Really fine review to start the week from @yukondawn.bsky.social on CF Ramuz, whose Into The Sun has just been reissued by @ndbooks.bsky.social, in a translation by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan. “Ramuz’s sentences have the beauty of a beam of sunlight through swirling dust.”

culture is not a property you inherit. it is a free gift anyone can receive.

I really enjoyed this strange tale The Unworthy by Augustine Bazterrica translated by Sarah Moses www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2026/2/...

It’s Friday, it’s review day, it’s @rachelcordasco.bsky.social on Andrea Horbinski’s history of manga (@ucpress.bsky.social). “The manga establishment and the manga on the periphery have established a productive tension over the years.”

I'm reading poetry subs at Strange Horizons this month. You can submit up to 6 speculative poems in a single file or separate files. I recommend separate files, because we allow simultaneous submissions and it's easier to withdraw individual poems. Guidelines: strangehorizons.com/submit/poetr...

Super interesting review today at SH from @tristanbeiter.bsky.social on the science fictional novel of ideas - and what it needs to work. “Ideas need to be thought rather than merely posited. And that active thinking happens, Arctic Knot inadvertently shows, in the sentences and words.”

“Genres can, in certain conditions, become prisons that trap the raw alchemy of writing and storytelling into limiting tracks of thought and meaning. […] What I’d like to see is more genres like artistic movements of the 18th-20th centuries. They were a moment in time. It grounds them.”

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We started the SH Reviews week with @mattholder93.bsky.social on the weird horror of Ballingrud's The Cathedral of the Drowned: "while my initial interest in Ballingrud comes from the heavy metal of it all, my lingering investment is rooted in the ecologies and philosophies undergirding the texts."

If you could pick any modern author for the Time War/Bigolas Dickolas effect, who would you pick? Many come to mind but I deeply believe that Kai Ashante Wilson and Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is very underappreciated. Would love for him to get some love, especially with his new novel next year!!

Cameron Miguel closes out the week at SH Reviews with a piece on CG Drews gothic-inflected romance, Hazelthorn - "a novel that tackles class and the consequences of wealth accumulation. But, when you dig deep enough, loneliness and queer yearning are at the roots of both."

My piece on anthropology's impact on genre fiction is avaailable to read online, only at everyoe's favorite Strange Horizons online magazine!

Wednesday's review at SH is from @anushreenande.bsky.social, who reads Travis Baldree's Brigands & Breadknives and asks: can cosy fiction "rais[e] the question of what happens when those once cherished elements—that comfortable, cozy life—start to feel stifling"?

This has got me really into the idea of a book club like this 📖

Likewise, SH stands with immigrants. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Back to normality at SH this week, with only three reviews to tackle - you can all come out from behind the sofa. To kick off, we have Andy Sawyer on Adrian Tchaikovsky’s return to fantasy in Spiderlight - a novel with “many openings for humour [which turn] into something darker.”

Lots in the newsletter, as ever, but especially nice to see Gautam citing Le Guin’s Lavinia as a favourite classical retelling. I agree on its quality, yet don’t see the book discussed as much as I’d expect, even in the context of discussion of Le Guin’s work more generally.

Also on the BSFAs, really good to see @thehubble101.bsky.social recommend Adam’s history of fantasy for the BSFA awards (also happily, my essay on the book is also nominated). Gotta say, I find the lack of attention for the book really odd - it’s a super useful text. An SH review is in the works.

Thoughts from NW on the BSFA long list, but also the awards more generally. On the short nonfiction list: “Note that nominations include both a series of essays, and five individual essays from that series.” 🤷‍♂️

There's a whole lot here that looks fascinating

does anyone else feel like SFF criticism is in a really good place right now? perhaps I just wasn't paying enough attention before. reading through the latest Strange Horizons and thinking about all the cool conversations I've seen and all the books I've picked up because of them. thank you critics.

I've spent a lot of my time in fiction trying to play with this issue, and the article gets into why I don't think it's a fatal flaw but could definitely use innovation

Finally, someone actually using Durkheim in genre lit spaces.

thinking about Delany refusing to provide aesthetic details about religion in Tales of Nevèrÿon because "to specify it, even here, as different from our own would be to suggest, however much we tried to avoid it, that it occupied a different relation to its culture from that which ours does to ours"

Hungarian #SFinTranslation

My essay in the @strangehorizons.bsky.social criticism special is up! I muse about genre, vibes and the difficulty of pinning things down in an ever-shifting landscape.

this is a very smart piece by @chloroformtea.bsky.social ab genre definitions &their shortcomings "SF today might be an agglomeration of subgenres that in ten years will have no relevance at all, displaced instead by new modes we haven’t dreamt up yet. So mono-definition may be doomed to failure."

On the Criticism Special Issue menu for today: Francophone Speculative Fiction and the Challenge of Politics  by Alexander Dickow Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

You had me at non-anglophone SFF!

"French science fiction, even at its least realist, tends to bear a simultaneous concern for formal and stylistic invention—sometimes with downright hallucinatory results—and for the ideological Message, tending even toward a clunky didacticism." A really eye-opening view of a literature in this.

Read my essay in the new Strange Horizons, if you like! Thanks to Dan Hartland! @danhartland.bsky.social and in excellent company too!

Looking forward to all these essays!

Jude Beiter: "I definitely want to second the classroom space labeling The Left Hand of Darkness as the gender book ... as a gender non-conforming person, there was an expectation of like, well, “What do you say?” that is absent from the much less combative & demanding environment of the book club."

holy shit, this sounds brilliant. Can't wait to read all of these pieces

Happy to be part of this with a Malazan review later in the week but even more happy to read all these insights. Guarantee you that the roundtable on influence will have you increasing your TBR pile as well as sending you back to some beloved works (now where’s my Patricia A. McKillip . . .)

Very happy to be part of Strange Horizons’ Criticism Special this year!

I'm in @strangehorizons.bsky.social's Criticism issue with a new poem (and accompanying commentary)! Special thanks to @kateheartfield.com's novel THE CHATELAINE for introducing me to the idea of Dulle Griet. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

WOW! What a read during these snowbound days!

It's Tuesday. More @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special! Today, @r-emrys.bsky.social, Lila Garrott, and @alexisshotwell.bsky.social talk political agency & SFF. "Why isn’t the arc bending consistently toward justice? Speculative fiction provides opportunities for more nuanced responses."

As a Weird writer & lapsed anthropologist, this was fantastic to read. @hanacarolina.bsky.social ’s review is a MUST & so is @megapolisomancy.bsky.social but tbh it’s all fab & I can’t wait to read @ossuary.bsky.social’s piece! Great to see this, @danhartland.bsky.social’s created a marvelous thing

it's my favorite time of year!

So proud to be featured in @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special. Big thank you to @danhartland.bsky.social for including my musings on fast produced pop fiction - a review/publishing trends analysis, with some perhaps non-obvious appreciation for Ben Alderson's achievements in that space.

This is really excellent. What I really appreciate about Zach Gillan's writing is how ecumenical and wide-ranging it is. This piece demonstrates that well, pointing toward some interesting intersections of affect, reading strategies, and genre expectations.

Welcome to the 2026 Criticism Special Issue! The Brackish Pool: Towards a Critical Practice of Reading Weird Fiction by Zachary Gillan @megapolisomancy.bsky.social Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

I emerge briefly from my cave to talk influence in SFF with some wonderful people. Check it out!

Essential. Simple as.

The Good Stuff

On Strange Horizons today! I had a great time thinking about influence and unique works with some wonderful people.

What else, indeed