Caught up with this while running errands this evening. Great episode that complicates but doesn’t dismiss the idea of hope in speculative fiction. And it was quite the surprise to hear my suggestion that SF&F publishing re-embrace the short novel mentioned at the very end.

Mine should be neither the first nor last response to this book! Maybe read the column; do read Dispelling Fantasies. “We now owe Joy Sanchez-Taylor something of a debt, because in her new Dispelling Fantasies she has laid a foundation stone which can help us move forwards rather than look back … “

Snap! Criticism time: @danhartland.bsky.social is back, this time reading Tochi Onyebuchi's HARMATTAN SEASON (@torbooks.bsky.social) with Joy Sanchez-Taylor's DISPELLING FANTASIES (@ohiostatepress.bsky.social)

🫰SNAP!🫰 My latest column for the excellent @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, on Tochy Onyebuchi, Joy Sanchez-Taylor, and what to read to understand what you’re reading. How might we fill the “imagination gap” in our fictions?

Here’s Wednesday’s review, from Cameron Miguel on KJ Parker’s Making History: “This tale returns to the question of truth […] and […] the narrator challenge[s] the foundations of historical narrative.” A review by a reviewer for whom the book “was engineered in a lab”:

The website of Alter Magazine - a space for “new literary writing on science, technology, and progress from South Asia,” has just gone live: www.altermag.com The first long-form piece - my essay on the secret history of Indian science fiction - will be published on 22 Nov. Watch this space!

So it’s the Szalay. It may be the most consistently realised of the books, but how good a thing that is will be down to your taste. The judges clearly liked this depiction of “[a] self [who] remains a mystery to us, because it is a mystery to him.”

New week at SH, and in Reviews we open with a doozy: @shinjinidey.bsky.social on Paul Kincaid's Colourfields (@briardenebooks.bsky.social). Who doesn't love reading a critic on a critic? So much to pick out in this really productive dialogue. But key: "Kincaid is attempting to apprehend a public."

I read the Booker Prize shortlist (again). Rum do, this year - but not uninterestingly. On the bourgeois novel:

I read the Booker Prize shortlist (again). Rum do, this year - but not uninterestingly. On the bourgeois novel:

Paul March-Russell on When There Are Wolves Again, in the latest episode of Critical Friends: “From a kind of Marxist revolutionary position, this book will really annoy you. But actually it is reaffirming a faith in legal, constitutional, democratic institutions.” Radical reformism? Discuss.

The week’s horror theme at SH ends with a review of a novel that seriously commits to the bit, paying homage to slasher classics in a way that Racheal Chie finds generative.

I very much approved of how this discussion centred the weirdness of Big Bird, since that is I think a big part of what gives it a sense of scale and even - albeit in the context of decline - *wonder*. Elsewhere, it also speaks to Jacqui’s thoughts on redemption (or lack thereof) in fiction here:

Wednesday’s review over at SH continues the monstrous theme of the week, with @subham6.bsky.social on Victory Witherkeigh’s The Demon: “The novel’s soul lies in its interrogation of identity.”

Good podcast ep on my favourite part of speculative fiction: near future sf and also hopeful stories. Something we are sorely lacking in these days.

More novella s̶h̶e̶n̶a̶n̶i̶g̶a̶n̶s̶ discourse.

Gang, Archita Mittra needs our help. She's a vital critical voice, a great writer of fiction, and more importantly she's part of the community we've built and are building here. Let's help her reach a place where she can carry on being all of those things, and write whatever she has for us next. 🙏

I really enjoyed the latest U&DF, not least because it came out right after Paul, Jacqui and I had recorded the latest Critical Friends - and trod some similar ground in attaching some of the most deterministic dystopias with horror. Something about the affects in these texts are aiming similarly.

🎧New Critical Friends! It was a real pleasure to convene this talk with Paul March-Russell of @sffoundation.bsky.social and Jacqueline Nyathi of @hararereview.bsky.social. On the hopeful imagination: “We should have a much bigger perspective when we’re thinking about how to get to the future.” (JN)

Hallowe’en was last week, of course, but this week’s slate of SH reviews are going for the ghostly and gruesome theme regardless. Here’s Nileena Sunil on Eat The Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin, from @titanbooks.bsky.social. Happy belated Samhain!

0 notes, minus notes.

Critical Friends fans will be like me addicts of our theme tune, “Dial-Up” by Lost Cosmonauts. Those musicians release under a number of monikers, and one of their incarnations - Aki No Koe - release a lovely piece on the frustrations of creativity today. Take a listen, start a podcast!

Archita is 67% to her goal. Thank you to everyone who's been sharing & donating for your generosity. Please don't stop doing so, so that she can reach the goal and get some degree of security for herself and her mother in this terrible time.

This rapturous review still barely captures the character of a remarkable night. Few shows I’ve attended have had such a sense of occasion - something about being away for fifteen whole years, I guess. But, unaccountably, it was worth the wait.

Always happy to see SH reviewers publish variously. Here’s a chapbook from Daniel Rabuzzi via @moonstonearts.bsky.social - 33 poems about and inspired by NYC. moonstone-arts-center.square.site/product/rabu...

Last review of the week is the always thoughtful @tristanbeiter.bsky.social on Eden Royce’s Psychopomp & Circumstance (@tordotcom.bsky.social): “one of the core questions of the novel is choice […] what it is even to have choices—and all the many ways that choices are constrained.”

Petition for a series in which @casella.bsky.social reads things above a bed of Louis Armstrong.

YOU: Hey, Strange Horizons hasn’t had a review of any speculative poetry for a while. But I like reviews of speculative poetry! ME: *I bear good news.* Vivian Wagner on Mahalia Smith’s Seed Beetle from @stelliform.press:

Excellent news - Rakesfall thoroughly deserves this recognition. I hope it leads to further discussion of (and attention on) what is a super important text. As I wrote for SH’s 2024 in review, “Rakesfall comes not to revivify the hoary bromides of SFF but dissolve them entirely into something new.”

If you can, please donate to help one of our regular contributors in this time of need.

We kick off the week at @strangehorizons.bsky.social with Kyle R. Garton on Fadi Zaghmout's fantastical parable, The Man of Middling Height (translated by Wasan Abdelhawq for @syracuseup.bsky.social). The book "will provoke much discussion, and—hopefully!—controversy," Kyle argues. Why? Click!

Hello everyone. Talented artist, reviewer, and beloved member of our community Archita Mittra is going through some really hard times currently. If you can spare a few $ it would make a world of difference ❤️ www.gofundme.com/f/help-archi...

Fellow Calcuttan writer/editor Archita Mittra is in desperate need of financial help. She recently lost her father, her home was damaged in the recent rains, & her mother's in hospital. They don't have insurance, & she's a freelancer. I can vouch for her. Please share widely & donate:

The last review of the week at SH is from @rachelcordasco.bsky.social, on Sung-il Kim's The Blood of the Old Kings, translated by Anton Hur for @tordotcom.bsky.social. She finds a distinctively Korean fantasy which also feels generically familiar.

So delighted to share that THE SENTENCE will now be coming out in a global edition with Saga Press in early 2027, newly-titled THE FIFTH INFLECTION. Deeply grateful to @jjbker.bsky.social for taking it on, and to Sareena Kamath for acquiring it for Saga. Excited to take this novel outside India!

great discussion here on when we want more or less from the works we read and why

Wednesday’s review, gang: Dawn Macdonald on Jacob Szamalek’s Inner Space, in a translation by Kasia Beford for HarperVia. “Character work and the quotidian is key to the novel,” she argues as she takes a look at this space station-set contemporary SF.

We're very proud to be the first publisher to have the Books By People stamp - and that it should be going to Telenovela, a book about the fight against authoritarianism and all the associated nonsense: www.thebookseller.com/news/uk-star...

You should read reviews. And write them. And subscribe to publications that run them.

Here’s @akankshya.bsky.social on Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child (trans. Martin Aitken for @ndbooks.bsky.social): “Ironically, in this reimagination of social horror, Ravn creatively makes space for (slapstick) comedy.” On witchcraft and society, for @strangehorizons.bsky.social:

Extremely pleased to see this, not least because Gautam is of course an SH comrade. But also, and as I wrote for @sffoundation.bsky.social, The Sentence is a real achievement that deserves a much wider audience - and heralds further goodies to come. Hooray and congrats all round.

One for the weekend at SH today: @hanacarolina.bsky.social doing some proper thinking about Joey Batey’s It’s Not A Cult (@bloomsburyraven.bsky.social). She argues that the novel’s particular “aesthetic approach … challenges the romanticisation of artists … and sensationalisation of relationships.”

New blog post: on Jordan Prosser's delightfully gonzo debut novel Big Time, which crosses Almost Famous with 1984 and a drug that can make you see the future, and asks: what power does art have during times of fascism? wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2025/10/rece...

Proposal: A Collected Criticism of Graham Greene's film criticism.

Always happy to carry an Electra Pritchett review - you can rely on her for incisive genre analysis worn enviably lightly. Case in point, here she is on The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott (@tordotcom.bsky.social): "If epic fantasy is about scale, then Elliott has written the best I’ve read in years."

In which @casella.bsky.social and I both discuss novels of two halves, and in which Nileena Sunil and @yarntheory.bsky.social both sing the praises of @indrapramitdas.bsky.social. This would be impressive co-working with @mealofthorns.bsky.social had we done any actual co-working.

1. This is excellent. 2. As @redfernjon.bsky.social points out, marketing categories are blurry & often arbitrary 3. This is esp. true of SF&F where many of the works labeled as novellas are short novels but aren’t marketed as such 4. More SF&F writers should learn to write actual novellas

[email protected] on reading long and short books critically: "You can have breadth and have that work really well. You can have depth and have that work really well. It's not like there's one direction "I think it’s really when the novel feels dissatisfying based on what it’s trying to do."

📣 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS! In a new ep of the @strangehorizons.bsky.social SFF criticism podcast, I talk with @redfernjon.bsky.social and Nileena Sunil about books that might be longer, and others that could be shorter. How to read a text that offers too little, or too much, stuff? Some ideas.

Paul March-Russell on EJ Swift: "in electing to write against the white noise of voices prophesying doom, Swift’s turn to the utopian is courageous ... [it's] a viable demonstration of how we can meet the greatest challenges that face us as a community." A review, and a novel, which demands notice.