Jan. 2025 (Issue 176)

We have original science fiction by B. Pladek (“Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness”) and Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko (“Dyson Spheres of the Vaba Cluster”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire” from Will McMahon and “After the God Has Moved On” by Kate Elliott. Plus, we have original fantasy by Neon Yang (“Bone and Marrow, Woven Into Song”) and Marika Bailey (“Chickenfoot Soup”). We also have a flash story (“A Heap of Petrified Gods”) from Adelehin Ijasan, and another (“I Eat the Sky For Us”) from Vijayalaxmi Samal. All that, and of course, we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team.

Cover art by Tithi Luadthong (aka Grandfailure) / Shutterstock

Jan. 2025 (Issue 176)

Editorial

Editorial: January 2025

by John Joseph Adams

Check out a discussion about this month’s content from our editor!

Science Fiction

Tell Them a Story to Teach Them Kindness

by B. Pladek

Author spotlight

USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was really great! can you tell me more about it?

CURATOR: I am happy to have fulfilled the assignment.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: B. Pladek

by Phoebe Barton

This story was vaguely fictional when I wrote it in February 2023, but reality quickly lapped me. I’m a literature professor and I am watching universities force professors to use AI to create course materials (usually because “it’s cheaper”). The potential for fascist censorship is horrifying.

Fantasy

A Heap of Petrified Gods

by Adelehin Ijasan

It was a different kind of migration when our parents moved to Lagos; Dad, a young accountant, had got a job at the federal secretariat, and Mum, a teacher, lugging three boys aged one, three, and five, transferred later from her state civil service job to the Federal School of Arts and Sciences on the island.

Science Fiction

The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire

by Will McMahon

The dancer switches the camera on as his ship falls into orbit around the black hole; the opening image of his unmuscled chest squeezed beneath translucent polyester blasts out toward a thousand points of watching light. He’s shaved his body for the first time in his life, the nicks of the razor lingering in little scabbing cuts. He hits the music.

Fantasy

Bone and Marrow, Woven into Song

by Neon Yang

Author spotlight

“This is it,” says Sister Auralee. She stamps on the ground beneath them. “This is where we’ll plant the church.” The turf yields to her bare feet, warm and spongy like bruised flesh. Grass peeks between her toes. She smells moisture, the tang of fibrous peat deep below, a thousand years of bones and dead leaves packed into the dirt.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Neon Yang

by Phoebe Barton

Fungi are wonderful. There’s something so unsettling and yet beautiful about them. There’s an allure in the spores, the feeding off dead matter, the variety of forms. In a past life, before I became a writer, I was a biologist. I loved the breadth and scope of life on this planet. I think fungi have an appeal to people because they’re so alien to our human experience.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Bestiary of Blood: Modern Fables and Dark Tales, edited by Jamal Hodge

by Arley Sorg

Arley Sorg has found another terrific anthology for you to check out: Bestiary of Blood: Modern Fables and Dark Tales, edited by Jamal Hodge. Read all about it in his newest review.

Fantasy

Dyson Spheres of the Vaba Cluster

by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

Author spotlight

The Map Sphere consists of thirteen stellar sails, circular in shape, arranged asymmetrically around the host star. They are easy to miss but look closely and you will see them: specks against the dark, clustered in no more than thirty degrees of arc. They are not really a sphere, this is true. Their total power production is so low you would be forgiven for doubting their function.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

by Mayookh Barua

I think we—humans collectively, I mean—have just about understood that we have a responsibility towards the Earth. I also think there’s a subset of people who believe the problem could be solved if we just shifted our exploitation of our environment outwards—to the moon, to Mars, to the asteroid belt. They’re wrong.

Fantasy

I Eat the Sky for Us

by Vijayalaxmi Samal

Baba’s skin splits open with the sound of thunder. A parent’s intuition, he says, switching on the news. A ticker tape warning runs across the screen telling us to leave, leave, leave. The sky over our home is cracking but Baba will not go. He runs up to the roof instead and grows larger than I ever knew him to be.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Hammajang Luck by Makano Yamamoto

by Melissa A Watkins

Melissa A Watkins thinks you need a new found-family heist novel. She recommends: Hammajang Luck by Makano Yamamoto.

Science Fiction

After the God Has Moved On

by Kate Elliott

We saw her staggering down the promenade, gills flaring as she sucked for the gods’ aether that no longer fueled her breathing. By her gasping breaths we knew the god had moved on, swimming the invisible aether to another, leaving her gasping in the void as she fell back into the strained, recycled, and slightly fishy-smelling air of the space station.

Fantasy

Chickenfoot Soup

by Marika Bailey

Author spotlight

A scream rises from the bush. One last call to the living: a warning of pain. Katarina’s heard that same sound more times than she’s had hot dinners but still a ribbon of unease unfurls in her gut. She sets her cleaver down for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Marika Bailey

by Alex Puncekar

There are many kinds of witches, some old, some young, some beautiful, others “grotesque” but what all of them share is that they don’t give a single fuck about your opinion and don’t waste time wondering if they should. And isn’t that magnetic? A person who is so self-possessed that it becomes a kind of magic?

Nonfiction

Book Review: The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune

by Chris Kluwe

This month Chris Kluwe presents you a book about love, loss, freaky fantasy, found family, and a little girl named Artemis Darth Vader. That’s right: we’re reading TJ Klune’s The Bones Beneath My Skin, and it is one rollercoaster of a ride.