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I don't normally link to reviews of SH material from here (should I?), but the Molly Gloss story we published earlier this year, "The Grinnell Method", has picked up two excellent critical responses that deserve to be read on their own merits. Both link to Paul Kincaid's "Widening Gyre" review at LARB.

First, Maureen Kincaid Speller has a very detailed reading of the story, followed by consideration of its generic identity, on her blog, Paper Knife:

How do we determine whether or not something is science fiction? Is it actually possible to do so any more? Indeed, is it even desirable? We can take a story like ‘The Grinnell Method’ and look at it in a number of different ways. It might be sf because its author has determined that it is and has submitted it to editors under that rubric. Equally, it might be sf because a venue that publishes sf has chosen to publish it as such (this is not quite the same thing as the author submitting it as sf). It might be sf because the reader chooses to tag it as such. Or it is sf because enough people decide that it is and some sort of ad hoc consensus is reached. Equally, it might be read as being something other than sf, and by extension, out of place in the particular venue in which it was published. But if that is so, what is it and how do we decide? And critically, does it even matter?

Meanwhile at io9, Abigail Nussbaum compares the story to Karen Joy Fowler's "What I Didn't See":

Both stories, as well as Tiptree's, are underpinned by their heroine's awareness of the stifling narrowness of the options afforded her in a male-dominated world, and a desire to escape into something inhuman. And both stories are rooted in the unknowable. In the Fowler story, as the title itself suggests, the narrator is absent for the story's central event, the massacre of apes instigated by her husband, who fears that if the men of the expedition aren't given an outlet for their rage and frustration, they will turn on the Africans, and of course the mystery of the woman's disappearance is never solved, just as the nature of the flaw in "The Grinnell Method" is never revealed. Gloss's story has the distinction of being more science-oriented than either Fowler or Tiptree's — where the narrator of "What I Didn't See" is characterized by her lack of sight, Barbara is characterized by her observance — and more overtly fantastic, but the lines of similarity are nevertheless there.



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.
Current Issue
31 Mar 2025

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.
In the second audio episode of Writing While Disabled, hosts Kristy Anne Cox and Kate Johnston welcome Farah Mendelsohn, acclaimed SFF scholar and conrunner, to talk all things hearing, dyslexia, and more ADHD adjustments, as well as what fandom could and should be doing better for accessibility at conventions, for both volunteers and attendees.
Wednesday: Under the Eye of The Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda 
Friday: The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon 
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By: Holli Mintzer
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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By: Alexandra Munck
Podcast read by: Claire McNerney
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Strange Horizons
By: Michelle Kulwicki
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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