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. We hope you will enjoy our offering of stories, poetry, essays, and reviews, all commissioned and curated by the Strange Horizons editorial collective.

In Jennifer Hudak's story, “The Last Time Gladys Howled At the Moon,” a werewolf battles to come to terms with her own ageing. Purbasha Roy's poem, “Everyone Dies,” reflects on, and contemplates the acceptance of death. But if ageing is not simply about an inevitable journey towards death, but also about the transformations on that path, then R.B. Lemberg's “The blanket, the secret, the dark” illumines those transformations through the vivid life-cycle of a butterfly; and Devan Barlow's “A Tree, At Peace” explores a rather different type of bodily transmogrification! And rounding off the poetry, M. Frost's “view” speaks of the mirror to ageing: memory.

We carry this theme forward in our non-fiction. Isabel Black's essay, “Grannies Against Oppression” explores the role of elders in resistance to totalitarianism and oppression by examining the last three books of The Expanse. And while our three reviews of the week are connected by the theme of the International Booker Prize, the thread of ageing also runs through them. In On the Calculation of Volume, we see the reliving of a single day over time; Under the Eye of the Big Words tackles the ageing of the planet, and of species; and finally, the pivotal character in The Book of Disappearance is a grandmother.

We at Strange Horizons hope that this special issue—in the way of all of our special issues—will contribute to a conversation, and to reflections about how the genre engages with ageing, and all that comes in its wake.