Michelle Koubek

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Nnadi Samuel |Corey Farrenkopf |Michelle Koubek |Catherine Baker

gravity ropes a shark upside down as if destined for hanging. the glissading wind, scissoring mushrooms off the hard scale of its body—laid in acrobatic display. the spectacle hunts the small kingdom of man. Its practised weight, silvering the atmosphere in marigold worship. I roam the length of this world, wasteful with minutes,positioning to catch a glimpse of its dorsal fin making an ocean of air. It swam the Mississippis of its lives, indifferent to hurt.

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Michelle Koubek |Corey Farrenkopf |Nnadi Samuel |Catherine Baker

The universe is dying. I can tell by how the stars are flicking off like lightbulbs. But that’s why I’m here, electrician to the sky,R5-70, a nanobot with 3,000 siblings. We crawl through the dim space like cave explorers,poking, twisting and tightening the stars that have turned off. And as they blink back on memories scorch uslike solar flares from the Sun,burning, because the past is angry for being forgotten. Here is one, I see my daughter,chicken wing arms and jalapeno eyes.

Dec 9, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Catherine Baker |Corey Farrenkopf |Michelle Koubek |Nnadi Samuel

Beginning to read any speculative fiction story means piecing its world together from the words the author gives us, one by one. What kinds of being live here, what spaces they inhabit, what laws their physical and social worlds must follow, what common sense they have that we do not, what technologies they know and how supernatural the cosmology will be—all come piece by piece as we interpret the words. And especially the names.