REVIEW: “Solve for X” by Kristen Koopman

Review of Kristen Koopman, “Solve for X,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 203-231 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Lots of misogyny and low level sexual harassment.

This is a story for any academic who has ever walked into the room and been the only one of their kind in the room — for the women, for the minorities, for the people in the “wrong” field for their gender, for all the people in the intersections.

It’s a — quite long for LSQ — complex and complicated story of the difficulties of being a woman, and a minority woman at that, in academia, and in a science field at that. It’s at times hard reading, but rightfully so, because that’s not an easy position to navigate, a fact both Julia, newly-appointed member of faculty, and her PhD student, Mercedes, must face; but it’s also at times rather cathartic. And while the way they face the issues is what makes this story speculative, an intriguing example of SF, it’s not the main focus of the story, just an elegant allegory.

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REVIEW: “Wind Whisperers” by Anna O’Brien

Review of Anna O’Brien, “Wind Whisperers,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 233-247 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Noma’s job is to whisper to the wind, the trick it into no longer agitating the skyscrapers and their inhabitants. Her job is not to mentor new wind whisperers, but Bryce, her newly assigned mentee, isn’t going to let that stop him.

Noma may find Bryce intensely irritating, but his earnestness is just sincere enough that I found him highly entertaining. This story made me laugh many times, and made me glad to have read it when I reached the end.

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REVIEW: “Intent of Form and Function” by Erin Stubbe

Review of Erin Stubbe, “Intent of Form and Function,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 127-153 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Content note: Unwanted pregnancy, abortion.

As I started reading this story, something in its essence felt very much like it was a modern-day Rumpelstiltskin retelling, which I was enjoying very much — and when this was confirmed, I enjoyed it even more. But at the same time, it’s also so much more than that, it’s a story of redemption.

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REVIEW: “Roil” by A.C. Luke

Review of A.C. Luke, “Roil,” Luna Station Quarterly 61 (2025): 113-119 — Purchase online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

As a child, Alsea was marked out as special, taught the songs that only few know how to sing in order to calm the ghosts and put them to rest. Now that she’s an adult, she spends her days waiting for ghosts to cross through the wall, to find them and sing to them.

What kept this story from being just another ordinary/run-of-the-mill ghost-exorcism story was the breathless hints of what lies on the other side of that wall — what, and who, and how did they come to be there, and how did they all die.

It was a curious little story.

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