We are delighted to present to you our second special issue of the year. This one is devoted to ageing and SFF, a theme that is ever-present (including in its absence) in the genre.

Gladys was approaching her first heat when she shed her fur and lost her tail. The transformation was unintentional, and unwanted. When she awoke in her new form, smelling of skin and sweat, she wailed for her pack in a voice that scraped her throat raw.

does the comb understand the vocabulary of hair. Or the not-so-close-pixels of desires even unjoined shape up to become a boat

The birds have flown long ago. But the body, the body is like this: it has swallowed the smaller moon and now it wants to keep it.

now, be-barked / I am finally enough

how you gazed on our red land beside me / then how you traveled it, your eyes gone silver

Here, I examine the roles of the crones of the Expanse space in Persepolis Rising, Tiamat’s Wrath, and Leviathan Falls as leaders and combatants in a fight for freedom that is always to some extent mediated by their reduced physical and mental capacity as older people. I consider how the Expanse foregrounds the value of their long lives and experience as they configure the resistance for their own and future generations’ freedom, as well as their mentorship of younger generations whose inexperience often puts the whole mission in danger.