At a convention of superheroes, a small group of them discusses what they could do if they really dedicated themselves to making the world a better place. But then they explore what that will mean for them and why they might not want to actually do it.

This story is a fitting metaphor for why we as societies and individuals don’t solve our biggest problems. The solutions are just too mundane, require drudgery, and take too long. They are no fun for the people of means. In the story, this really stirs up the reader’s emotions against the superheroes while, strangely, also making the reader sympathetic to them. Like real life problems, it turns out things are more complicated than they seem.

Length: 860 words (less than 5 minutes)

My rating: 4/5

Savannah is an odd combination of bounty hunter and librarian. Her latest mission is to hunt down the recent killer of a master by his apprentice. She follows him up into the mountains and encounters a “diabolist” who had kidnapped the suspected killer. Things go a little sideways and things are revealed.

If you appreciate stories that are about more than they seem at first, you might appreciate this one. It ends up covering some difficult subjects like abuse. The prose is thoughtful and a bit contemplative as Savannah explores why she is doing what she is doing. Overall it provides an interesting tale told about characters that the reader comes to care for very quickly in this fairly short read.

Length: 6,536 words (25 to 30 minutes)

My rating: 4/5

The dad in this story regularly goes out to get milk. Each time he does, he also takes on some amazing, fantastic task and comes back battered and bruised. It seems he is trying to impress his family, but they just want him to spend time with them.

I loved this story! It is such a great metaphor for the male breadwinner myth. Men go out to work each day thinking they are slaying dragons and taking blows for their families. Turns out that their families don’t care so much what happens outside the home. They seek Dad’s presence and care for them over anything that happens elsewhere. And this tale explores exquisitely the feelings on both sides of this conflict. Wonderful!

Length: 953 words (about 5 minutes)

My rating: 5/5

What if you had the ability to make everything better for all the people who suffer like you do? Would you exercise it? At what cost? Those are the questions raised in Fatima Taqvi’s story in the Lightspeed magazine. A young street urchin in Karachi, Pakistan sits outside a tailor’s shop. One day, he notices something coming out of the mirror. He goes into the store to talk the tailor and finds himself his apprentice with a very odd set of instructions.

The city itself is a pivotal character in this exploration between the haves and the have-nots. We often think we know what we would do in difficult situations, but do we really? When the street urchin is presented with such a challenge, like most of us, he is confident in saying what he will do. But the charm of this story is that plays with the struggle of what he will actually do.

My rating: 4/5