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Jun 12, 2024 | 
strangehorizons.com | Devan Barlow |Danilo Heitor |Tajudeen Muadh |Jess Hyslop
It’s difficult being a reptile in winter even the fire-breathing kind, and our research proves that genus is far rarer than most believe Once winter hits, should a dragon linger at your hummingbird feeder or sneak through nearby piles of decaying leaves consider placing a laundry basket filled with soft blankets somewhere they can access It’ll work nicely as a temporary lair Be prepared for your visiting dragon to steal your scarves, your spoons, your salt shakers or anything else that...
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May 30, 2024 | 
metastellar.com | Devan Barlow
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe air was choked with smoke from tightly-clutched cigarettes, and the table was covered in half-full cups of tea—how long had it taken the family to decide to have their housekeeper fetch her? Gwen examined the table so she didn’t have to meet the impatient eyes of the family members. Had one of these cups of tea held the poison responsible for the corpse lying beside an overturned chair at the head of the table?
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Jan 29, 2024 | 
strangehorizons.com | Devan Barlow |Aishwarya Subramanian |Dan Hartland |William Shaw
Your stories make me feel uneasyOr is that just the glass slicing openthe soles of my feet?
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Jan 29, 2024 | 
strangehorizons.com | Aishwarya Subramanian |Dan Hartland |Mary Lee |Devan Barlow
This is the third of our annual criticism specials, which makes it officially a habit (or enemy action). This makes an editorial a little difficult to write; if in the 2022 Criticism Special we set out a broad set of principles that we adhere to as critics and editors, then the 2023 Special was a recommitment to those in memory of former senior reviews editor, Maureen Kincaid Speller. In 2024, introducing this special issue, is it enough just to say, “We still believe this”?
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Jan 29, 2024 | 
strangehorizons.com | Tehnuka Ilanko |Mary Lee |Devan Barlow |Jess Nevins
The Saint of Bright Doors begins as the story of a boy with exceptional abilities, and exceptional parents, striving to become an extremely ordinary young man. Fetter’s magic appears unremarkable when compared to his upbringing—his mother wholly focuses her own existence, and his, on the destruction of his cult-leader father.
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Jan 1, 2024 | 
magazine.interstellarflightpress.com | Devan Barlow
FictionFlash Fiction by Devan BarlowIt had been years since Margot could read a book without it turning to honey in her hands. Like she was some sort of incorrectly shaped bee. She could at least still read books, though she had to be fast, and there was no turning back the pages to reread. No savoring the words for her. Despite reading widely, trying every genre she could find, honey always seeped up from the words, and the margins collapsed beneath the weight of sweetness.
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Dec 14, 2023 | 
strangehorizons.com | H. B. Asari |Devan Barlow |Leah Komar |Rachel Cordasco
When I picked up Shubnum Khan’s The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, I found it very hard to put down again. It reminded me of the time in my early twenties when I read a lot of postcolonial and emigrant novels, with bonus points for poetic style and themes of star-crossed lovers, as in Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet [1999] and Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter [2001], or sprinkled with a smattering of fantasy and magic, most notably some cherry-picked Alice Hoffman novels.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
strangehorizons.com | Devan Barlow |H. B. Asari |Leah Komar |Rachel Cordasco
I approach my moon’s apiary,hive-sanctuaryA hummingof hive magicplays along my skinThe bees sheltered in the treeswhen they brought us to these moonsQueens continued rulingYellow and black shaded tosilver and tealI bow to the bees,thanking them for pollinatingasking for honeyTo crystallize the citrus peelsour witch-work requiresSmall forms swirl around my faceflicking wings, brushing antennaelike gentle kissesTheir buzz pours into my earsmatching the thump of my heart
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
strangehorizons.com | Leah Komar |H. B. Asari |Devan Barlow |Rachel Cordasco
No one knows why worker bees leave when they leavethere’s plenty of food, an intact hive, a queen, larvae, nurses for the larvae but worker bee says: you can’t love something if you aren’t afraid to lose it. I was born holding a knife and as soon as I use it, I’ll die.
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Dec 12, 2023 | 
strangehorizons.com | H. B. Asari |Devan Barlow |Leah Komar |Rachel Cordasco
The first and last time the sisters met was decades ago when they were seven. Their father, Olikoli, had picked them up from their mothers—Aimerienina from her human mother on the mainland, then Ngasiena from her Njeri mother in the Silts—and taken them to one of the only swimming pools that dialled down its chlorination on Sunday mornings for Njeri and overcharged them for it.
