We are touched and encouraged to see an overwhelming response from writers from the Sino diaspora as well as BIPOC creators in various parts of the world. And such diverse and daring takes of wuxia and xianxia, from contemporary to the far reaches of space!
In January 2022, the reviews department at Strange Horizons, led at the time by Maureen Kincaid Speller, published our first special issue with a focus on SF criticism. We were incredibly proud of this issue, and heartened by how many people seemed to feel, with us, that criticism of the kind we publish was important; that it was creative, transformative, worthwhile. We’d been editing the reviews section for a few years at this point, and the process of putting together this special, and the reception it got, felt like a kind of renewal—a reminder of why we cared so much. In the couple of months that followed, we made grand plans for future projects, and even started a podcast.
Would a Teixcalaanli aristocrat look up at the sky, think of Lsel Station, and wonder—with Auden—"what doubtful act allows/ Our freedom in this English house/ our picnics in the sun"?
We are amazed, awed, delighted and have wept (in a good way) at the sheer talent represented in the stories, poems and essays. In fact, we are saddened that we couldn’t represent all of Southeast Asia. We have so much talent.
Due to the high volume of submissions we received during our November 2021 open call, we are taking longer than average to review all of the stories. Rest assured we are doing everything we can to work our way through each of your stories with care and attention. Though we try to respond within 90 days, that is not the case currently with the state of the world and impacts on our staff. Our goal is to finish reading through all submissions by May 2022.
Art
“Artist Interview: Juliana Pinho's Making-Of” by Juliana Pinho (01/18/21)
“Artist Interview: Aya Ghanameh” by Dante Luiz (03/29/21)
“Artist Interview: Sunmi” by Dante Luiz (05/31/21)
“Artist Interview: Palloma Barreto” by Dante Luiz (07/05/21)
Articles and Columns
“The Waters Of This Place: Aotearoa New Zealand Speculative Fiction” by AJ Fitzwater (01/25/21)
“New Horizons: A Conversation with the Editors of Rikka Zine, khōréō mag, and Constelación” by Gautam Bhatia, Terrie Hashimoto, Coral Alejandra Moore, Lian Xia Rose, Rowan Morrison, and Alexandra Hill (02/22/21)
“Taking Care: The Humane Heart of Science Fiction” by Judith Tarr (03/22/21)
“Roundtable: The palestinian speculative” by Fargo Tbakhi, N.
When we were first asked to take on the Strange Horizons Reviews department, in the summer of 2014, we said yes for two main reasons: the first was that we knew each other already in various ways, and thought we would enjoy working together (in the years since, this intuition has proven more correct than we knew); and, secondly and even more importantly, because we thought reviews were important.
That’s why, since our appointment and barring a week or so here and there, we have done our utmost to deliver three long-form reviews in every single issue of this brilliant magazine (we really have no idea how our successive predecessors in Reviews, Niall Harrison and Abigail Nussbaum, possibly achieved this alone).
As the year winds to a close, here is a quick round-up of how some of the work that Strange Horizons published during 2020 fared across a year of juries, judges, voters, and awards!
