📣 CALL FOR @strangehorizons.bsky.social 2027 CRITICISM SPECIAL It is already the time when thoughts turn to the end of January and the annual SH criticism special. Do you have an essay? A long review? A roundtable? A *critical thing*? Please email us about it! 📧 reviews at strangehorizons dot com
26 January 2026
Welcome to the annual Strange Horizons criticism special!
strangehorizons.com
Can’t help but notice that Dan has buried the lede a bit here (everyone say “congratulations, Dan”)
Dan Hartland@danhartland.bsky.social · last mo.📝 We have new editors at SH Reviews! @kateem.bsky.social will be curating a monthly strand of reviews focusing on SFF at least 50 years old. Novelty bias begone! And @ajodasso.bsky.social is moonlighting from Poetry as our new Media Reviews Editor, ensuring films, TV, games get their regular due.
"This is not dream logic, not surrealism nor magic realism. This is not the old weird or the new... Even the unbroken worlds are fragile, anxious, surveilled, itchy" #10YearsAgo @vajra.me on Kuzhali Manickavel strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...
Marginalia: You Spin Me Right Round
I'm going to talk a little bit about the work of Kuzhali Manickavel.
strangehorizons.com
It's been 10 days since we began the annual Strange Horizons fund-drive! So far, we've raised 75% of our base goal of $22K, which will allow us to continue existing in 2027. We would love to get there, and beyond, so we can raise our writers' pay. To help us: www.backerkit.com/c/projects/s...
Strange Horizons 2027 Fundraiser
The annual Strange Horizons fundraiser! Support this free, online, award-winning, weekly magazine of SFFH, which runs entirely on reader - YOUR - donations!
backerkit.com
Gautam Bhatia@gautambhatia88.bsky.social · 4mo agoThe Strange Horizons annual fund-drive is now live! Support us to continue publishing free, weekly, online SFFH fiction, poetry, art, and non-fiction for our 27th year! www.backerkit.com/c/users/3516... For new supporters - welcome aboard. For the regulars - you’ll notice something different. 🧵
Strange Horizons was the first magazine I ever submitted to as a teenager (and received a kind rejection). It was one of the first sff magazines to feel like a platform that welcomed international writers. I've read them, been published by them, written criticism for them. Help keep the lights on:
Strange Horizons@strangehorizons.bsky.social · 4mo agoThe Strange Horizons Annual Fund Drive to keep us publishing in 2027 is finally here! You can find the fund drive at the link ⬇️ www.backerkit.com/c/projects/s... Some changes have arrived this time around though. Read the thread to learn more.
Classicist here to inform you all that this is ancient Greek for summoning a cat
Yiannis@yiannisbab.bsky.social · 5mo agoAh yes, the "Thdpsssps"
This thing is now out in the world! @drmrb.bsky.social & I wrote a book; I'm going through cycles of "literary masterpiece" and "wait, this is not academic at all, it's a stack of bear puns in a duffle coat". If either of those appeals to you, it's out/pre-orderable depending on where you are.
This thing is now out in the world! @drmrb.bsky.social & I wrote a book; I'm going through cycles of "literary masterpiece" and "wait, this is not academic at all, it's a stack of bear puns in a duffle coat". If either of those appeals to you, it's out/pre-orderable depending on where you are.
The Bandigoat lives! 7 tales of weird fiction & horror by @kuzhalimanickavel.bsky.social, @emelkrishnan.bsky.social, Jugal Mody, Miriam Kumaradoss-Hohauser, Lungmying Lepcha, and Rashmi Ruth Devadasan www.blaft.com/products/ban...
This is really excellent. What I really appreciate about Zach Gillan's writing is how ecumenical and wide-ranging it is. This piece demonstrates that well, pointing toward some interesting intersections of affect, reading strategies, and genre expectations.
Zachary Gillan@megapolisomancy.bsky.social · 9mo agoFor the @strangehorizons.bsky.social 2026 Criticism Special, I wrote about weird fiction being constituted by weird reading, vis a vis Sederholm and Woofter’s The Weird and @undertow.bsky.social’s The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Vol. 1., in tribute to Maureen Kincaid Speller. It’s a long one.
📣 It's here: the 2026 @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special! 💡 A whole week of critical insight, with a new essay and new review every day. A podcast, a roundtable, an *editorial*. 📚 The weird! Anthropology! Non-anglophone SFF! Plus thoughts on fantasy series, adaptations, film and more.
26 January 2026
Welcome to the annual Strange Horizons criticism special!
strangehorizons.com
How thrilling is this! A glowing review of I Dream of Theresa May in the London Evening Standard: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "There’s honestly not a weak link in this hilarious and heart-breaking production" www.standard.co.uk/culture/thea... On until November 29th @taratheatre.com : taratheatre.com/whats-on/i-d...
I Dream of Theresa May: an electric black comedy about the hostile environment
The former Home Secretary torments and guides a queer Indian immigrant as he desperately seeks settled status
standard.co.uk
🎧New Critical Friends! It was a real pleasure to convene this talk with Paul March-Russell of @sffoundation.bsky.social and Jacqueline Nyathi of @hararereview.bsky.social. On the hopeful imagination: “We should have a much bigger perspective when we’re thinking about how to get to the future.” (JN)
Critical Friends Episode 17: On Imagining Hopefully
Dan Hartland is joined by Paul March-Russell and Jacqueline Nyathi to discuss speculative fiction’s approach to hope and optimism. Where has it gone? How do writers express it? And what are its pit…
strangehorizons.com
If you can, please donate to help one of our regular contributors in this time of need.
Indrapramit Das@indrapramitdas.bsky.social · last yr.Fellow Calcuttan writer/editor Archita Mittra is in desperate need of financial help. She recently lost her father, her home was damaged in the recent rains, & her mother's in hospital. They don't have insurance, & she's a freelancer. I can vouch for her. Please share widely & donate:
JUSTICE AND BALANCE BRIEFLY RESTORED TO THE LAND
Ursula K. Le Guin@ursulakleguin.com · last yr.Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall! Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.
Also, don't miss Vajra's incredibly powerful acceptance speech (fitting given how many of Le Guin's speeches were and are so unforgettable): youtu.be/Y5h5ZDjWPTc?...
2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
YouTube video by Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation
youtu.be
David Naimon@davidnaimon.bsky.social · last yr.Congratulations Vajra! ICYMI: here is our deep dive together into RAKESFALL, the winner of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Audio: tinhouse.com/podcast/vajr... @ursulakleguin.com @vajra.me
this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.
Strange Horizons published our first issue 25 years ago this month! 🎉 Thank you to everyone who has ever read, shared, submitted, donated! We wouldn't be here without you and we hope you'll continue to support us into the future!
🎧 New Critical Friends for your listening devices! This month, Sneha Pathak and @tansyg.bsky.social talk to me about texts often dismissed as too slight to review - books, films, genres with which we might be accused of merely passing time. How should critics approach this sort of work? And why?
Critical Friends Episode 15: On Time-Pass
Dan Hartland is joined by Sneha Pathak and Tansy Gardam to discuss the kinds of text which many don’t find worthy of criticism at all.
strangehorizons.com
Wednesday's SH review is from Sneha Pathak, on @blaft.bsky.social's Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction. This is a really interesting piece on a super-valuable collection, which "plays an important role in bringing more readers to the rich and varied world of purely entertaining, juicy pulp fiction."
The Blaft Anthology of Gujarati Pulp Fiction edited by Rakesh Khanna, translated by Vishwambhari S. Parmar
Parmar, who has translated writings by various authors, of various lengths, and belonging to different sub-genres, giving a detailed picture of the pulp writing scene, both as it was and as it has …
strangehorizons.com
Something very very weird happened during the Hugos award ceremony... It's been on my mind for days, and so I wrote this blog: "When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident" grigorylukin.com/2025/08/21/w... #Worldcon
Apropos of nothing, John Reider's book "Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction" is a great, accessible look at science fiction's infatuation with colonialism, manifest destiny, and the idea of "the frontier". www.weslpress.org/978081956874...
Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction – Wesleyan University Press
Groundbreaking study of science fiction's relation to colonialism and imperialismThis is the first full-length study of emerging Anglo-American science ficti...
weslpress.org
☎️ SH CRITICISM HOTLINE NOW OPEN In mid-August, thoughts naturally turn to the end of next January: the @strangehorizons.bsky.social Criticism Special. What spec fic essays, roundtables, interviews, song-and-dance routines have you got for us? Go broad! ⚾️ Pitch us: danwhartland at gmail dot com
& enabling this whole situation is British bureaucracy's weird fetish for the abstract thought experiment over what real people actually experience, where the powerful people who make decisions wilfully pretend not to know anything by silencing & excluding anyone w/ any skin in the game.
At this point it feels so insufficient & stating the obvious to keep pointing out that appeals to "biology" to dictate who should have rights & who shouldn't is fascist, that policing gender only props up patriarchy, etc. but I guess we have to keep loudly doing that (& hopefully not only that).
A fringe group of bigoted weirdos have dragged British media, government, and law into their hateful obsession with trans people. Grim, depressing, and dangerous. Everyone with power in the UK who's played along should be ashamed of themselves.
