"And She Had Been So Reasonable" by Rachel Bolton (Apex #147)

“There is no one thing that makes a woman. Don’t believe people who tell you otherwise.” In this deceptively detached story, a nameless Woman is struggling to escape an abusive marriage, while Bolton invites the reader to shape the form and features of the main character in their mind. The result is a frankly terrifying reminder of the universality of violence and misogyny (which feels somehow more realistic the more the story embraces its speculative element at the end), but also of our indomitable need to resist. Certainly hits different after recent global events.

"Any Good Sacrifice" by C. J. Subko (Small Wonders #17)

Four girls start a perilous journey to reach the God’s Maw. Along the way, each girl has to sacrifice parts of herself to help her group continue amid the treacherous terrain—and every sacrifice, though painful, helps them cover a bit more ground. With an almost child-like naivete in its telling, made to conceal the horrors within, this dark fairytale about the power of sisterhood by Subko is at turns as familiar and comforting as it is heartbreaking and, ultimately, hopeful.

"House Traveler" by Thomas Ha (Bourbon Penn #34)

“There is no meaningful difference between house and not house. Just a container. A limiter. A form your mind tries to fill.” The unnamed protagonist has a simple mission: to leave the house, meet the Liar, and bring back as many provisions as possible for his meager group to survive amid a ravaged, dystopian world. But this is not a straightforward story and like its ever-changing neighborhood, the world Thomas Ha has created is a slippery thing, weaved together by memories and obfuscation, by consequences and strange flying things. Quizzical, fascinating and steeped in subtle cosmic horror, House Traveler is one of those enigmas you will return to often, only to never find the same architecture again, whether within or without.

"Telling the Soul of Mars" by Alina Pete (Augur #7.2)

Wāpan, a storyteller born on Mars, visits her Native community on Earth for the first time, to share stories and continue weaving the rich, unbroken tapestry of oral tradition. Yet the stories Wāpan carries in her heart, stories crafted by her ancestors to tell Martian-born humans of how life was back on Earth, cannot compare to the actuality of seeing the ocean, or snow, for the first time. In this incredibly touching tale of reclamation of one’s heritage and of building bridges between two vastly different ways of living, Pete manages to make us envision the soul of a strange planet, while yearning to hold the planet we’re currently inhabiting in our arms, tighter.

© 2024 Danai Christopoulou