Strange Horizons published our first issue 25 years ago this month! 🎉 Thank you to everyone who has ever read, shared, submitted, donated! We wouldn't be here without you and we hope you'll continue to support us into the future!

🎧 New Critical Friends for your listening devices! This month, Sneha Pathak and @tansyg.bsky.social talk to me about texts often dismissed as too slight to review - books, films, genres with which we might be accused of merely passing time. How should critics approach this sort of work? And why?

Wednesday's SH review is from Sneha Pathak, on @blaft.bsky.social's Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction. This is a really interesting piece on a super-valuable collection, which "plays an important role in bringing more readers to the rich and varied world of purely entertaining, juicy pulp fiction."

Something very very weird happened during the Hugos award ceremony... It's been on my mind for days, and so I wrote this blog: "When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident" grigorylukin.com/2025/08/21/w... #Worldcon

Apropos of nothing, John Reider's book "Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction" is a great, accessible look at science fiction's infatuation with colonialism, manifest destiny, and the idea of "the frontier". www.weslpress.org/978081956874...

☎️ SH CRITICISM HOTLINE NOW OPEN In mid-August, thoughts naturally turn to the end of next January: the @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special. What spec fic essays, roundtables, interviews, song-and-dance routines have you got for us? Go broad! ⚾️ Pitch us: danwhartland at gmail dot com

& enabling this whole situation is British bureaucracy's weird fetish for the abstract thought experiment over what real people actually experience, where the powerful people who make decisions wilfully pretend not to know anything by silencing & excluding anyone w/ any skin in the game.

At this point it feels so insufficient & stating the obvious to keep pointing out that appeals to "biology" to dictate who should have rights & who shouldn't is fascist, that policing gender only props up patriarchy, etc. but I guess we have to keep loudly doing that (& hopefully not only that).

A fringe group of bigoted weirdos have dragged British media, government, and law into their hateful obsession with trans people. Grim, depressing, and dangerous. Everyone with power in the UK who's played along should be ashamed of themselves.

Online Talk: "Feminist Struggles and Fairy Tales: Writing Kunhuthee" by Dr. J Devika ACLiSA Speaker Series: Author talks 26 April 2025 8.30 p.m. IST To register, please scan the QR Code on the poster or follow this link: docs.google.com/forms/d/1LpT... Website: aclisa.in/2025/04/04/a...

Legendary hater Charles Darwin

If you are interested in going #BeyondtheSecretGarden but don’t know where to start, check out this book pack created by @letterboxlibrary.bsky.social

For anyone wondering, some possible dog names have survived from cuneiform sources. On tiny dog figurines found buried under a palace in Nineveh, Iraq are inscriptions that seem to be names. dan rigiššu “loud is his bark” munaššiku gārîšu “biter of his foe” mušēṣi lemnūti “expeller of evil”

It’s always a pleasure to read Paul Kincaid. The subtle, wry confidence. The distillation of context that’s important to those of us who don’t know the whole history. Opinion that’s rooted in criticism and history—not just to have a take on the subject.

CfP the work of Frances Hardinge 11-12 July 2026. The conference welcomes academic paper proposals, panel discussion topics; art and craft workshops or posters; fan art. Closing date 30 September 2025. 1/2 The Submission Form: eventbrite.co.uk/e/frances-ha...

It's here! The @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special: one editorial, five critical essays, three poems, one podcast, three special reviews. We'll be publishing one essay per day all week, and the reviews will appear on the usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday cycle. Shall we go on a tour? Let's.

The next Briardene Book is Colourfields by Paul Kincaid, out in April! An exploration of SF as seen by critics, historians, and biographers, you can pre-order through our shop now: briardenebooks.uk/shop/

Happy new year! RP to win a copy of 'Beyond the Secret Garden' by Darren Chetty & Karen Sands O’Connor. Trace how Black & racially minoritised characters have been represented in ‘the secret garden’ of British children’s literature from its earliest stages.

New ARB feature: our "Notable Criticism" of 2024. We painfully narrowed down a huge list of great reviews, essays, & other writing, looking for work speculative criticism that represents and enhances the field. Here are 10 articles we think you should read: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/01/05/a...

The @strangehorizons.bsky.social Reviews gang is back tomorrow with our annual three-part Year In Review: across Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the lion’s share of our reviewers will be offering up their views on the year just gone and its various SFFnal offerings. Some great picks and reflections.

Why this show doesn’t get talked about as one of the great animated shows of its time, I will never understand.

happy new year may we all clear “about average”

For all the party poopers out there. Don't stop talking about violence. Don't stop talking about Palestine. About freedom for all oppressed & colonized peoples. Whenever, wherever, however. #FreePalestine #KilljoyTruths #SilenceAboutViolenceisViolence feministkilljoys.substack.com/p/party-poop...

I have a review up at Strange Horizons (scream)! It’s a really fantastic novel I’ve not seen discussed nearly enough, so it was great to have a chance to talk about it. You can read it here: strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/...

Uh, right. Is there a solution for publishers (and writers) who don't want their content scraped by AI at all? And where and when did I give permission for my writing for Prospect to be used like this, exactly?

Working on critical border studies starter pack for @acbsnetwork.bsky.social go.bsky.app/TxsUGAN

The UN has now formally found Israel's genocide "consistent with genocide", including the use of weaponized starvation. www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

Me, talking about quest narratives and what they do to space? Unheard of. @drmrb.bsky.social and I had some thoughts on Paddington in Peru: theconversation.com/peru-in-padd...

My article on the coloniality of academic freedom and the Palestine exception still has free access. Check it out when you get a chance. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

And the winner of the Ignyte Community Award is: Khōréō! #Ignytes2024

The winner of the 2024 Ignyte Award for Outstanding Creative Nonfiction is: THE MAGIC IS IN THE ROOTS: CULTURAL RECONNECTION THROUGH MAGICAL REALISM by Lysz Flo (FIYAH) #Ignytes2024

Jimmy Carr sorry for killing joke Louis CK sorry for the strokes Will Smith sorry for smash mouth Scientology sorry for bad religion CIA sorry for dead kennedys Lazy texters sorry for u2 Owl sorry for the who Blind dog sorry for wet leg Orange juice sorry for pulp UK beef industry sorry for madness

That Chappell Roan is facing harsher questioning from young American liberals than Harris (or Biden, conveniently forgotten now auntie girlboss is here, after defending him for months) while Israel drops US-supplied 2000 lb bunker busters on residential areas in Lebanon is fucking dire.

I've been aggravated by the amt of public US attention that student protest has drawn compared to what they're protesting: universities' involvement in destruction of life & land in Palestine. &/but/also, that protest is important PRACTICE for finding & wielding power that doesn't require compliance

I am recommending this as a practice

GOOD MORNING we funded the "Ageing and SFF" special issue of Strange Horizons!! Next goal is $18,000 to pay ARTISTS more! (and wouldn't it be nice to get there, with all of the AI assaults on our sensibilities? They are at $16, 805 www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...

great job google

& remember that the NHS does have a price binder and that other migrants pay up to 150% for services! Delivering your baby can cost up to £30k! And if you have outstanding payments they will deny care and report you to the Home Office!

"Jonathan Chait, a full-time columnist for New York Magazine, was lightly criticized by a person posting for free on Twitter. This shows that the scale of public debate has tilted too far to the left, and you can take that from me, a person with a column in the New York Times."

And! We've already hit our first milestone of $1K (thank you!), and so, we can now unlock the first piece in our fund-drive special issue! "The Roots of the Genre" - an interview by Will Shaw, of WFA winner Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, about translated Bengali SF: strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/...

Support us through another year + help us do some cool stuff that we're excited by!

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"Protesters want to give defense contractors less money, but have they tried giving them more money?"

Kuzhali Manickavel's short story “The Statue Game”, originally published in AGNI, translated into Tamil by Appadurai Muttulingam as “சிலை விளையாட்டு”, பார்த்து மகிழ்ச்சி www.andhimazhai.com/literature/s...

I never tell people what to vote for for the Hugos, but will make this one exception because can you imagine the acceptance speech? (and I continue to love this book)

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS is a finalist for the Lammy Awards in the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category. I'm grateful for this unexpected and difficult joy. As a Lammy nominee—so very strange!—I have three painful things to say. I'll try to keep it short. vajra.me/2024/03/27/t...

I’m incredibly happy to announce that THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS has won the IAFA Crawford Award for a first fantasy novel! vajra.me/2024/03/04/t...