By Daniel Dern: I’d been noodling this piece on “where to find/e-find Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s fiction” for the past few weeks, and, conveniently, Item (1) in the Dec 15, 2023 scroll, noting and excerpting Episode 214 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast both motivated me to finish this piece — and saves me some background contextual exposition re Hoffman’s about/career/awards, by letting me simply point to Scott’s. (Thanks, Scott!)

Between some gafiating and other distractions, while I may have read of Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s short fiction, I didn’t really become aware of her work until her 1995 novel, The Silent Strength of Stones (the second in her Chapel Hollow novels), which became (and has stayed) one of my two favorite sf/f novels (tied with John Crowley’s Engine Summer, with Patricia McKillip’s The Riddle of Stars trilogy just below them), and in the core pile of books I re-read more or less yearly.

(Slight digression: Based on the inscription, which includes “Moderator!”, in my autographed Stones paperback, I (briefly) met Hoffman at a ReaderCon. It’s possibly our paths also crossed at Sasquan, 73rd Worldcon, 2015, in Spokane (aka “SmokeCon” due to, well, the at-times oppressive smoke blowing in from major fires).)

But I hadn’t, until a month or so ago, realized that Hoffman has published not only around a dozen-and-a-half-novels, but also 200+ stories (ranging from short through long). That’s my bad: for no clear reason, I hadn’t taken my frequent next step of going to the library and bookstores (new and used) to read everything else a new-to-me-author had written (or, to a lesser extent, an author’s character and/or series). (E.g., as I did with Ross Thomas, Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe.) I did keep up with some of her subsequent books, and stories in F&SF. Some.

Then, a few months ago, I saw Amazon was having another of their periodic Kindle Unlimited deals — here, three months for a buck-ninety-nine per — which I use to explore and enjoy. (I don’t feel the need for the regular KU subscription.)

Something led me to search on her name, within the “Kindleverse” along with Hoffman’s Wikipedia entry.

And, via info/links at the end of Hoffman’s stories on KU, her page on Ofearna.

Hoffman’s Ofearna page lists what looks like most (possibly all? ) of her work (including showing a lot of book cover art on the novels and collections), with links to Amazon/Kindle links, and, in many cases (presumably, where available), legitimate links to specific story text (many from Daily Science Fiction).

It turned out that there’s a fair amount of Hoffman in Kindle Unlimited (also purchasable, ranging from $0.99 to $8.99) — searching Kindle Unlimited on her fullname, 33 hits, including numerous stories I’d not previously heard of nor read.

(Note: At least two of the KU hits look like false positives, meaning not, based on author/title, by Hoffman. This is a problem that, in my annoyed experience, nearly every library, comic and bookstore catalog search is abysmally prone to. I blame a lot of this on incomprehensibly bad search coding/design. I’m still waiting for “only look/match within the specified field” and “only precise matches, please” search options, grumble.

Searching Amazon on Hoffman’s name yielded 171 hits, including novels, stories, collections, and magazine and anthology appearances…and a bunch more false positives.

(Note: Your own searches may yield significantly different results. My own efforts, with a different browser and/or other tweaks, and probably with changes in barometric pressure, burped up lots more bogus hits and other “huh, why’s this here” results. Again, IMHO bad search design. Bleh.)

Searching (my public) library’s (and the 40-library consortium the e-catalog aggregates) physical and e-holdings turns up far fewer Hoffman hits (not surprisingly):

• The full library (consortium) catalog (includes both books and e-books) shows 21 hits, including about half a dozen of her novels…two of which I recently reserve-requested and are now there waiting for me to pick them up.

• Libby (the OverDrive library app’s successor, there’s a paltry one hit (of what’s available through my library), of an issue of Uncanny with one of Hoffman’s stories in it. Tsk!

And HooplaDigital.com, which is available via my library, but has its own inventory) yields a modest seven Hoffmans — The Silent Strength of Stones, Ghost Hedgehog, and a few anthologies (Note, I don’t know whether Hoopla’s offerings are uniform to all the libraries and institutions it provides access through, or not — if you know more, please let me know in a comment or directly).

READING HOFFMAN: NOT JUST FANTASY AND PERSONAL MAGIC/POWER, BUT ALSO SF. Back to the original motivating deal: Once I’d done the search within KU I e-borrowed and read pretty much all of Hoffman’s work that was there that I hadn’t previously read, with about a fortnight to spare on the KU deal:

• Savage Breasts and Other Misbehaving Body Parts: Eight Short Stories
• Faint Heart, Foul Lady: A Novelette: & Bonus Story: Night Life
• Meet in Fear and Wonder: Four Science Fiction Stories
• Wild Talents: Three Short Stories
• The Skeleton Key & Bright Streets of Air: Two Stories
• Surreal Estate: A Short Story
• Short, Sharp Snacks: Fifteen Flash & One Short Story
• Antiquities: Five Stories Set in Ancient Worlds
• Escapes: A Short Story
• The Spirit in the Clay : A novelet in the Chapel Hollow/Silent Strength of Stones universe
• The Other Side Secret: A Short Young Adult Novel
• The Dangers of Touch: A Short Story

A lot, unsurprisingly, was fantasy, ranging from contemporary to whatever-we-call-non-contemporary fantasy. Magic powers, abilities, beings/races and artifacts figure strongly in Hoffman’s fantasy; what’s interesting is that while there are some common methods/terms, even within a given book (or series), there’s often a mix, so characters who discover they both have abilities, etc. are often puzzled/impressed/startled.

Until this binge, however, I hadn’t realized how much science fiction Hoffman has written.

Most (possibly all) of Hoffman’s fantasy shows magic, rather than fueling a quest, empire, fight-universe-ending-evil or other large-scale plot, as somewhere between personal and interpersonal, discovering/learning/coming to terms with one’s often-newfound powers, sorting out how they relate to it, and do/don’t use it within the world around them. (The same goes for much of the science fiction.)

What it all has in common is how enjoyable it is.

Now (well, over the weekend and beyond), I’ll be clicking through Hoffman’s Ofearna page/links (to read, etc.).