“Chimera” by Anjali Sachdeva – 4.3
Uncanny, March/April 2026 Savita, a sixty-five-year-old Indian-American woman, has long dreaded Thanksgiving — not merely for its excess, but for the grief that has shadowed every November since her youngest…
“Blade Through the Heart” by Carrie Vaughn – 3.5
Reactor, March 2026 Commander Graff of the TGS Visigoth arrives on a feudal planet mid-war, perched with his two-person crew — the sharp-tongued Xun and the steady Brown — atop…
“Espie Droger Dreams of War” by Matthew Kressel – 3.7
Lightspeed, March 2026 Espie Droger is a young data engineer working in a subbasement office of a government Procurement and Logistics building, surrounded by moldering cardboard boxes and lit by…
“An Encounter at the Dawn of the Time War” by JT Petty – 3.6
Lightspeed, March 2026 The story is narrated by an unnamed woman living in a homeless encampment beneath an overpass in August 2019 — a university-educated immigrant sharing a row of…
“Scion” by Thomas Ha – 3.4
Clarkesworld, March 2026 On the storm-wracked moon of Rai, an unnamed young lord navigates a vast, labyrinthine manor whose shifting concentric rooms reflect the deteriorating mind of the Levinlord —…
“You Are Invited to Our SPRING CELEBRATION” by Thoraiya Dyer – 3.3
Clarkesworld, March 2026 On a planet of crystalline beings — sentient, ancient, and vast — a narrator known as Unnecessary Expender Of Energy To Satisfy Curiosity raises its child, Awakened…
“Those Who Left History” by Wanxiang Fengnian, trans. Stella Jiayue Zhu – 2.6
Clarkesworld, March 2026 “Those Who Left History” is a multi-voiced speculative fiction told through interleaved diary entries, journalistic reportage, and future historiography. Its central conceit is “spatial closure” technology —…
“Person, Place, Thing” by Marissa Lingen – 3.5
Clarkesworld, March 2026 The story is narrated by Camilla, a subcolony of an alien collective intelligence that has dedicated itself to learning human languages and communication. Camilla takes pride in…
“First Human Ghost on Mars” by R.L. Meza – 2.6
Clarkesworld, March 2026 The narrator is the ghost of an astronaut — later revealed to be Captain Rogers — who died of a stroke before the Mars mission launched but…
“Crosstalk, Elysium” by Carolyn Zhao – 3.3
Clarkesworld, March 2026 The story is narrated by Elysium itself — a Karnarian spaceship — though this revelation unfolds gradually. Elysium orbits a distant fuel station, counting each pass in…