Size / / /

Seen true: a skeleton,
a woman striding statue-tall
in a time of cities, of temples, of stories
lost: no foundation texts inscribed on her tall body
only her collar-bones in Shahr-e Sukhteh's dry ground: aš, aš
words unfinished, unfound—and an eye in her skull's left socket
that would have glowed gold and sun-patterned in her face,
seeing / sun-world, scorched to bone and gold / oh
/ women of gold: legs as long as temples,
as strong / to see her walk,
more than a story
I made.




Alex Dally MacFarlane is a writer, editor, and historian. Other historical stories can be read in the anthologies Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, Missing Links and Secret Histories, and Zombies: Shambling through the Ages. She is currently editing The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, out late 2014.

Where it is not stated, translations from Ancient Greek are by Sonya Taaffe and translations from Arabic are by Sofia Samatar, used with their permissions, for which the author is deeply grateful.
Current Issue
3 Aug 2026

I had a daughter and then I didn’t. I woke in the cradle of midnight, shivering from a supernatural cold. I thought at first that she was crying, that she had woken me, like so many midnights before. But there was silence all around me. I sat up on one arm and peered into her crib. She was gone. In her place was wrapped a sallow, horned little boy. His eyes blinked open. I look at him. He looked at me. Changeling, I thought. Then he started to scream. “Why weren’t the windows
The deads are punctual. They arrive exactly when there is nothing left to distract us.
survival is a fungus
In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Amritesh Mukherjee and Abigail Nussbaum join Dan Hartland to talk about literary awards.
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By: Aimee Ogden
Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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Issue 8 Jun 2026
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