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Strange Horizons
@strangehorizons.bsky.social
9.8K followers 34 following 330 posts
Publishing speculative fiction, poetry, reviews, & articles Mondays, free to read at http://strangehorizons.com. IGNYTE Community Award winner. Hugo Award winner 2024.

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618 Days in Longsleep 
by Mahaila Smith @mahailasmith.ca

"The view is terrifying."

Link ⬇️
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POETRY by Mahaila Smith 618 Days in Longsleep  Quote "The view is terrifying." 10 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 13, 2025 at 3:31 PM
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HEART FALLOUT
by Jess Peng

"Her hip is sensitive—“You have a very thought-reactive skeleton,” the doctor told her—and imagining gymnastics meant the hip wanted to twirl and snap and stretch, and it did. All over the kitchen floor."

Link ⬇️
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FICTION Quote "Her hip is sensitive—“You have a very thought-reactive skeleton,” the doctor told her—and imagining gymnastics meant the hip wanted to twirl and snap and stretch, and it did. All over the kitchen floor." HEART FALLOUT  by Jess Peng 10 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 12, 2025 at 8:04 PM
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The Patience of the Equator 
by Brishbhanu Baruah

"A cat prancing across the solar system

re-arranging

the planets"

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by Brishbhanu Baruah The Patience of the Equator  Quote "A cat prancing across the solar system re-arranging the planets" 10 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 11, 2025 at 8:21 PM
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The reviews are in!

Eat the Ones you Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
reviewed by Nileena Sunil

The Demon by Victory Witherkeigh
reviewed by Subham Rai

Field Of Frights by Christina Hagmann
reviewed by Racheal Chie

Link to latest issue in bio!

#speculativefiction #specfic #horror #sff #bookreviews
Left cover of Eat the Ones you Love by Sarah Maria Griffin featuring plants including an orchid and Venus fly trap with eyes in them. Right REVIEWS Quote "I found the first-person narration from the point of view of the plant to be convincingly menacing. In fact, these aspects—which stress the malevolent, stalkery characteristics of the plant—provide an interesting contrast to the much softer tale of Shell finding love, community, and newfound purpose." reviewer: Nileena Sunil 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of The Demon by Victory Witherkeigh featuring a string of miniature skulls curing through fire. Right REVIEWS Quote "Witherkeigh doesn’t offer easy answers; her protagonist doesn’t escape her punishment but learns to carry it. This refusal of closure is what makes The Demon linger. It’s a story for anyone who’s felt like a stranger in their own skin—a reminder that identity, like a demon, is both a burden and a strange, stubborn gift." reviewer: Subham Rai 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Field Of Frights by Christina Hagmann featuring a figure in a black suit and white shirt with a white mask over their head sitting on a yellow arm chair in a field of yellow wheat. Right REVIEWS Quote "It speaks deeply to the field of hurts we have inside us, the unresolved traumas that linger and control us. Unaddressed, they become a barrier preventing us from moving forward in life. These barriers force us to face the monsters within us, kill them, and be victorious, but that can only be done if we know what they are." reviewer: Racheal Chie 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 9, 2025 at 1:13 PM
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Palimpsest
by Melissa A Watkins

"After my mother died, Dr. Rostrow called to ask me if I wanted anything out of her brain."

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FICTION Quote "After my mother died, Dr. Rostrow called to ask me if I wanted anything out of her brain. I almost hung up, but her green eyes were so intense, even on camera, that I let her talk. There were studies, she said. Ways that my mother could give something to a future she wouldn’t see. " Palimpsest  by Melissa A Watkins 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 8, 2025 at 11:24 AM
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sijo from a spaceship escaping a dying planet 
by Annie Bolger

"what season is space?"

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POETRY by Annie Bolger sijo from a spaceship escaping a dying planet  Quote "what season is space?" 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 7, 2025 at 11:39 PM
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wani gari 
by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi

"the town has its own vision.
its eyesight is perfect

for destruction. anything
beautiful is mislea
ding."

Link ⬇️
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POETRY by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi wani gari  Quote "the town has its own vision. its eyesight is perfect for destruction. anything beautiful is misleading." 3 November 2025 Strange Horizons
November 7, 2025 at 11:27 AM
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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...
Fiction Submissions Open Indigenous Authors
November 5, 2025 at 6:55 PM
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Strange Horizons will be open to fiction submissions from Indigenous authors only on November 3rd at 9am UTC!

The window will close after 500 submissions are received.

More information:
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

If you sent us a story in April or June, you CANNOT submit in this window.
Fiction Submissions Opening Indigenous Authors November 3rd at 9 am UTC
October 27, 2025 at 7:14 PM
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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!
Left cover of The Man of Middling Height by Fadi Zaghmout, translated by Wasan Abdelhaq featuring a blue and dark green vaguely human shaped blobs. Right REVIEWS Quote "Overall, this novel richly exploits science fiction’s great capacity to imagine the otherwise and denaturalize what seems inevitable and natural. The adventurous analogy between height and gender will surely provoke much discussion, and—hopefully!—controversy." reviewer: Kyle R. Garton 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Seed Beetle: Poems by Mahaila Smith featuring a diagram of a mechanical beetle with wing open. Right REVIEWS Quote "The collection also reimagines what a new “natural” world might look like in the wake of an Anthropocene apocalypse. The newly fashioned environment is certainly not the same as the one that originally existed, since it’s based almost entirely on human and mechanical intervention." reviewer: Vivian Wagner 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce featuring the side view of a person in a shirt with a lace neck and chest and a skeleton hand across the chest and a a long skeleton cameo necklace hanging from the ear. Right REVIEWS Quote "a richly alive narrative that is able to think through its ideas because of its grounding. It draws the reader in by insisting on its details—and in so doing serves as a reminder of the power of the granular in choices, communities, and storytelling." reviewer: Tristan Beiter 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 26, 2025 at 12:04 PM
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Holy Days
by Eleanor Ball @eleanorball.bsky.social

"On the awnings,
leaves and girls fall, pile, and rot. All this, the natural order."

Link ⬇️
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POETRY by Eleanor Ball Holy Days  Quote "On the awnings, leaves and girls fall, pile, and rot. All this, the natural order." 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 25, 2025 at 6:47 PM
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Bullet Time at the Kink Party 
by miriam

"Leah is queer community. Leah is expanding and expansive. Leah wants to fall in love with everyone still alive in this room and beyond and be their bottom for a night, just one night..."

Link ⬇️
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FICTION Quote "Leah is queer community. Leah is expanding and expansive. Leah wants to fall in love with everyone still alive in this room and beyond and be their bottom for a night, just one night, though she wouldn’t say no to more than one." Bullet Time at the Kink Party  by miriam 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM
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ERROR 404: Expiation Not Found
by CP Nwankwo

"the gate gapes, always hungry—

its teeth are CCTV lenses, rusted wide."

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by CP Nwankwo ERROR 404: Expiation Not Found Quote "the gate gapes, always hungry— its teeth are CCTV lenses, rusted wide." 20 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 22, 2025 at 2:58 PM
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The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken
by Akankshya Abismruta

Inner Space by Jakub Szamalek, translated by Kasia Bedford
by Dawn Macdonald

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur
by Rachel Cordasco

Link to latest issue in bio!

#bookreviews
Left cover of The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken featuring a portrait of a 16th century woman with red and yellow blotch over the face. Right REVIEWS Quote "The Wax Child is ingenious for its storytelling that brings forth the horrors of the witch hunt in the 16th-17th century Denmark by mirroring the horror in its visceral and eerie narration that evokes disbelief in the familiar." reviewer: Akankshya Abismruta 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Inner Space by Jakub Szamalek, translated by Kasia Bedford featuring an astronaut turning into stardust and drifting across the page. Right REVIEWS Quote "Szamalek expertly builds excitement by incrementally ratcheting up the stakes, unveiling interpersonal histories, and hinting at well-kept secrets and hidden motivations. All around, Inner Space is a gripping, tense thriller that builds high stakes without resorting to a lot of graphic violence." reviewer: Dawn Macdonald 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Blood of the Old Kings (The Bleeding Empire Volume 1) by Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur featuring a cloaked person channeling magic through a floating sword with a black and purple dragon winding around them. Right REVIEWS Quote "Despite the fact that Blood of the Old Kings is in many ways a formulaic work of fantasy and most of the characters lack much dimension... Sung-il Kim has offered us a timeless story about resistance and friendship that enriches the corpus of translated speculative fiction." reviewer: Rachel Cordasco 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 18, 2025 at 1:20 PM
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Welcome to the Horror Opposition Association! 
by Bree Wernicke

"Unless
you move/transform/get eaten/somehow fail
to maintain proper quantities of teeth,
you’ve joined your local Horror Opposition
Association, permanently. Yay!"

Link ⬇️
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#poetry
POETRY by Bree Wernicke Welcome to the Horror Opposition Association!  Quote "Unless you move/transform/get eaten/somehow fail to maintain proper quantities of teeth, you’ve joined your local Horror Opposition Association, permanently. Yay!" 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 17, 2025 at 10:19 AM
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Ogress (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) 
by Shana Ross

"I cannot give anyone answers, so I become a small

chip of flint, a small silence in a conversation, a small carving in the rock
face."

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by Shana Ross Ogress (The Incredible Shrinking Woman)  Quote "I cannot give anyone answers, so I become a small chip of flint, a small silence in a conversation, a small carving in the rock face." 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 16, 2025 at 10:19 AM
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The Orchard Village Catalog
by Parker Peevyhouse

"When I started at Optionality, they put me in a cramped condo with three other newish employees, one of whom insisted on assigning each roommate a different burner on the stove."

Link ⬇️
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FICTION Quote "When I started at Optionality, they put me in a cramped condo with three other newish employees, one of whom insisted on assigning each roommate a different burner on the stove. I was the last to move in, so I got the smallest burner, which means I no longer make pasta." The Orchard Village Catalog  by Parker Peevyhouse 13 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 15, 2025 at 9:21 AM
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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
Left cover of When There are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift featuring a wolf with young sparse trees growing in front of it. Right REVIEWS Quote "In the current context of ultra-right-wing politics masquerading as patriotism and social media-fuelled conspiracy theories parading as truth, Swift’s liberal, democratic, multicultural, and inclusive politics strike this reader as radical." reviewer: Paul March-Russell 6 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott featuring two small figures walking down a road lined with large humanoid animal stature on each side leading to a large fortress with three huge spires. Right REVIEWS Quote "Dense but never overwhelming, compact but never too brief, richly detailed and imaginatively constructed, queer-inclusive and sensitive to the ways in which society masks and justifies injustices along other lines, this novel makes a thrilling read..." reviewer: Electra Pritchett 6 October 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of It’s Not a Cult by Joey Batey featuring a red double keyboard piano on fire with solid yellow smoke rising from it with strange symbols and markings at the edges. Right REVIEWS Quote "Readers expecting a traditional genre experience may be thrown off—but for those attuned to its wavelength, it’s a striking, generous, and at times exhilarating act of cultural resistance." reviewer: Hana Carolina 6 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 12, 2025 at 11:52 AM
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My Love Wails in the Mending 
by Lora Gray @loragray.bsky.social

"her bones wailing low,
her wind in them willows
like a storm a-gathering"

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by Lora Gray My Love Wails in the Mending  Quote "her bones wailing low, her wind in them willows like a storm a-gathering" 6 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 9, 2025 at 10:16 AM
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pigwitch
by Rupkatha

"the old sow in the back pen has teeth like splintered moonlight.
She ate a man once, i think. or maybe a god."

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by Rupkatha pigwitch  Quote "the old sow in the back pen has teeth like splintered moonlight. She ate a man once, i think. or maybe a god." 6 October 2025 Strange Horizons
October 7, 2025 at 10:40 AM
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Our departments have come together to regale you with a poem for our 25th anniversary!

Behind the Scenes at Strange Horizons
by the Strange Horizons staff

"Not ivory towers, but towers that telescope,
each climbing step an irregular height."

Link ⬇️
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POETRY by the Strange Horizons staff Behind the Scenes at Strange Horizons Quote "Not ivory towers, but towers that telescope, each climbing step an irregular height." 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons
October 5, 2025 at 6:03 PM
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The reviews are in!

Black Hole Heart and Other Stories by K. A. Teryna, translated by Alex Shvartsman
by Rachel Cordasco

Contra Amatores Mundi: A Gothic Fantasy by Graham Thomas Wilcox
by Matt Holder

The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch
by Cameron Miguel

Link to latest issue in bio!
Left cover of Black Hole Heart and Other Stories by K. A. Teryna, translated by Alex Shvartsman featuring a heart shaped hole with animals and clouds and a person fishing in it. Right REVIEWS Quote "The stories in Black Hole Heart refuse to be labeled. They burst from the confines of the page, swirling and switching genre gears, leaving the reader wondering what’s coming next." reviewer: Rachel Cordasco 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of Contra Amatores Mundi: A Gothic Fantasy by Graham Thomas Wilcox featuring two gothic relief panels one of a person in a suit of armor and the other in a nun's habit. Right REVIEWS Quote "The language is inseparable from both the human artist invested in strange and ornamental mode of storytelling and from the storytelling itself. It is the one element that above and beyond transports the reader to a truly alien, medieval world." reviewer: Matt Holder 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons Left cover of The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch featuring a blonde man leaning on a table looking up at the blushing tattooed half-elf. Right REVIEWS Quote "With that frequent foreshadowing, the respectful approach she takes to sensitive topics, and the way she melds healing and romance, I am beyond pleased that I read this novel; if I outlined every stellar moment we’d be here for hours." reviewer: Cameron Miguel 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons
October 4, 2025 at 9:14 PM
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Love’s Not Time’s Fool 
by Jenise Aminoff

"I move, not of my own design,
but helplessly over the curves and recesses
of our making time, our lovetime."

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff
POETRY by Jenise Aminoff Love’s Not Time’s Fool  Quote "I move, not of my own design, but helplessly over the curves and recesses of our making time, our lovetime." 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons
October 3, 2025 at 10:37 AM
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A Short Fiction Treasures Special: 2 x 25 Gems from Strange Horizons’ Archives
by Maria Haskins @mariahaskins.com

Link ⬇️
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#fiction #shortstories #speculativefiction #specfic #sff #sciencefiction #scifi #fantasy #horror
FICTION Quote "Going through the archives of Strange Horizons for this special column has been a bit like exploring a treasure chamber. I’ve picked fifty stories. I could have picked hundreds. Meaning: I left a lot of wonderful fiction off the list." A Short Fiction Treasures Special: 2 x 25 Gems from Strange Horizons’ Archives  by Maria Haskins 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons
October 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
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Jorinde Remembers
by Anne E. G. Nydam

"My self was lost in the song, feathered in shadows,
And all I knew became the nightingale."

Link ⬇️
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#poetry #speculativepoetry #specpo #sff #fantasy
POETRY by Anne E. G. Nydam Jorinde Remembers Quote My self was lost in the song, feathered in shadows, And all I knew became the nightingale. 29 September 2025 Strange Horizons
September 30, 2025 at 10:28 AM