U could also...preorder my book ghoulish.rip/product/cosm...

Friday’s review at @strangehorizons.bsky.social is from @erichendel.bsky.social, on Adam Oyebanji’s Esperance (@dawbooks.bsky.social in the US, @hachetteuk.bsky.social in the UK). It’s a novel, Eric finds, in which “alternate interpretations of the story emerge constantly.”

✨It's Double Publication Day!✨ If you like science fantasy, folklore with a twist, digital ghosts, nature having opinions, and ghost cats/orcas living their best lives please do give these books a go? geni.us/weallghostsPB geni.us/saltorac @solarisbooks.bsky.social

New Review - an excellent tale of digital ghosts, seers, scientists and ethics await in the brilliant The Salt Oracle by @rainewilson.bsky.social out now - very strongly recommended! Huge thanks to @solarisbooks.bsky.social www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2025/11...

This is an incredibly beautiful book, I urge you to pick it up, especially if you love speculative fiction that is both deeply fantastical, while also being darkly painful and poetic at the same time. Idk how she does it but I want some of that writing magic ;)

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.

🫰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”:

Pre-order Luna Novella 2026! All That Is in the Earth by @aknighton.bsky.social When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead 🪐 www.lunapresspublishing.com/lunanovella

Announcing the cover for THE HALLS OF THE DEAD, releasing Summer 2026 with @harpervoyagerus.bsky.social! HALLS is a romance, a dark fantasy, a Christmas horror story, a righteous fury revenge quest. It's dark and bloody, full of rage and love. I can't wait to share it with you.

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."

NEW PODCAST ALERT! The latest Critical Friends episode it out now! In Episode 17: On Imagining Hopefully, Dan Hartland, Paul March-Russell, and Jacqueline Nyathi discuss speculative fiction’s approach to hope and optimism. Link ⬇️ strangehorizons.com/wordpress/po...

A grotesquerie of a gothic house novel, rooted in the physical and intellectual repulsiveness of humanity. I enjoyed it, with the caveat that it is intentionally repetitive, and TW for sexual assault and disordered eating. Reading it felt like being trapped in a starve binge purge cycle.

I wrote this flash romance story in between books this summer and it just got published! short-story.me/stories/roma... I hope you’ll check it out… it will only take a minute to read! #romancelandia #shortstory 🌈

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 reviews are in! The Man of Middling Height by Fadi Zaghmout, translated by Wasan Abdelhaq reviewed by Kyle R. Garton Seed Beetle: Poems by Mahaila Smith reviewed by Vivian Wagner Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce reviewed by Tristan Beiter Link to the latest issue in our bio!

Our portal is still open to submissions by Indigenous Authors! Here is more information about our submission process including the link to our amoksha submission portal: strangehorizons.com/submit/ficti...

I had such a great time with @ukpageone.bsky.social Marco and Tariq! An excellent opportunity to learn more about small presses, AND in true Italian style, my hands were all over the place! 😂

A fantastic episode. Francesca and @lunapress.bsky.social are an amazing part of the Scottish book scene and this interview shows why.

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.

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.”

For a standalone, I recommend How to Survive This Fairytale by @smhallow.bsky.social - A book I loved so much that I simply had to get the RainbowCrate edition of it as well!

🦢✨ The two editions look beautiful together!! So glad you loved the book!

Early access for this week's episode is now up for our Mid-list & Bestseller Patrons. This week, we're talking with the brilliant Francesca Barbini of @lunapress.bsky.social, who tells us about the strengths of a small press compared to a bigger one. Join Patreon to watch now: patreon.com/ukpageone

Pre-order Luna Novella 2026! All That Is in the Earth by @aknighton.bsky.social When Clifford crash lands on the planet of Abaddon, he might as well be dead 🪐 www.lunapresspublishing.com/lunanovella

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!

🎧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)

I’m so excited to announce that ALL OUR TOMORROWS is now available as an audiobook! 🎧 This project was so important to me bc I’m part of the ME/CFS community, and many of my peers can only tolerate audiobooks. I wanted to make sure my book was accessible to everyone. 🩵 Peep my bio!

My short story “The Last and First Loves of Hayrum Bellmaker” is now up at Crow & Cross Keys! 🖤

Something is chiming in the tower this evening. We've looked everywhere but we still can't find it. What we can find is today's short story... "The Last and First Loves of Hayrum Bellmaker" by @mimulus.bsky.social crowcrosskeys.com/2025/10/25/t...

The @rainbowcrate.bsky.social special edition of HOW TO SURVIVE THIS FAIRYTALE is here, and it’s beautiful!!!

A band find their gigs take on a terrifying new significance when they start singing about supposedly fictional Northern gods of mishap & mayhem... New horror/fantasy It's Not A Cult by Joey Batey (you know him as Witcher's Jaskier & The Amazing Devil band!) is out today! 💙📚🪐 #horrorsky #NewBooks

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.”

I’m consistently blown away by the response to HOW TO SURVIVE THIS FAIRYTALE. This year has been pretty terrible for me, and it’s been a blessing to see readers connect with this story of triumphant gay love, trauma, second chances, and rewriting your story.

As we come to the end of the year, I’m looking to create a team who can help me promote How to Survive This Fairytale for the holidays and its 1 year anniversary of release on 1/16/26! If you like gay shit & crying, the sign up form is below! forms.gle/JmqpRct4Zftz...

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:

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.

Love seeing such a diverse range of SFF books being reviewed! 🌟 Can't wait to dive into these. Happy reading, everyone! 📚✨ #BookLovers #SFF

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.

ANNOUNCEMENT🎺🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Introducing our bona new quarterly literary magazine: FANTABULOSA! Pushing the boundaries of bold, authentic, QUEER storytelling. Bringing you stories of the uncanny, the dangerous and the fantastical. & thanks to our brilliant #WrathMonth backers, we're fully funded for 2026 🤘

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:

New review @strangehorizons.bsky.social! An obscure folk band is thrust into fame in a horror novel about the perils of social media. How do you preserve creative joy in a world that commodifies art and feeds obsession? Thanks to @danhartland.bsky.social for taming this monster of a review.

When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift reviewed by Paul March-Russell The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott reviewed by Electra Pritchett It’s Not a Cult by Joey Batey reviewed by Hana Carolina Link to the latest issue in our bio! #fantasy #sciencefiction #scifi #horror #sff #bookreviews

New review @strangehorizons.bsky.social! An obscure folk band is thrust into fame in a horror novel about the perils of social media. How do you preserve creative joy in a world that commodifies art and feeds obsession? Thanks to @danhartland.bsky.social for taming this monster of a review.

We are delighted to announce that Orcadian author Barbara Stevenson will return to Academia Lunare with a new work on Scottish Gothic Fiction: The Kirk, the Deil and the Grue Atween. Luna Press has acquired EWR and we are looking forward to welcome it in the new year! @babette1-62.bsky.social 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

A list of UK LGBTQ+ bookshops:

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.”

📚 🧡 MY BIGGEST DREAM COME TRUE 📚 🧡 My debut novel, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, will be out in 2027!

periodic reminder that if you write stuff that's published on the web for a publication you yourself do not own, PDF that shit as soon as it goes live

We're so clooooose to halfway there! Watch for some new rewards today!