“Underneath the Underneath” by Audrey Zhou – 3.7
Strange Horizons, April 2026 Mina is a woman from elsewhere—a seafarer’s daughter who came to Dragon Pass Island when her family’s trade ship was wrecked at its port and who…
Skin Deep: Commodification, Identity, and Embodied Blackness in Jamie McGhee’s “Skiinfolk” – 4.1
Introduction Jamie McGhee's speculative novelette "Skiinfolk," published in Strange Horizons, arrives from a scholar-practitioner whose critical investments are unambiguous: her nonfiction monograph You Mean It or You Don't: James Baldwin's…
“Skiinfolk” by Jamie McGhee – 4.1
Strange Horizons, April 2026 In a near-future America where Augmented Skiins™ — artificial second skins that transform one’s appearance — are as commonplace as clothing, Ogden is a young Black…
“Unspeakable Knowns” by Donald McCarthy – 3.5
Asimov's, May/June 2026 The story unfolds in first person through the voice of an unnamed Secretary of Media for Maldrove, the oldest human colony world, distinguished by its pervasive red…
“The Sky Above The Earth Below” by Steve Rasnic Tem – 3.7
Asimov's, May/June 2026 Grace is twenty-nine years old, American-born, and supervising three experimental carbon capture beaches along the Chilean coast for the Civilian Climate Corps. The beaches are surfaced with…
“The Language of Machines” by Betsy Aoki – 3.7
Asimov's, May/June 2026 The story is narrated by Rach, one of the New Humans — beings engineered by sentient spiral machines from the corpses of Old Humans who once tore…
Neurological Trespass and the Politics of Cognitive Capital: A Critical Review of Zhou Wen’s “The Girl Who Stole Life” (2026) – 4.0
Introduction Zhou Wen's novelette "The Girl Who Stole Life," translated by Xueting C. Ni and published in Asimov's Science Fiction (May/June 2026), represents a significant contribution to the growing body…
“The Girl Who Stole Life” by Zhou Wen, tr. Xueting C. Ni – 4.0
Asimov's, May/June 2026 The story opens with an unnamed narrator standing in an ominous alley, the scent of decay seeping from behind a door, contemplating a woman whose choices led…
“Sophie Simpson’s Whizz-Bang Day at World War I” by Dale Bailey – 2.9
Asimov's, May/June 2026 Sophie Simpson is a sharp, plain, perpetually skint girl from a single-parent household who wears her cousin Mary’s ill-fitting hand-me-downs and eats cheese and pickle sandwiches every…
“Hot” by Cecelia Holland: Survival, Becoming, and the Ethics of Care in the Climate-Collapse Novella – 4.3
Introduction Cecelia Holland, whose career spans more than six decades of historical and speculative fiction—her debut novel The Firedrake appeared in 1966—brings to "Hot" (published in Asimov's Science Fiction, May/June…