Sep. 2025 (Issue 184)

We have original science fiction by C.Z. Tacks (“The Girlfriend Experience”) and Kel Coleman (“Last Meal Aboard the Awassa”). We also have two terrific flash pieces: “The Place I Came To” from Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko and “City of One” by Stephen S. Power. Plus, we have original fantasy by Isabel J. Kim (“Human Voices”) and Cadwell Turnbull (“Apeiron”). We also have a flash story (“Beginning Before and After The End”) from Jake Stein, and another (“On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting”) from Bogi Takács. 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 liuzishan / Adobe Stock

Sep. 2025 (Issue 184)

Editorial

Editorial: September 2025

by John Joseph Adams

Be sure to read the editorial for a rundown of this month’s great fiction.

Science Fiction

Last Meal Aboard the Awassa

by Kel Coleman

Author spotlight

Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long, thorny morning in a section of the growth bay that was in full flower and had needed hand pollinating. Though the other crew members around the mess made do with the usual break time assortment, Cook had steamed and spiced osard grains just for her before going off shift to nap in their rooms.

Fantasy

Beginning Before and After the End

by Jake Stein

I’m going to explain everything, I promise, but we don’t have much time. For now, you just have to trust me. In three seconds, I need you to raise your right hand. You know, like you’ve got a question in school. (Shouldn’t be too hard; I know you’ve got tons of questions.) Okay—wonderful. By now you must have raised your hand, or we’d both be gone already.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Teijima

by Chris Kluwe

Feeling contemplative or in the mood for something poignant? Chris Kluwe recommends Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura and translated by Yuki Teijima.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Kel Coleman

by Alex Puncekar

We’re supposed to take care of one another, empower and uplift one another, hold one another accountable, show interest in one another’s histories, present experiences and dreams for the future, keep the home we share safe and clean for all of us who live here now and will live here in the future.

Science Fiction

The Place I Came To

by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko

The place I came from, the port across the sea of stars, the isle town edged with sturgeon scales, was built on basalt. The place I came to, the city at the centre of the field of view, the once-ringed origin of dreams, was too large and too important to answer to a single kind of rock, but the first I encountered there was an unpolished railing of coarse-grained granite—the kind that leaves little slivers behind in your palm, but when you go to investigate you find they are only imprints where stone has been.

Fantasy

Apeiron

by Cadwell Turnbull

Author spotlight

Outside the cabin, there was snow. There had always been snow, far as the eye could see, and further still. It might be true that the snow extended forever in every direction, sitting heavy on mountaintops and green pines, on frozen lakes and frigid tundra. Asha hadn’t tried to go very far from the cabin. […]

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Cadwell Turnbull

by Mayookh Barua

When I sat down to write “Apeiron” I had a decent sense of what I wanted it to be. A lot of the thinking about the story happened off the page, over years. I knew I wanted it to feel like a fable, but with more modern elements. I knew I wanted to expand on creation myths and delve into the psychology of gods. I knew I wanted it to be dreamy. What form all of that would take was the part I was least sure about. I figured I would work that out as I went.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Novic by Eugen Bacon

by Melissa A Watkins

If you’re looking for a quick, absorbing read with a lot more depth than you’d expect from a novelette, check out Novic by Eugen Bacon.

Science Fiction

The Girlfriend Experience

by C.Z. Tacks

Author spotlight

The company man’s smile showed off his perfect teeth. Evie hated that smile; it meant he was going to kill her again. Him staring down the camera above the Manic Pixie’s door didn’t help. Even with the dead pixels mildewing the monitor, Evie got the full gut-liquidating effect.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: C.Z. Tacks

by Phoebe Barton

I wrote “The Girlfriend Experience” while attending Clarion West last year. I masochistically put my hand up for Monday critiques, so it was one of the stories in our very first day of workshops. In retrospect, it might’ve been a subconscious litmus test to find out which of my classmates were prudes. (As it turns out, none of them; Clarion West Class of 2024 is wall-to-wall perverts, and I could not be happier.)

Fantasy

On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting

by Bogi Takács

Dear Dr. Erzsébet Krajcsik-Nagy,

I am contacting you as a member of the general public, and not as a fellow scholar, though I must say my chosen field of art history does have certain similarities to yours. I read the interview with you in the online edition of the Plains Dispatch with great interest, and went on to seek out your research article mentioned therein, titled “On an Unusual Kind of Spatially Distributed Haunting.” I believe I have additional information which could shed light on the case study you mentioned.

Nonfiction

Book Review: Where Are You Really From by Elaine Hsieh Chou

by Arley Sorg

If you immediately understand this phrase, and you get it on an emotional level, then these stories will probably speak to you in ways that they might not otherwise.

Science Fiction

City of One

by Stephen S. Power

In City of One, the object is to avoid being seen. You begin at a random point in the city. If you are seen, you die. You cannot leave the city. If you try, you die. Your wellbeing starts at 1 out of 100. At 0, you die. To maintain your well-being, steal food, water, and shelter. If caught, you die. Remaining unseen does not increase your well-being. Sleep does not increase your well-being or decrease your exhaustion. Remember: You are surrounded.

Fantasy

Human Voices

by Isabel J. Kim

Author spotlight

In its dreams, the thing they call “Kos” sleeps deep and drowned in the clutch of the ice-cold trenches, where the pressure is a loving clasp around its arms and tail, where it is near-disintegrate, more spirit than substance, more magic than meat. Then it wakes up in the bathtub. The deoxygenated water filters tepidly through Kos’s gills. It gasps, coughing through a windpipe and lungs that weren’t meant to be so exercised, even with the “humidifier” that pumps clouds of soft wet air into the bathroom. Irina had set it up the fifth night, when Kos had started coughing lacy bright red sprays of blood.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Isabel J. Kim

by Delia Cullity

I wrote the bulk of the first draft while I was on a cruise ship and experiencing the deep ennui that comes from being on a cruise ship. So that’s intrinsically buried deep in the DNA of this narrative in many mysterious and arcane ways. The second piece of inspiration is that a couple of years ago, on social media, I had seen an image of a mermaid in a bathtub with a bunch of tally marks written on the wall, and that painting really struck me. It’s always fun to take things seriously, and I started thinking about the sequence of events that might lead a person to keep a mermaid in a bathtub against its will, and the logistical challenges of essentially having both some guy in your house, and also a big goldfish.