Why would sentient aliens have the same mating habits as humans? Even other great apes don’t have the same mating habits as humans. Humans don’t always have the same mating habits as humans.

The blood woke Yalnis. It ran between her thighs, warm and slick, cooling, sticky. She pushed back from the stain on the silk, bleary with sleep and love, rousing to shock and stabbing pain.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Vonda N. McIntyre's "Little Faces."

What follows are excerpts from two reviews of science fiction that I read last December.

I dream of women who vow / to keep their fire baskets full