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Oops, we've slipped over into March already. How did that happen? I think this February news round-up is still good to go, though:

We're into awards seasons and there are SH alumni on the Nebula ballot (including Usman T. Malik, Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Pinsker, Tina Connolly, and Amal El-Mohtar), Stoker ballot (Alyssa Wong, Damien Angelica Walters, Lucy A. Snyder, among others) and the BSFA ballot (Nina Allan, Adam Roberts, and Jonathan McCalmont). Congratulations to all of them!

I note a new magazine has launched, headed up by Salik Shah and Ajapa Sharma, two writers whose work has appeared in these pages: Mithila Review. The first issue has work by Usman T. Malik, Shweta Narayan, Shveta Thakrar and others.

And if you fancy a chance to study with our senior reviews editor, Maureen Kincaid Speller is one of the three tutors at this year's SF Foundation Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism (the other two are Andrew Milner and Tade Thompson). As a veteran of several past classes, I thoroughly recommend the Masterclass if you have any interest in SF criticism. This year's event will take place from Thursday 23 to Saturday 25 June in London; applications are due by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of new stories or you to read: The latest issue of Lackington's includes Arkady Martine's "Contra Gravitatem (Vita Genevievis)" and Natalia Theodoridou's "Manapolis", among others. Aidan Doyle's interactive fiction piece "Kotodama appeared in sub-Q. Sarah Pinsker's latest is "Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea", in the February Lightspeed, alongside "Charlotte Incorporated" by Rachael K. Jones. The latest Analog includes Maggie Clark's "Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan", and Rich Larson's "Sleep Factory." Ada Hoffmann's novelette "The Scrape of Tooth and Bone" appeared in GigaNotoSaurus. Fiction editor An Owomoyela has a new story in Clarkesworld, co-written with Rachel Swirsky: "Between Dragons and Their Wrath." Heather Morris's "You're Doing the Best You Can" can be found in Daily SF. Rachael Acks's "Fire in the Belly" can be found in the latest issue of Mothership Zeta. Charles Payseur's "Taste of the Forest, Dark and Sweet" is in the new anthology Simmer, from Dreamspinner Press. Karen Munro's "We Have Always Lived in the Subdivision" can be found in Strange Little Girls, from Belladonna Publishing. A pair of podcasts: Michelle Ann King's comic fantasy "Send in the Ninjas" appeared in Podcastle's "Artemis Rising" event, while A. C. Wise's "Her Last Breath Before Waking" was at Glittership. Andrew Kozma's flash fiction "The Gardens" appeared on Grievous Angel. And last but not least (except in character count), Akua Lezli Hope has two micro flash pieces in Tiny Text: "Incubation" and "Departure"

Not so many new books this month, but Stefon Mear's Lunar Alchemy (latest in his Rise of Magic series) is out from Thousand Faces Publishing. Michael R. Underwood's novella The Absconded Ambassador, second in his Genrenauts series, is out from Tor.com. Lawrence Schimel's new book for adults is Una Barba Para Dos, a collection of 100 erotic flash fiction pieces in Spanish, published by Editorial Dos Bigotes. And Lore Graham's roleplaying game supplement Deep Dark Blue: Adventure in the Benthic Frontier is out from Evil Hat Publishing.

Some new poems: A new issue of Stone Telling includes work by Neile Graham ("The Sense of Beginning"), Lev Mirov ("Witch's Brew"), Lynette Mejía ("Spell"), Sonya Taaffe ("The Parable of the Albatross") and M. Sereno ("To the weaver, from the woman who slew Bakunawa"). Elsewhere, Peg Duthie's "look at that, you son of a bitch" is in Rattle (it's a quote from the late astronaut Edgar Mitchell). Heather Morris's "Arrhythmia" was in the February Apex. Carrie Naughton's "Crux" is in Atlas and Alice. Catherine Rockwood's "Marina at Mytilene" appeared in Upstart (at the very end of January, but missed out of the last round-up). Sara Norja's "Village Woman" is in Goblin Fruit. And Elizabeth Barrette's Poetry Fishbowl was on the theme of "tactile emphasis", with 14 new poems released.

Lastly, a quiet month for non-fiction as well, but Carmen Maria Machado's "The Moon Over the River Lethe" can be found at Catapult, Foz Meadows has a new column on adaptations at Tor.com, Jessy Randall reviewed David Bowie's Blackstar for The Collapsar (with Daniel M Shapiro), and part of Jenn Grunigen's Masters thesis, a database of fox narratives, is now online.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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