@annewilkins.bsky.social’s “A Good Brother” in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social’s looms over the heart, despite its unassuming size. Its pathos - the imminence of grief and the resilience of devotion - lingers like a shadow long after the final words. #booksky #sff #fiction #fantasy #shortstory #flashfic

#Uncanny imagery. #Existential ruminations. A quasi-apocalyptic #retrofuturist meditation on collective #trauma. @ramirosanchiz.bsky.social’s ‘Trees at Night’ in @clarkesworldmagazine.com sublime tragedy of our suffering, the nightmares we can’t escape. #Librarians rule. #sff #scifi #fiction

Here's your regular reminder that Steven Pinker is -not- some centrist wise man. He's a conservative who whitewashes far-right talking points, a long time participant of the Bari Weiss/Heterodox anti-"woke/progressive" disinformation network, who boosted grifters from science racists to Orbanists.

Empathy, physicality, ambiguity. Also beauty, love and true creativity. @gregegansf.bsky.social’s bold, intricate, startlingly smart and expertly told ‘Understudies’ in @clarkesworldmagazine.com, like a real human, is rich in all of it. My first tear-jerker of 2026. A triumph. #sff #scifi #ai #llm

Capitalism commodifies #beauty, reducing it to vapid, cosmetic #spectacle and #kitsch. What if beauty were more? The force of experiential meaning. The care of fragile things. Solace in the arc of a life. Clarity in a world of chaos. Harmony amidst suffering. Beauty is the lifeblood of the soul.

Favourite reads of 2025: Asunder by @kerstinhall.bsky.social Starling House by @alixeharrow.bsky.social The Emily Wilde Trilogy by Heather Fawcett The Lost Spells by Jackie Morris & @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social And too many phenomenal stories and poems to name. #reading #books #sff #booksky

How tedious is this spectacle of excellence: of awards won, units sold, rankings & net worth. Celebrity has no #soul. Seek and share your #wisdom. Make and celebrate #beauty. Cultivate #virtue and nurture bonds of #love. Build #justice with your #comrades, and savour the fleeting #miracle of life.

Regularly recharge the negative energy that builds up inside you by spending time in nature. #Illustration #LineArt #CommentPls

Fill your day with holiday cheer this festive season, just like the Cape rain frog. Hoppy #Christmas and a Hoppy #NewYear.

Conversation types that match my #neurotype: 1. Special interest geek-out / show n tell 2. Deep analysis of moral/ societal issue 3. Vulnerable emotional sharing/ bonding 4. Personal development / lifestyle design game-plan 5. Goofy musical wordplay #autism #adhd #neurodivergent #neurospicy

What can’t be co-opted? Who can’t be corrupted? What does it take to make a lifestyle - a philosophy - out of defiant, gritty hope? @phoebebarton.bsky.social’s “In Luck’s Panoply, I Stand” in @clarkesworldmagazine.com, we find our answer: never kneeling. Inspired. #sff #scifi #shortstory #fiction

@carrievaughnco.bsky.social’s The Job Interview in @clarkesworldmagazine.com comes in hot as an armed unionist, slicing red tape all the way to my S-tier of stories for the year. Gum-grinding office politics and a smooth, hard reboot of the epistolary form. Masterful. Bullseye. #sff #fiction #scifi

Praise Osawaru’s “moth boy” wrenches at the soul, in search of a serenity in the face of mortality, but awed by the magnitude of loves lost and tragedies too close. It falls to us to Mercy in a world of pain, Wisdom before suffering, Beauty against violence. #sff #poetry #poem #scifi #fantasy

Perhaps it is the glaring depravity of our system, and the odiousness of the false gods who feast on its hollow fruits, that gives the overwhelming majority of us, who yearn only to flourish among our neighbours, the perfect motivation to build something better. If not hope, then spite will do.

If some guy stole my shit and made millions off it while wiping out my job prospects, and you, as my friend, bought that guy's cheap mass market replica of my shit, you and i would for obvious reasons have a problem. It being a massive company, not a guy, actually makes it even more of a problem.

How do we start afresh when it means letting go of the only things - and the only people - we’ve ever known? @bjcooper.bsky.social’s “The Robot and the Winding Woods” in @analogsf.bsky.social traces the attachments that sustain our sense of home. A raw, understated hope. #sff #scifi #shortstories

Queer solidarity. Southern progressivism. A baseball bat to techno-evangelism. @jamessanford.bsky.social razor-witted satire “A Summary of Our Neighbourhood’s Salvation After the Storm” in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social spotlights secular community with fists clenched and beer cold #clifi #scifi #sff

@spyscribe.bsky.social’s “Observations of a Small Object in Decaying Orbit” in @apexmag.bsky.social spotlights the impact of toxic dogmatism on the families of political elites. Humane and unadorned - a space-faring Hemingway, a child-sized Orwell. #sff #scifi #shortstories #fiction

An irresistibly wacky premise, delivered in a wry, flippant, sleuth-style voice, Alex Jablokov’s vividly imagined “Lady Ballistic: Fast and Accurate Cleaning” in @analogsf.bsky.social gives exactly the right kind of brain tickles. Douglas Adams meets Doctor Who. #shortstories #fiction #sff #scifi

Every so often I find a slam-dunk banger of a #scifi #shortstory with a wry, unassuming voice, irresistible suspense and flawless payoff. Witty and playful, Mark Ferguson’s taut monster tale “It Eats Metal” in @analogsf.bsky.social is a small-town #horror of heroic retirees with gumption to spare.

Unneighbourly shenanigans, the fragile pride of a bourgeois villainess, colonial manners and high-society tedium - @henrylienauthor.bsky.social’s “The Lady’s Aquatic Gardening Society” in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social is more than screamingly funny. #colonialamerica #historicalfiction #feministlit

Liu Maijia’s “Giant Grandmother” in @clarkesworldmagazine.com dodges the merely sentimental with philosophical depth and moral maturity. Cute elephants, wise grandmas, prosocial limits on scientific research, humane eco-sensitive futures - what’s not to love? #sff #scifi #shortstories #fiction #eco

The more I listen to @bblilikoi.bsky.social speak of poetry - this syncretic, transcendental consolation for the soul - the clearer it seems that the literary life is one of reverence, that elevates our best by turning our worst into beauty. #poetry #literature #poems #creativewriting #writing #art

I think my dream day job is owning a laundromat where I have a small desk where I write books to the dulcet tones of sudsy sloshes and dryers humming.

The most effective editing move is still the one I stole from George Saunders: read your draft over and over and over again, out loud, until you have to fix the bad parts because you will literally die if you have to read them more time

Mournful, not quite cosy, rich with subtle dramas between siblings, friends, creatures and cultures, @drfionamoore.bsky.social’s The Cancer Wolves in @clarkesworldmagazine.com charts a harsh yet hopeful course through the collapse. Resiliently humane. #sff #scifi #postapocalyptic #shortstories

Literally ONE more annual subscription will allow @othersidespec.bsky.social to publish reprints!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/hyb...

Deliciously seditious, a meta-satirical masterpiece. Subtle, restrained, venomous, @thomasha.bsky.social’s “In My Country” in @clarkesworldmagazine.com is a tribute to subtext, ambiguity and the power of the irreducible to foment new consciousness. Bartleby for the MAGA age. #sff #dystopian #scifi

"The political ineptitude of the magnates of industry and finance was no less than that of the generals and led to the mistaken belief that if they coughed up large enough sums for Hitler he would be beholden to them." Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 237)

The only thing more painful than the loss is the losing: the inevitable unraveling, the unstoppable decline. ‘Rules of Biology’ by Dale Bailey in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social paints a devastating portrait of #toxicmasculinity ‘s greatest insecurities with exquisite empathy. #sff #scifi #shortstories

Care-for-profit commodifies life, providing healthcare to only the few. Ray Nayler’s “The Ocean Between the Leaves” in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, an autopsy of #transhuman #biotech, exposes the violent class logic of turning suffering into surplus value. A classic for our times. #scifi #sff

Rammel Chan’s ‘Tourists’ in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social weaves a tightrope of cross-cultural intrigue. Exemplary deployment of translator devices, secret identities and forbidden love tropes, given new life with subtle suspense. #scifi #sf #sciencefiction #shortstories #fiction

@katefrancia.bsky.social’s ‘Holly on the Mantel, Blood on the Hearth’ in @bcsmagazine.bsky.social binds its delicate character study and crisply textured world, personal history and collective destiny, with nettled vine. The finale looms like a hungry shadow. #sff #fantasy #shortstories #fiction

Are wrongs ever fully righted? Do intentions matter? Can we redeem ourselves from collective sin? @meganflchee.bsky.social’s The Museum of Cosmic Retribution in @nightmare-magazine.com, replies to Dickens and Lovecraft with a star-spangled hammer to the heart. #horror #sff #shortstories #fiction

A kitchen table holds more than food: echoes of quiet war, shadows of our lost beloved, and all that can’t be fully digested. Peter Balakian’s “Eggplant”, read in @newyorker.com’s Poetry podcast, peels back layers, revealing the Earth we consume. #poetry #writing #reading #ecocriticism #literature

In @lightspeedmagazine.com, @p-h-lee.bsky.social provokes disturbing reflection with ‘Only Some of True Love’s Miracles’: slicing through sentimental objectification and violence in the name of care. Plus: MUCH better than the earworm: ‘What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me.’ #sff #scifi #shortstories

Hello Bsky! Re/intro: I'm a political theorist of technology corporations & Silicon Valley at Oxford University. I host and produce the Anti-Dystopians, the politics podcast about tech (with new episodes incoming!) Podcast: www.alinautrata.com/podcast Newsletter: alinautrata.substack.com

A true villain origin story reads like a broken soul’s manifesto. In @babblewocky.bsky.social’s “Butter”, featured in @nightmare-magazine.com, an avenging nihilist is born. Failed by society. Deluded by the eldritch. Grim, gruesome and unforgettably great. #sff #horror #shortstories #fiction

Intoxicating, uncanny, dripping with suspense, “An Even Greater Cold to Come” in @clarkesworldmagazine.com casts a long shadow that never stops stirring. Rarely have I encountered a writer who can consistently surprise as Rich Larson does. #sff #shortstories #fiction #scifi #horror #shortfiction

If you care about truth, freedom and the timbre of text on the mind’s ear, chuck the corporate media slop. Reclaim your brain: Truthout Democracy Now Jacobin Intercept AlterNet Politico Counterpunch The Nation Mother Jones Novara Media Double Down News The Baffler n+1 Guardian New Statesman

Gothic premise, pulpy delivery, a voice full of dry decorum and self-deprecating mania. A humorous Lovecraft. An Offering from the Void by @froid.bsky.social in @nightmare-magazine.com asks: What should we publish? Why spread what can’t be unsaid? Where’s the stone now? #horror #sff #shortstories

Conceptual. Polemical. A prosodic manifesto for the quantum age. A pragmatist’s pledge. A xeno-mother’s vow. @loekwa.bsky.social’s ambitious ‘Matriarchs’ in @apexmag.bsky.social sketches the emotional infrastructure of the desperate and the brave. #sff #asianamerican #shortfiction #stories #scifi

‘The Gorgon’ by Jay O’Connell displays the delicious Machiavellianism at the hollow heart of corporate culture, banally evil and bumbling into its own cyber-grave. The prose recalls the best of Iain Banks. Full fireworks for @asimovssfmag.bsky.social, yet again #sff #nowpunk #scifi #shortfiction

@williamledbetter.bsky.social’s ‘What I Am’ in @asimovssfmag.bsky.social might have been a premise straight out of @posthumanstudios.com’s Eclipse Phase, were it not Iron Giant levels of wholesome. A warm hug of a story; a glint of gold beneath dark waves. #sff #shortstories #fiction #scifi

@asimovssfmag.bsky.social delivers another Rich Larson banger with ‘Bidding War’: sharp as ever and sonorous with the kind of punchable perspective that leaves you devastated and enriched. A scathing condemnation; a spotlight on the soul in a rotting world. #sff #satire #shortstories #fiction

A: Arithmetic B: Black Hard Necklace. C: Compassion Too Scarce, But Worth Seeking Anyway. S: Schools That Kill. In ‘Solve This One, Mrs Miller’ in @nightmare-magazine.com, @mygeekblasphemy.bsky.social Calrie St George balances the equation for good. #sff #survivors #mystery #shortfiction

No punches pulled. No truths untold. No shadows unnamed. @beatriceiker.bsky.social’s The Southern Bells in @nightmare-magazine.com pours something dark in the eyes with her molten-hot lyricism, revealing everything we try so hard not to see A reckoning. A warcry. #sff #horror #decoloniseyourmind

For a satirical fever dream only marginally (by the most austerity-trimmed of feathers) more absurd than reality, @p-h-lee.bsky.social’s Richard Nixon and the Princess of the Crows in @lightspeedmagazine.com, read by the inimical @stefansecho.bsky.social, takes the imperial cake 🐦‍⬛🎂 Hilarious! #sff