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Nina Allan is a writer and critic. Her novel The Rift won the BSFA Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle, and her novelette “The Art of Space Travel” was a finalist for the Hugo Award. Her essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of venues including the Guardian, The Quietus and the TLS. Her most recent novel is Conquest, published in May 2023 by Riverrun/Quercus. Nina lives and works on the Isle of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland.


Nina Allan in our archives
Current Issue
27 Jan 2025

What of material effect will all this criticism have achieved? Reader, we can’t say. Maybe none. But maybe some. Who knows?
Believe me, it was obvious from the get-go who was endangered by 1967’s Dangerous Visions .
We can see conservative values, fears, and hopes playing out in many Western science fiction works—and patriarchal ideals around motherhood, reproduction, and family are everywhere.
Collective Dreaming: The Schrödinger’s Cat Approach to Framing Futures         
The key is to evade the rigid and hegemonic structures of Western-oriented writing.
And Back Again: The Enduring Appeal of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy 
It’d be an understatement to say that The Return of the King fundamentally altered my brain chemistry.
The Celts Meet Celtic Fantasy 
What would it look like for dominant-language fantasy to engage with the living cultures, contemporary politics, and modern histories of Celtic-language communities?
By: River
faded computations / erased by the light of blood moons and / chalk
An Alternate Ending for “The Breakdown of Family N” in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
And progress will become return / And the mother will become fetal
In this episode of Strange Horizons @ 25, Kat Kourbeti sits down with SFF critic and writer Bogi Takács for an in-depth conversation about the role of criticism in the SFF space, plus an overall look at their varied career.
Wednesday: Takaoka’s Travels by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa 
Friday: We Are All Monsters: How Deviant Organisms Came to Define Us by Andrew Mangham 
Issue 20 Jan 2025
Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 13 Jan 2025
Issue 6 Jan 2025
By: Samantha Murray
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 23 Dec 2024
Issue 16 Dec 2024
Issue 9 Dec 2024
Issue 2 Dec 2024
By: E.M. Linden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
Issue 25 Nov 2024
Issue 18 Nov 2024
By: Susannah Rand
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
Issue 11 Nov 2024
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