Zachary Gillan

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Articles

Dioramas by Blair Austin

May 8, 2024 | strangehorizons.com | Zachary Gillan |Varsha Dinesh |R. Lazarus |James Cheng

In a second-season episode of the American sitcom Community (2009-2015), the study group that the show focuses on is making a diorama. “I can’t believe this is our twentieth and final anthropology diorama of the year,” says one character. “I can’t believe our assignment is making a diorama of us making our nineteenth diorama,” responds another. There’s something about the diorama—minuscule, artificial, toylike, and recursive—that invites ridicule.
The H Word: Bartleby and the Weird

Nov 15, 2023 | nightmare-magazine.com | Wendy Wagner |Zachary Gillan

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” (bit.ly/3PIvslrgutenberg) first published in 1853, is not typically considered a work of horror. The tale of a law clerk who absents himself from his duties at work, then from the outside world, then from life itself, it presents itself as a work of realism with no gore, no horror, terror, nothing of the supernatural or the monstrous about it.
Someday, I identify as a Prairie

Sep 12, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Nnadi Samuel |Rebecca Schneider |Lydia O’Donnell |Zachary Gillan

Glory be to the improper plot: this acre of hand tilled hibiscus& the dying raven that slants midway, in collapsed grace. I am thankful for everything that lays chaotic. jagged landmass. raked mess of depression, inversely proportional to climate change—the way I discolor in summer. measuring tape laid to waste because,this is a farm dispute where everyone wants to outcount the other.
Mooncalves edited by John W. M. Thompson

Sep 12, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Zachary Gillan |Rebecca Schneider |Lydia O’Donnell |Nnadi Samuel

Miles Davis, the Prince of Darkness, made his name in the frenetic world of bebop by playing his trumpet as little as possible, emphasizing not a constant stream of notes, but the gaps between them. “It’s not the notes you play; it’s the notes you don’t play,” he was fond of saying.
DOPPLER EFFECT By Lydia O’Donnell

Sep 12, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Lydia O’Donnell |Rebecca Schneider |Nnadi Samuel |Zachary Gillan

The researcher wanted to determine if life could exist on planets around stars that were previously thought of as inhabitable.
I'll Be Your Mirror

Sep 12, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Rebecca Schneider |Lydia O’Donnell |Nnadi Samuel |Zachary Gillan

0—SunsetIn my earliest memory, she stands by a window. She’s wearing her lab gear, coat and gloves, leaning into a stretch. The soft curve of her profile is backlit by the prairie sunset. It’s been a long day’s work, and a long evening lies ahead, but for now she’s at rest, watching the pink and yellow sky fade to dusk. 1—PranksIn those days, I was certain of my purpose. I assisted Ojoa in the lab to practice my physical dexterity. Mealtimes, I sat with the facility staff to develop my social skills.
Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw

Feb 15, 2023 | strangehorizons.com | Zachary Gillan |Athar Fikry |Rebecca Turkewitz |Rachel Cordasco

Blood-soaked but tender, Cassandra Khaw’s debut collection Breakable Things is a lush collection of the dark fantastic, twenty-three short stories honed down almost to the point of flash fiction. Largely pulled from the beginning of Khaw’s career, published between 2015 and 2019, with one new addition, they showcase an author with a distinct voice from very early on. Khaw’s work tends to fall in one of three major modes: high fantasy, mythic/folkloric, and weird horror.