She wore no jewels, only the short trousers of a ball player and an undecorated armguard that covered her from wrist to elbow, her hand curled into a fist to hold it in place. She wasn't jumping or crouching, only standing, her arms at her side, her head tilted just slightly, as though she were listening to a voice only she could hear.

The noise rose. Qefahl Brend seemed paralyzed in his seat. The novice next to Her-Breath-Contains said, "She can't do that! Can she do that?" Meanwhile, Ultimately-Justice strolled unconcerned to the center line, looked at Seven-Brilliant-Truths, and gently, sweetly, smiled.

These interviews were conducted by email between April and June in 2010 as part of my PhD on the Culture, drawing on the extraordinary way Banks's writing investigates and interrogates language, the body, the relationship between the self and society and the relationship between the self and the other, to consider what it is to be a person.

That a vessel of story so packed with story it seems to overflow with plenitude can feel half-empty after we shut the last page may be a central clue to what David Mitchell has been doing in The Bone Clocks in order to tell sooth; or not. A clue would be good.

I saw a city, Perrette longs to say. The most incredible city. I want to step under its gleaming gold roofs and I want you to step alongside me—

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Ann Leckie's "She Commands Me and I Obey (part 2 of 2)."

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Ann Leckie's "She Commands Me and I Obey (part 1 of 2)."

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Alex Dally MacFarlane's "Because I Prayed This Word."

my body burnished scales, a shawl of sparks over a story I have never told.

It was the new year / and you were hardly human yourself