Asking for a friend. No, really.

[mrissa]

A friend is looking for a short story that fits the following parameters: "It's about an autistic girl who is with her mother at a convention, I think, and gets whisked away to Faerie by some kind of imp who implies everything will suit her, and in the end the girl comes back to her mother

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I forget the title and author, but I think it was published by Strange Horizons about 2-3 years ago. It might have been an alien rather than an imp.

[timprov]

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130902/rules-f.shtml

[klwilliams]

I don't recognize that story, but for another fictional handling of autism there's "Air Guitar" by Mad Robins in "Tales From the House Band".

[reveritas]

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, but that's not the story you want, obviously. I don't know what they did right or wrong in the book but it was a pretty good read.

[therck]

If you don't find it another way, you might try whatwasthatbook. People frequently ask about short stories there as well as about books. It's not certain that someone would know, but it's a community with a lot of members, so there often is someone who knows.

[moiread]

We found it! The guess above about Strange Horizons was right. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2013/20130902/rules-f.shtml

Thank you so much for helping me ask around.

On reread, I am not as impressed with it as I was the first time, so if people have better suggestions of short YA-oriented SF/F stories that feature great depictions of autism spectrum disorders, I too would really love to hear them. I'm trying to focus on better representation of various minority groups in the fiction I present to my students.

(Most of the big reading material is locked into the curriculum but I have control over smaller assignments, so I try to make the most of it. Especially since the majority of our student population is female and/or kids of colour. What these kids need with two years of depressing Jack London white-man-against-the-winter stories, I will never understand. Therefore: desi girls in wheelchairs conquering evil, amputee superheroes, and autism in

Diverse anthology suggestions

[rachelmanija]

Kaleidoscope, edited by Julia Rios. Diverse YA sff.

Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk I and II, edited by Joselle Vandefhooft. (Disclaimer: I have a story in volume I.) A fair number of the stories would be fine for teenagers; the majority don't have any on-page sex, for instance.

All three of those anthologies are diverse in regards to disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. I don't recall if any of them are about someone with autism, though.

Re: Diverse anthology suggestions

[moiread]

Kaleidoscope has already been the source of several stories read to my students!

I'll look into the other two. Thank you muchly!

[timprov]

Funny: I made my comment above, went up and told Mris I had found the story, at which point she told me it was you who asked, and I said "oh, if I'd known that, I'm sure Chelle would have Googled it herself."

Which of course you were doing at exactly the same time I was.

It's a YA novel (and late in a series) and so probably not useful to your class, but one of the better depictions of autism I've seen in SF/F is Diane Duane's A Wizard Alone.