“Cutting Corners” by Yoon Ha Lee – 3.5
Reactor, March 2026 In the interstellar war between the nation-states of Hausse and Lyonesse, spacecraft have long been piloted by “deuces” — artificial intelligences so costly to develop and integrate…
“When Things Went Bad” by Stephen Graham Jones – 3.4
Uncanny, March/April 2026 Braden, a farmer, is in the middle of an ordinary chore — shouldering a bag of seed corn from truck to shed — when an alien vessel…
“What We Mean When We Talk About the Hole in the Bathroom”: Marital Dissolution, Liminal Space, and the Unspeakable in Angela Liu’s Uncanny Fiction – 4.0
Introduction Angela Liu's short story "What We Mean When We Talk About the Hole in the Bathroom," published in Uncanny Magazine Issue Sixty-Nine (2026), is a formally restrained yet emotionally…
“What We Mean When We Talk About the Hole in the Bathroom” by Angela Liu – 4.0
Uncanny, March/April 2026 A woman and her husband discover a two-foot circular hole in their bathroom wall, emanating cold wind that smells of wet soil and river water. Their argument…
“Welcome to Heroism” by John Wiswell – 2.7
Uncanny, March/April 2026 In a near-future world where superhumans exist alongside ordinary people, a viral app called The Dare quietly rewires the relationship between spectacle, power, and collective action. Every…
“Permanent Press” by Sunwoo Jeong: Spectral Domesticity, Diasporic Ambivalence, and the Phenomenology of Choice – 4.6
A Critical Academic Review Introduction Sunwoo Jeong's novelette "Permanent Press," published in Uncanny (Issue Sixty-Nine, March/April 2026), arrives as a formally inventive work from a writer already recognized in speculative…
The Divine Ordinary: Myth, Memory, and the Persistence of the Sacred in Theodora Goss’s “The Woman Who Stole Flowers” – 4.0
Introduction Theodora Goss's short story "The Woman Who Stole Flowers," published in Uncanny Magazine Issue 69 (March/April 2026), arrives as a characteristic expression of her mature literary project: the recuperation…
“The Woman Who Stole Flowers” by Theodora Goss – 4.0
Uncanny, March/April 2026 The story is narrated by an American academic on sabbatical in Budapest, researching changes in the Hungarian educational system in the post-Soviet era. One spring morning, she…
“Permanent Press” by Sunwoo Jeong – 4.6
Uncanny, March/April 2026 At the heart of the story is a neighborhood laundry-mat run by the stingy Mr. Lee, whose flickering neon sign alternates between two spellings—LA NDRY and L…
“The Threads That Never Go Slack”: Continuity, Grief, and the Archive of Song in E.M. Linden’s “The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead” – 4.0
A Formal Academic Literary Review I. Introduction E.M. Linden, a speculative fiction writer from Aotearoa New Zealand, has established a recognizable voice at the intersection of literary and genre fiction—a…