“Fernie” by Angela Liu – 3.6
Adventitious, April 2026 “Fernie” is a dual-perspective short story told in alternating voices: a lonely, precocious little girl named Sally, and a sentient ancient fern she befriends during a family…
“Ma’anu Wei: What We Know Thus Far” by Eliezra Schaffzin – 3.8
Kaleidotrope, April 2026 The story is structured as a pseudo-scholarly dossier, narrated by an unnamed collective of researchers — scientists or academics of some institutional authority — who are piecing…
“Diamonds” by Grant Stone – 3.8
Kaleidotrope, April 2026 The story is told in second person, a technique that places the reader inside the fractured consciousness of an unnamed intelligence operative — someone who exists, as…
“I Spin Records Into Gold” by Daria Lavelle – 3.7
Reactor, April 2026 “I Spin Records Into Gold” by Daria Lavelle — Reactor, 2026 Eddie is a engineering student turned reluctant roadie, a man who abandoned a clear-eyed future —…
“A Tree That Can’t Be Chopped” by Timothy Mudie – 3.5
Kaleidotrope, April 2026 The story is narrated by Brinnen Ott, a mill worker at a frontier timber company town built on the edge of a vast, ancient forest. Brinnen’s closest…
“How Gods Feed” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor – 3.3
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, April 2026 Naomi is a widow in mourning, living in the prairie village of Somerled among her husband Endride’s people. Her infant son Iovita has recently died…
“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…