I have always loved short stories. I don’t remember a time when I ‘‘discovered’’ them. For me, there was nothing to find. They were always there; in school textbooks, homework assignments, in the anthologies I would randomly pick off the shelf at the library. There was never any question either of what I would start writing when I decided to learn story craft. In those early days, reaching the end ...Read More
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Whalefall, Daniel Kraus (MTV Books 978-1-66591-816-9, $27.99, 336pp, hc) August 2023. Cover by Will Staehle.
Daniel Kraus’s Whalefall straddles the line between science and science fiction and pulls readers into a world that is at once familiar and completely alien. As full of action and gore as it is packed with science and emotional turmoil, Whalefall is a superb reimagining of Jonah’s tale as well as a narrative that cements ...Read More
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The Reformatory, Tananarive Due (Saga Press 978-1-98218-834-4, $29.99. 576pp, hc) October 2023.
The great Tananarive Due is back with her first solo, full-length novel since 2011 with The Reformatory. Set in the fictional city of Gracetown FL, where many of her stories take place, this one focuses on two Black children caught in the grinding gears of Jim Crow. Robert and his older sister, Gloria, were left behind ...Read More
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Tell us about your magazine, khōréō. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team? What is your mission?
In 2020, khōréō was founded with a specific-yet-broad mission: publishing speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. Our team currently relies on volunteers, with the idea that many hands make light work; on the editorial side, we have Aleksandra Hill as the founder, outgoing editor-in-chief, and publisher; Zhui Ning Chang ...Read More
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Zooscape 8/23 Cast of Wonders 8/29/23, 9/3/23 Worlds of Possibility 8/23
I’ll kick things off with the August issue of Zooscape, which focuses on furry speculative fiction. So it makes sense that the issue lingers on the deep wounds that exist within and between animals, including humans. From extinctions and apocalypses to quieter hurts and the kindnesses that heal them, Zooscape once more shows the versatility of furry speculative fiction, ...Read More
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The Fractured Dark, Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit US 978-0-316-29113-2, $18.99, 544pp, tp.) September 2023.
The Fractured Dark is the second novel in Megan E. O’Keefe’s Devoured Worlds trilogy. The first book, The Blighted Stars, is a fast-paced and viciously readable planetary opera adventure with intelligent fungus, AI descending into dysfunction, ecological critique, explosions, banter, and a touch of inadvisable romance to make the whole cocktail go down more ...Read More
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A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller, Maureen Kincaid Speller (Luna Press 978-1-91555-620-2, £16.99, 308pp, tp) September 2023.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Maureen Kincaid Speller in person, but we corresponded on email and social media. Talking virtually with Maureen was always a delight, moreso when she approached me to review Rod Duncan’s Unseemly Science for Strange Horizons. The deep sadness I felt ...Read More
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A Study in Drowning, Ava Reid (Harper Teen 978-0-06-321150-6, $19.99, hc 384 pp) September 2023.
Ava Reid’s beguiling fantasy A Study in Drowning is set in the country of Llyr, which is reeling from the latest in a long-running series of border disputes with its neighbor Argant. Somewhat reminiscent of Wales, Llyr possesses a strong national identity which is heavily dependent upon the legacies of the seven ‘‘Storytellers’’, creators ...Read More
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The Museum of Human History, Rebekah Bergman (Tin House 978-1-95353-491-0, $17.95, 256pp, tp) August 2023. Cover by Beth Steidle & Yang Cao.
Told in chapters that jump between disparate characters and across years, Rebekah Bergman’s The Museum of Human History is very loosely centered on twin sisters, Evangeline and Maeve Wilhelm. Following an initially unexplained accident, Maeve falls into an uninterrupted and ageless sleep. As the narrative loops around ...Read More
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A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, Anna Smith Spark (Flame Tree Press 978-1-78758-839-4, $16.95, 336pp, tp) September 2023.
I haven’t read Anna Smith Spark’s work before, though I understand her debut, The Court of Broken Knives (2018), received some critical attention. Her latest, A Sword of Bronze and Ashes, is a peculiar, ambitious novel. It deliberately sets out, with its use of language, its use of repetition and ...Read More
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I suppose, before diving in, to put it in short, short fiction has opened a tremendous number of doors for me personally as a writer – craft-wise, career-wise, opportunity-wise. I don’t think the trajectory of my writing journey so far would have been as wildly fortunate and luck-filled – at least to me – without short stories.
In the summer of 2019, I met a man in a coffee shop ...Read More
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Flash Fiction Online 7/23 Diabolical Plots 7/23 Lightspeed 9/23
September’s Flash Fiction Online features an interesting take on obsession and artificial intelligence with Sylvia Heike’s “Quantum Love”, where a sentient computer called Queenie finds themself in love with their primary handler, Natalie, who is increasingly stressed and distant because her marriage is falling apart. Queenie has a solution, though, and the subtlety to pull it off – ...Read More
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Monstrous Alterations, Christopher Barzak (Lethe 978-1-59021-761-0, $20.00, 206pp, tp) September 2023.
Fiction which deliberately sets itself in dialogue with specific works of earlier fiction is an ancient tradition, but it often seems like catnip for SFF writers. Just in the last few years we’ve seen Nghi Vo on F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Hand on Shirley Jackson, Kij Johnson on Kenneth Grahame and H.P. Lovecraft, John Kessel on Austen and ...Read More
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TOBI OGUNDIRAN is the author of Jackal, Jackal, a collection of dark and fantastic tales. Ogundiran has been nominated for BSFA, Shirley Jackson, Ignyte, and Nommo awards. His work has appeared in The Book of Witches and Africa Risen, and in several Year’s Best anthologies. His debut novella, In the Shadow of the Fall, is out from Tordotcom in 2024. Born and raised in Nigeria, he spent seven years in ...Read More
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Asimov’s 9-10/23 Clarkesworld 8/23, 9/23
Asimov’s “Slight Spooky” September/October 2023 issue starts off strong with the novelette “Deep Blue Jump” by Dean Whitlock. The story is set amongst a group of children who have been sold or abandoned into a life of harvesting drug-like dream berries. The conditions are brutal, working long hours, risking their lives climbing on dangerous vines to reach the berries, and watched over by slappers ...Read More
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The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei (Flatiron 978-1-25087-533-4, $29.99, 416pp, hc) July 2023.
Yume Kitasei’s The Deep Sky is three books wrapped into one. At once a locked-room (locked ship, in this case) whodunit, an interstellar adventure that discusses a very plausible future, and a story that explores mother-daughter relationships as well as friendship, The Deep Sky is a very timely science fiction narrative that looks at some of the dark ...Read More
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Thief Liar Lady, D.L. Soria (Del Rey 978-0-59335-805-4, $28.00, 416pp, hc) June 2023.
Fairytale retellings have been perennially popular, offering readers the chance to relive the magic and mayhem of a familiar world while also discovering something new about it. Take for instance the tale of Cinderella, where the main character’s escape from a dreary and deeply unjust reality isn’t just temporary (as secretly attending a royal ball might ...Read More
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Strange Horizons 8/21/23, 8/28/23, 9/4/23, 9/11/23 Hexagon Fall ’23 GigaNotoSaurus 7/23
Some wonderful poetry bridges Strange Horizons’ August and September content, starting with “Stoic” by Mukut Borpujari, which confronts simplicity and the philosophical stoicism that focuses on knowledge over possessions – over the physical. The poem follows a divesting of things, the narrator part of a couple who are cleaning house and getting rid of a lot ...Read More
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A Power Unbound, Freya Marske (Tordotcom 978-1-25078-895-5, $28.00, 432 pp, hc), November 2023.
‘‘Elsie Alston’s running feet hit the grass like pale secrets.’’ So begins the lyrical third and final installment in Freya Marske’s Last Binding trilogy, A Power Unbound. And like the previous entries, A Marvellous Light and A Restless Truth, Marske’s deft and elegant use of language holds as much power and sway as her ...Read More
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The Big Book of Cyberpunk, Jared Shurin, ed. (Vintage 978-0-59346-723-7, $32.50, 1,136pp, tp) September 2023.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the pre-War experiment of television was reintroduced. For a time, there was unease that the abyssal screen into which we stared might also be staring into us – “Big Brother is watching you” as George Orwell put it. Events such as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth ...Read More
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When people proclaim that we’re experiencing a ‘‘Golden Age’’ for short fiction, I tend to look at them sideways. While we’ve seen an explosion of new markets over the last two decades, it’s never been a particularly healthy time for the overwhelming majority of them. For print editions, increasing postal and printing costs are eating away at profits. Those publishing online struggle face steeper challenges and often have unpaid or ...Read More
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The Pomegranate Gate, Ariel Kaplan (Rebellion 978-1786188243, £18.99, 512pp, hc) July 2023. (Erewhon 978-1645660576, $27.00, 576pp, hc) September 2023.
Young-adult author Ariel Kaplan’s first adult novel, The Pomegranate Gate, is a sprawling fantasy epic that brings Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism into an immersive, alternative-Earth version of the Inquisición española. Toba Peres and Naftaly Cresques, two twenty-somethings, are the unlikely seeming heroes of the novel and, at first meeting, seem ...Read More
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A Multitude of Dreams, Mara Rutherford (Inkyard Press 978-1335457967, $19.99, 394pp, hc.) August 2023.
If you don’t think too deeply about Mara Rutherford’s A Multitude of Dreams, it’s a smooth and readable young-adult novel borrowing strongly from the gothic and romantic traditions: a sealed castle, a masquerading princess-who-is-not-a-princess, a mad king, a plucky young gentleman, a terrible disease, a monster wearing the face of a benevolent master, secret ...Read More
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Welcome to our special short fiction issue! We’ve got an interview with Carmen Maria Machado, best known for her National Book Award-nominated collection Her Body and Other Parties. We hosted a roundtable discussion with short story powerhouses Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik – among them they’ve won seven Nebula Award, five Hugo Awards, four World Fantasy Awards, and a couple of Stoker Awards, too.
We’ve invited some ...Read More
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Death Valley, Melissa Broder (Scribner 978-1-66802-484-3, $27.00, 240pp, hc) October 2023.
Melissa Broder has been on my need-to-get-around-to-reading radar since I picked up her 2018 debut, The Pisces, about a woman who falls in love with a merman. To this day, the book remains unopened on my Kindle. So does Broder’s second novel, Milk Fed, about a lapsed Jewish woman on a strict, calorie-controlled diet who engages ...Read More
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Who Haunts You, Mark Wheaton (Off Limits Press 978-8-9879250-1-0, $13.00, 170pp, tp) September 2023.
Mark Wheaton’s Who Haunts You is a thriller featuring a determined teen detective who cannot be sure of anything she uncovers. Rebecca ‘‘Bex’’ Koeltl is a high school senior in a school that is suddenly suffering an alarming number of student deaths. Yunwen Lei runs off a cliff, Darrell Anolik drives into a delivery van, ...Read More
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Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, edited by Jonathan Maberry (Blackstone 979-8200687992, hardcover, 200pp, $27.99) October 2023
I have yet to read any individual issue of the revived Weird Tales magazine, piloted by editor Jonathan Maberry. But I already know that this new periodical incarnation must be a class act, fully worthy of bearing forward into the future the celebrated name and lineage. My appraisal comes from enjoying this ...Read More
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A Stranger in the Citadel, Tobias S. Buckell (Audible Originals 978-1713646228, $24.99, CD, 7 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) September 2021. (Tachyon 978-1-61696-398-9, $17.98, 256pp, tp) October 2023.
Far-future societies which have forgotten or mythologized their history have been a staple of SF at least since H.G. Wells’s Eloi. If you shift the point of view from that of a visiting time traveler to an inhabitant ...Read More
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Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go, Cleo Qian (Tin House 978-1-95353-492-7, $18.00, 256 pp, tp), August 2023.
Everyone – and everything – in Cleo Qian’s debut short story collection, Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go – feels deliberately, surpisingly out of focus, at least, to me. Edges are indistinct, images muddy and untrustworthy. It’s dizzying, disorienting, and, at times, heart-stoppingly effective.
The collection itself is difficult to describe. Neither ...Read More
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Where Peace Is Lost, Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager US 978-0-06-3085930, $19.99, 392pp, tp) August 2023. Cover art by Serena Malyon. Cover by Owen Corrigan.
Valerie Valdes’s Where Peace is Lost is her fourth novel, after a well-received debut space opera trilogy. Where Peace is Lost sets itself in a different science fiction continuity, with different characters, and spends most of its time on a single planet: It feels like ...Read More
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castofwonders.org/ Fantasy 8/23 The Book of Beijing, Bingbing Shi, ed. (Comma) July 2023. F&SF 9-10/23
Cast of Wonders ranged from poignant to bitingly sarcastic in its July originals, but I was most taken with its first August story, Dani Atkinson’s “The Raven Princess”, which quickly introduces readers to a classic fairytale setup – a princess trapped in the body of a raven, trying to help a ...Read More
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Menewood, Nicola Griffith (MCD/Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37420-808-0, $35.00, 720pp, hc) October 2023.
When her novel Hild was published back in 2013, Nicola Griffith wrote a short essay for Tor.com addressing reviews which described her as a distinguished SF/F writer who had somehow jumped ship into historical fiction, or which asked whether the novel itself could be read as some sort of fantasy. I even saw it described as ‘‘speculative ...Read More
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