Paul Chuks

Jan 13, 2025 | strangehorizons.com | Paul Chuks |Aishwarya Subramanian |Dan Hartland |Paul Kincaid

Abu Bakr Sadiq has established himself as a speculative poet who uses speculation as a didactic tool in examining the most inevitable human feeling that people of all classes experience—loss. As such, the reader is greeted with didacticism in the opening poem of his latest book, “Introducing Bhabi to the Cyborg”:just so we’re clear, you're not allowed to askhow these scars came to be. i don’t usually respond to questionsconcerning lineage [...] (p.

May 24, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Mark Granger |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

Sometimes the sign of a good book is not gelling with it straight away. It’s happened to me many times, but for whatever reason I’ve pushed through that initial uncomfortable phase and realised that, no, what I’m reading is great. The Hard Switch is one of those books. I can now say Owen D. Pomery’s latest graphic novel is a fantastic emotional SF warm hug of a story, even when the horrible stuff happens. Because, spoiler alert, it bloody well does happen.

May 22, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Matt Holder |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The engine that drives Ed Park’s Same Bed Different Dreams is the philosophy of a question: what is history? Is it a series of factual events organized into a sequence after-said-fact (and what is fact? And who decides on them?) or “a litany of trackable moments, the realm of machines” (p. 3)? Is it a method of interpretation? An impulse for truth, or Truth, “‘a message from a genius, ruined by the rain’” (p. 4)? A reckoning toward justice, a curative for erasure?

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Paul Chuks |T.D. Walker |B. Pladek |Andy Sawyer

any god—when you pray—will tell you—the last thingthey want to do is turn their back—then they turn. you’re from a country where bombs haverevoked bodies into void, for years; your grandma diedthis way. her limbs in the south, head,north, hands, east—as if showing godhow to dismember a poem. It’s your turn now. the bombs have come in the same temper—you in your granny’s frame, near the spot sheescalated into dust. you call upon god,a bomb dies in your face.

May 21, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Andy Sawyer |B. Pladek |T.D. Walker |Paul Chuks

The genre of After World is still often referred to (see The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) as “The Last Man,” from its genesis in the early nineteenth century in various novels and poems using that title, including, of course, the famous work by Mary Shelley.