I hate selkie stories. They�re always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat and brought it downstairs between finger and thumb and said �What�s this?�, and you never saw your mom again.

The best Steampunk tales (for this reader) are those which expose the gears of the world, just as though our masters had not betrayed us, and then break the gears, because of course the gears of the world, on exposure, prove to have been broken or (which is the same thing for humans) made invisible.

songbirds will sing to / a spring river falling / through the forest's hair.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Sofia Samatar's "Selkie Stories Are for Losers".