And YAY. Approx. reading time: 33 minutes.